ANOTHER (with a fellow Quaker, mostly) that might be ongoing. We'll see
Jim: Are the police, prosecutors and judges TRYING to make us see them as evil? Do they think they are really invincible behind a wall of corrupt political alliances? Do they think none of us are watching? Do they really think a young female protester purposely attacked a male policeman and did so much harm to him that she deserved a seven-year sentence? Come on! And is she really so dangerous or lacking in roots that she had to be whisked off to Riker's Island rather than offered bail?
Are there any police (or prosecutors or judges) who are sincere and idealistic about serving the public, or are all of them corrupted by their positions? If there are any, why do they not condemn this obvious miscarriage of justice? How many similar injustices have been carried out against people of color and poor people without our even hearing about them? Is this just business as usual?
I think we need police and courts that really protect people. How do we get there?
http://youtu.be/BKxir_u2T_0
Jim: The police, prosecutors and retired judges who testified at the death penalty abolition hearings last month, regardless of which side of the issue they were on, all seemed to have a noble view of what their roles had been. They saw themselves as decent...See More
John Redman If you support legislation to effect "solution" to problems you perceive, then YOU are part of the problem, Jim. Government IS a terrorist and There is no good fruit from a poisoned tree. INternalize that and come out fighting - nonviolently, NOT with structured violence (legislation).- Jim: Here is a blog by one policeman who is asking the right questions:
https://improvingpolice.wordpress.com/.../making-choices.../
"For the most part, police are not legally obligated to act morally, but it behooves them ...See More
improvingpolice.wordpress.com
Being moral is to make good choices between right and wrong or good and bad acti... See More - Jim: In this case, in New York, all the legislation is on the books and theoretically understandable, but the way the police and courts are applying it is clearly immoral. Can the police and courts act morally? Yes. By acting immorally, are they making it harder for other police and courts to win public trust in the future? Of course! By acting morally, could they "win hearts and minds"? Yes.
- John Redman No, Jim, immoral acts cannot be handled morally except to ignore them. Lie down with dogs and get up with fleas.
- John Redman And I can move. With no government, there are no corporations. With no corporations there is no ,limited liability, yes?
- John Redman You recently saw how effective government regulation of nuclear waste dumps plays out, a massive release of plutonium and americanum in New Mexico salt mine. Sure, TRUST the organization that Izzy Stone warned you about (george Carlin, too) if you want but that is an abdication of responsibility.
- John Redman When they can get you to asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. Lenin called them (sheeple) "Useful fools". Are you willing to fit that description? I'm not. I believe in creative nonviolence, not MORE violence (structured violence) to effect change TOWARD individual freedom. Democide - the number 1 cause of early death.
- John Redman "We quit massacring each other a long time ago". When was that, 2 seconds ago? Is Kelly Thomas ancient history? The Alabama teen who just had his throat sliced to death yesterday? You are believing a myth, alright, The MOST DANGEROUS SUPERSTITION (by Larken Rose - I'll loan you, Jim, my copy if there is not one I do.nated in the library)
- John Redman "Why can't we just have community."? Do you mean FORCED or willing? If FORCED, welcome to The Gulag, an ideal not shared by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but maybe you disagree.
- John Redman Maybe THIS slaughter didn't just happen, either: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/video-surfaces-unarmed.../
thefreethoughtproject.com
April 29, 2014 Long Beach police were pursuing a man fleeing from a Target Store... See More - John Redman No, Geoff, Jim, the massarcre is ongoing and stretched out by daily drone strikes, runoffs in the Mo River from Hanford, the effluent from Fuckishima, the thugscum cops and the hidden deaths from government regulation (that YOU would like to ignore). Democide is widespread and is begging for YOUR genuine opposition - nonviolently. Even shopping in corporately owned stores is an act of violence. Paying taxes is a screaming opposition to the teachings of God. Drivers licenses and registration is obedience to tyranny and defying God at every level. Cowardice is NOT a Godly virtue.
- Jim:.The recent police murders in New Mexico and California are not massacres because they are not cruel MASS killings. Nowadays, we Americans seem to approve of massacres only overseas, by military personnel and spy agencies. That police should have impunity for this kind of thing is immoral in the extreme. There were probably millions of interactions between police and citizens this year, and I suspect that most of them were both legal and moral, serving a legitimate purpose. This police impunity and cruelty is a rare exception, and it is best dealt with by good laws well applied.
- John Redman Oh, good, Jim, GOOD. Weasel words. "There were probably millions of interactions between police and citizens this year, and I suspect that most of them were both legal and moral, serving a legitimate purpose." That is a lie, jim. NONE are moral if cops use force. NONE NONE NONE. It is FAR from "an exception"It is the RULE. You lie to yourself then repeat the lie abroad. George Carlin had your number illustrated in a post I shared yesterday.
- John Redman DO AWAY with incorporation. Limited Liability, a creation of government called Corporitism-Fascism, is pure sin. Don't JUST blame corporations. Doing so means "Don't look behind the curtain".
- John Redman "because they are not cruel MASS killings.". I cannot belive that you just wrote this. Consider the aggregate. Count in the people that froze to death this past winter from government interferance in the marketplace, the ones that starved to death because zoning boards (and COPS) closed down church soup kitchens. Look at the totality and tell me It's not MASS killing.
- John Redman Everything that the state does serves a STATE purpose and moral people will NOT believe otherwise. The state uses force and coercion to effect its purposes and NOTHING else. THAT makes it IMMORAL and nothing else can be constructed from that (except lies). "Well enforced" is an oxymoron. If you want moral outcomes, use strictly moral means which means NONVIOLENCE (NOT an outcome that FCNL favors, the degenerates), Satan, when tempting Jesus, used the SAME arguments. And YOU want to adopt them? Why, for expediency? Doesn't PEACE seem right to you?
posted by John Boanerges Redman at 6:29 AM
1 Comments:
Reflection/Commentary from Quaker educator and writer Parker Palmer on Krista Tippet's "On Being" blog
Here's a poem I re-read frequently. As short and simple as it is, it helps me remember that nothing new can grow between us when we speak to each other from "the place where we are right."
More important, the poem leads me to ask what I think is a question worth pondering: How might things change if we began our political conversations not from our certainties, but from our "doubts and loves"?
Many of us who differ politically love the same things — our children and grandchildren, our country, the natural world. Many of us who differ politically harbor the same doubts — that what's being done (or not done) to care for the things we love is the best or the right thing to do.
Yes, we differ on what ought to be done. But what if instead of starting by arguing over solutions — over "the place where we are right" — we began by sharing our loves and doubts? I suspect that our political conversations would be much more productive because they would proceed from common ground.
Hey, it's worth a try! One thing I'm certain about is that the other way isn't working!
Yehuda Amichai is widely regarded as Israel's greatest modern poet. If you read "The Place Where We Are Right" while remembering the political context in which it was written, the poem's power multiplies.
The Place Where We Are Right
by Yehuda Amichai
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the Spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
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