It's all fair game. If you think of it or I do, let's talk about it or rant about it.
Awake
-Are you a God? - they asked the Buddha. - No. - Are you an angel, then? - No. - A saint? - No. - Then what are you? -I am AWAKE.
Einstein
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure of the universe"-Albert Einstein-
Om Mani Padme Hum
Matthew 25:40
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Matthew 7 1-6
1. Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4. Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5. Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. 6. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
I just found this article Original Article saying that tools found in India may show a history going back as far a 1.5 million years, or possibly more, who knows. Of course they're stone tools which doesn't lead to the thought of a technologically advanced civilization equal or greater than ours, or that alluded to in the Mahabharata. As I've said before, I believe in such a civilization, one that far surpasses the current world. One that has eliminated evil, where man, if indeed there were men and not some other kind of creature, got along with man. Of course, it does play into the theory that there was once a truly superior being on this world, that has continuously degenerated over millennia the result being modern people who continue to degenerate. It could be that the stone tools found that go back over a million years, could be the remains of the results of that technologically advanced civilization, eons after it destroyed itself and was rebuilding, only eons later to destroy itself again and again who's even to say India was where it is today, then. . Man in one form or another has been on the earth millions of years, millions, plenty of time for hundreds of advanced civilizations also of one kind or another. After all this world, as we know it, could only be considered advanced, at best, for less than 100 years, really for 50 or so. Personally I consider ours as one of the less advanced, if you take away electronics, i.e. printed circuits, computers, etc. we're really no more advanced, perhaps less so than in the 15th-19th centuries, at best the early 20th. Ignorance is running rampant, growing stronger every day. Anyway I'm starting to ramble, so read on.
Lee Murray Stone tools reveal India’s 1.5 million year old prehistory
Past Horizons
Excavation of an Acheulian handaxe.
Article created on Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Archaeologists have discovered India’s oldest stone-age tools, up to 1.5 million years old, at a prehistoric site near Chennai. The discovery may change existing ideas about the earliest arrival of human ancestors from Africa into India.
A team of Indian and French archaeologists have used two dating methods including Cosmogenic nuclide burial dating to show that the stone hand-axes and cleavers from Attirampakkam are at least 1.07 million years old, and could date as far back as 1.5 million years.
The excavations at Attirampakkam show a deeply stratified sequence of occupation.
12 years of painstaking work
The Tamil Nadu site was first discovered in 1863 by British geologist Robert Bruce Foote, and has been excavated at various times since then.
Archaeologists Shanti Pappu and Kumar Akhilesh from the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education have spent the last 12 years continuing to excavate the site and have now found 3,528 artefacts that bear a distinct similarity to prehistoric tools discovered in western Asia and Africa. The tools fall into a class of artefacts called Acheulian that scientists believe were first created by Homo erectus – ancestors of modern humans – in Africa about 1.6 million years ago. “This means that soon after early humans invented the Acheulian tools, they crossed formidable geographical barriers to get to southern Asia,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, who is an expert in Asian prehistoric archaeology but was not associated with the Chennai study. “The suggestion that this occurred 1.5 million years ago is simply staggering,” he said.
The suggestion that this occurred 1.5 million years ago is simply staggering Petraglia himself had earlier been involved in excavating the Hunsgi valley in Karnataka, which has yielded 1.27 million-year-old stone tools, regarded as India’s oldest until now. Although earlier excavations had revealed Acheulian tools at a few sites on the Indian subcontinent, including a two million-year-old site in Pakistan, the dates assigned to the artefacts so far have remained under debate.
The latest dating techniques
Pappu and her colleagues assigned dates to the Attirampakkam tools by analysing traces of certain elements embedded in them and by correlating the archaeological layers excavated at the site with changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.
We adopted two different dating methods and arrived at consistent results
“We adopted two different dating methods and arrived at consistent results,” Shanti Pappu explained “We believe this is the strongest evidence so far for an Acheulian industry in India older than one million years.” The dating studies were carried out by collaborating geophysicists in French academic institutions. Researchers believe the new dates will have major implications for current ideas about who carried the Acheulian culture into India.
Acheulian handaxe embedded vertically in clays.
In the past, some researchers had attributed the flow of Acheulian tools into southern Asia and Europe to the Homo heidelbergensis, another ancestor of modern humans but one that appeared long after the Homo erectus. But the 1.5 million year date assigned to the Attirampakkam tools suggests that groups of Homo erectus carried the tool-making culture into India. In an independent research study, Petraglia and his colleagues have analysed Acheulian tools in India that appear to be only 120,000 years old. The two findings suggest that the Acheulian toolmakers inhabited India for 1.4 million years – from 1.5 million years ago to 120,000 years ago. “The excavators have done an outstanding job, unprecedented in archaeology studies in India. This means soon after early humans invented the Acheulean tool kit 1.6 million years ago, groups migrated out of Africa crossing formidable barriers to get to southern Asia,” confirmed Michael Petragalia.
What sets apart the Indo-French discovery from other similar previous findings is the dating accuracy. The tools in Attirampakkam suggest that the Homo erectus carried the Acheulian culture into India before the Homo heidelbergensis ferried this tool-making culture into Europe, where the earliest sites are about 600,000 years old, said Robin Dennel, a senior archaeologist at the University of Sheffield, in a special scientific commentary in the March 2011 issue of Science.
All images are courtesy and copyright of the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, India
Off for Thanksgiving today I got up and was watching the Twilight Zone. It was the episode where Chris Horne was going from Ohio to California in 1847. They were in the desert, nearly out of water, his 8 year old son possibly dying, and everybody wanting to turn the wagons around and go back. Horne tells them he's going to look for water, or game, on the other side of a ridge a hundred yards away.
On the ridge he sees a paved highway, and power lines on top of huge towers, he looks back and the wagons and people he just left have disappeared. Walking on he examines the highway and is almost run down by a monster, a semi. Walking on he comes to a diner, where he discovers many astounding things, including a calendar that says the year is 1961, not the 1847 he left behind a short while ago.
There's been a theory that all times exist simultaneously, not separately, not as a straight line as is supposed in most reincarnation scenarios, not a stream of time, more like parallel universes where given the ability we could step from one time or reality to another. If this were true, it would mean that as I sit here writing this, other worlds other realities exist in the same space, I could, possibly do, reach out and touch something that in this reality doesn't exist, that I'm not even aware of, yet still it exists and is there to be touched even though those in that reality aren't anymore aware of me than I of them. In the case of the show, he stepped into another time unknowingly to get a drug, penicillin, unknown in his time, to save the life of his son, who according to the encyclopedia he read in the future was destined to do great works as a doctor. After getting the penicillin, he returned to his own time by crossing back over the ridge, just a few seconds after he left according to the others, although he perceived it as hours.
I remember when I was in the fifth grade, I've posted about this before but it's relevant, I sat in the first row, and would apparently doze off dreaming for lack of a better term. I was in a different place, a different time, a different life, and as I remember it seemed to last a long times, hours, weeks, months, suddenly I'd come awake, nobody seemed to have noticed, not classmates, not the teacher who was right in front talking or writing on the chalkboard. Then I'd look at the clock and only a few minutes or seconds had passed, yet it seemed like I'd dozed forever. Now, many times, grown up, I go back to sleep usually for a few minutes but I seem to be in a different life, sometimes similar to this, most times with the same people, or impressions of the same people, but not this. I call it dreaming real, real yes, but not this reality, but real.
It makes me wonder, do we live in many realities simultaneously? Are we the physical reality of a single soul, or multiple souls, or are all the people in this reality multiple physical realities of a single soul, living in this as well as many other parallel realities? Think about it, I'd be interested in reading your comments and learning what you think.
“When I interviewed police officers for the book who’ve been on these raids, the words that they would use to describe how they felt during the raids are the same adjectives we use to describe the effects of the drugs that they’re conducting these raids for in the first place. They’re described as intoxicating and [officers claim that they] get this huge rush…it’s a thrill.”
The numerous declarations by the state, of war against vague enemies like drugs, terror, and crime, have been used to justify further police militarization. Even though it can be argued that these wars cannot be won, and several decades and billions of dollars support that notion, the state continues with the charade. And because of this, these relentless expeditions have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier (Balko, 2013). The increased frequency of unaccountable and heavily armed police raids which are being conducted on homes of unarmed, and non-violent suspects, in the middle of the night, is an alarming misuse of state power.
Why can’t the police conduct their raids during the daylight? Perhaps that might lower the occurrence of innocent bystanders who get terrorized and/or lose their lives. Maybe that would increase the accuracy of entering the correct home that the warrant has been issued for. Apparently, it is much easier to go busting into someone’s home in the middle of the night (Balko, 2013). Granted, there are occurrences when individuals have good interactions with police officers, officers are often shown respect from individuals when they deal with the public in a respectful manner.
The increasing trend has been majorly overlooked by the public and their representatives. A Mayor in Maryland sought an explanation from the federal government as to why SWAT team members had burst into his home without knocking and killed his two dogs, in what turned out to be drug raid ‘mix-up’. In the past decade that has been a 3000% increase in no-knock SWAT team raids. Police are being equipped with body armor, Blackhawk helicopters, armored vehicles, chemical spray, night vision, and even drones. The police are annually looking less like the benevolent keepers of the peace. Today in the United States, SWAT teams are deployed about 100 to 150 times per day.
“It’s really about a lack of imagination and a lack of creativity, when your answer to every problem is more force, it shows that you haven’t been taught and trained to consider other options.” – Norm Stamper, retired Seattle police chief from 1994 to 2000.
It is claimed that the police cannot arrest people in a violence-minimizing manner due to “lack of resources”, but we know that thanks to asset forfeiture and revenue expeditions, like radar and seat-belt traps, police departments are collectively bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars.
But, if they believe the drugs to be in the home, and need to enter in a frenzy to decrease the chances of the suspect destroying any, why not enter the home when the suspect isn’t there? And if the materials are believed to be on the person, why not arrest them in the daylight when their actions are more visible, to notice if they discard of any substances? Most instances do not call for extreme violence, especially when the identity or guilt of suspects is remotely unsure, and especially shouldn’ be used in regards to matters of personal choice.
Some suggestions to curb further militarization of America’s multiple police forces, include: End The War On Drugs
Prohibition has proven to be ineffective at eradicating or preventing drug use, and the goal of ending drug use and production is seemingly impossible. End anti-drug Byrne Grants
These grants create federal incentives for further militarization, and also create multi-jurisdictional drug task forces, who often lack any real accountability or oversight. End The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program
When police departments reach a threshold of drug arrests, the agency becomes eligible for more federal funding, which encourages more aggressive enforcement of drug laws. End Civil Asset Forfeiture Program
Police departments seize a variety of items that are believed to be connected to ‘drug activity’ such as: cash, cars, homes, boats, bikes, and jewelry. This has obviously created a lucrative incentive for police to send SWAT teams to conduct routine raids to serve drug warrants. One thing is for sure: police militarization is bad for everyone and is a greater danger to our freedom and health than “terrorism”.
References:
Balko, R. (2013). Rise of The Warrior Cop. PublicAffairs.
A very interesting article. I was in the 9th grade in Buena Park High School, sitting outside under a tree at lunch. Suddenly a loud speaker said the school was being closed that we should all go home, that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. Arriving home the only thing on TV was that, on all channels. My aunt Edythe came later, in tears, she went to the Catholic church across the street and prayed. Personally I didn't, at the time, understand. I was more disturbed that it was pre-empting all my favorite TV shows. It wasn't until much later that I began to understand, and to realize there was more going on, than most of us knew about. Today I understand that this, like the twin tower destruction, was engineered to achieve a purpose, not by those accused in Pravda west, our media, but rather by those who had millions, billions, even trillions to gain.
“One pristine bullet? That dog don’t hunt!” — Senator Russell Long, as portrayed by Walter Matthau in Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie “JFK” This Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It also represents a breaking point for all Americans. Either you were old enough to remember one of the worst events in American history, or you weren’t. I just turned 56, so I was just 6 years old and I remember it like it was yesterday. A children’s TV program was on, my favorite part of my morning, and it was interrupted by the news from Dallas. My mother overheard it, and she shrieked and began to sob. At 6, you don’t understand events; but you understand when your mother is upset. I even remember later that evening when the family went for dinner. It was the first time I had ever tasted pizza, and I remember my brother was stoic but my mother and my sister were crying. Over the following decades, my father and my uncle were always discussing who killed Kennedy. Big deal, you might think. Masses of others were, and remain, fixated on that question. But what made my dad, Vernon, and his brother, Dick, special was not only that they were both intelligent and successful men, but they were also expert marksmen who hunted big game in North America and in Africa. My dad told me that with his then-state-of-the-art bolt-action rifle, a 300 Weatherby Magnum, he was fortunate to fatally strike a charging elephant with a single shot that felled the animal 50 steps from where he stood. They spent time after the assassination at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Their conclusion that the three fatal shots that the Warren Commission pinned on Lee Harvey Oswald and his $13 rifle were next to impossible. This, above all the other improbable events (notably, the subsequent assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald), left both my dad and my uncle believing to their dying days that there was a second gunman.
Is It Possible BHO Serves The BHO?
Is it possible that President Barack Hussein Obama is nothing more than a pawn of the Black Helicopter Organization — a powerful, global government? It seems more likely that than the official explanation on the Kennedy assassination. Many well-meaning Americans are calling for a third major political party. Few consider that since Kennedy’s death, there really has been only one party in the White House. This explains why Presidents such as Republican Richard Nixon prosecuted the Vietnam War the same way as his Democratic predecessor Lyndon B. Johnson, and why Democratic President Obama’s Mideast war machine is a continuation of Republican President George W. Bush’s. They are all members of The Presidents Club and all work for a higher authority than themselves or the government we think we elect to represent us. Kennedy was independent — a President who rejected the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s directions during both the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy told two of his closest confidants, Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers: “They couldn’t believe that a new President like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.” More importantly, Kennedy was giving serious consideration to ending involvement in Vietnam because he believed it was a lost cause. His predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, has said this on Jan. 17, 1961, 1,039 days before Kennedy’s murder:
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
CNN debuted a special about the killing of Kennedy. Ironically, the main sponsor of “The Assassination of President Kennedy” was Lockheed Martin, one of the largest members of the military-industrial complex. My question is: Had Kennedy lived, would Lockheed Martin even exist? And if it did, how big would it be? As Deep Throat famously says in the 1976 film “All the President’s Men” about another President who, like Obama, was also an infamous liar, “Follow the money.” The Lockheed Martin F-35 is an astonishing tactical fighter and interceptor, perfectly designed to shoot down Soviet bombers that once carried huge nuclear payloads to the edge of American airspace. But their efficacy in fighting clandestine Islamic terrorist organizations is almost nil. Still, they will fly the friendly skies six years late, in 2019, at a price of $161 million apiece. The development of such an airplane along with America’s bloated military budgets were impossible before the coup d’état that launched the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Yet 50 years later, the military-industrial complex is more influential and powerful under Obama. For half a century, Presidents have made boldfaced lies (from the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which launched the Vietnam War, to fresh revelations that Obama blatantly lied about Obamacare). They only further cement the power and wealth of the ruling elite, who garner ever greater control of our Nation as they shred our Constitution. Things have become progressively worse for America since Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One in Dallas. The past 50 years have been evolution in reverse; good leaders have mutated into cavemen with little less than greed and lust. My birthday last week reminded me that I am on the downside to 60 and that, before long, few Americans will have firsthand memories of Eisenhower’s warning or Kennedy’s assassination. What they will remember is Presidents like Bill Clinton and Obama, who so easily lied and got away with it. To borrow from T.S. Elliot: This is the way America ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. The sound of the shots fired by two rifles 50 years ago Friday in Dallas are an echo that reverberates today. Yours in good times and bad, –John Myers P.S. If you remember where you were and how you felt when you learned President John F. Kennedy had been shot, please share your memories. We live in remarkable times, and remembering the past is critical to finding a way through this fog to a better and more prosperous future.
First from the Rutherford Institute, a subject I've written about before, but also a subject that can't be written about too much in my opinion. I'm leaving it unchanged, misspellings and all with the exceptions of highlighting using color and a couple comments...
Commentary
Who Will Protect You from the Police? The Rise of Government-Sanctioned Home Invasions
By John W. Whitehead October 21, 2013
“Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.”—Winston Churchill
It’s 3 a.m. You’ve been asleep for hours when suddenly you hear a loud “Crash! Bang! Boom!” Based on the yelling, shouting and mayhem, it sounds as if someone—or several someones—are breaking through your front door. With your heart racing and your stomach churning, all you can think about is keeping your family safe from the intruders who have invaded your home. You have mere seconds before the intruders make their way to your bedroom. Desperate to protect your loved ones, you scramble to lay hold of something—anything—that you might use in self-defense. It might be a flashlight, your son’s baseball bat, or that still unloaded gun you thought you’d never need. In a matter of seconds, the intruders are at your bedroom door. You brace for the confrontation, a shaky grip on your weapon. In the moments before you go down for the count, shot multiple times by the strangers who have invaded your home, you get a good look at your accosters. It’s the police.
Before I go any further, let me start by saying this: the problem is not that all police are bad. The problem, as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, is that increasing numbers of police officers are badly trained, illiterate when it comes to the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, and, in some cases, willfully ignorant about the fact that they are supposed to be peacekeepers working for us, the taxpayer.
Unfortunately, with every passing week, we are hearing more and more horror stories in which homeowners are injured or killed simply because they mistook a SWAT team raid by police for a home invasion by criminals. Never mind that the unsuspecting homeowner, woken from sleep by the sounds of a violent entry, has no way of distinguishing between a home invasion by a criminal as opposed to a government agent. Too often, the destruction of life and property wrought by the police is no less horrifying than that carried out by criminal invaders.
Consider, for example, the sad scenario that played out when a SWAT team kicked open the door of ex-Marine Jose Guerena’s home during a drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena—23 of those bullets made contact. Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.
Seven-year-old Aiyana Jones was sleeping on her living room sofa, which was positioned under a window, when suddenly, the silence of the night was shattered by a flash grenade thrown through the living room window, followed by the sounds of police bursting into the apartment and a gun going off. Rushing into the room, Aiyana’s father, Charles, found himself tackled by police and forced to lie on the floor, his face in a pool of his daughter’s blood. It would be hours before Charles would be informed that his daughter was dead. The 34-year-old suspect the police had been looking for would later be found elsewhere in the apartment building.
Then there was the time police used a battering ram to break into the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnson, mistakenly believing her house to be a drug den. Fearing that burglars were entering her home, which was situated in a dangerous neighborhood, Johnson fired a warning shot when the door burst open. Police unleashed a hail of gunfire, hitting Johnson with six bullets. Johnson died.
Eighty-year-old Eugene Mallory suffered a similar fate when deputies with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, claiming to have smelled chemicals related to the manufacture of methamphetamine, raided the multi-unit property in which Mallory lived. Thinking that his home was being invaded by burglars, Mallory allegedly raised a gun at the intruders, who shot him six times. Mallory died. “The lesson here,” observed the spokesman for the sheriff’s department, “is don’t pull a gun on a deputy.” (Even a deputy who illegally enters the home of an innocent citizen-LM)
In Fort Worth, Texas, two rookie police officers sent to investigate a possible burglary circled 72-year-old Jerry Waller’s house with flashlights shining. Waller, concerned that his home was being cased, went to his garage, armed with a gun for self-defense. The two officers snuck up on Waller, who raised his gun on the intruders. When Waller failed to obey orders to lower his gun, the officers shot and killed him. It turned out the officers had gone to the wrong address. They blamed the shooting death on “poor lighting.”
During a raid in Ogden, Utah, police dressed in black and carrying assault rifles charged into a darkened home. Upon entering the hallway and encountering a man holding a shiny object that one officer thought was a sword, police opened fire. Three shots later, 45-year-old Todd Blair fell to the floor dead. In his hands was a shiny golf club.
In Sarasota, Florida, a mixture of federal and local police converged on the apartment complex where Louise Goldsberry lived after receiving a tip that a child rape suspect was in the complex. Unaware of police activity outside, Louise was washing dishes in her kitchen when a man wearing what appeared to be a hunting vest pointed a rifle at her through her window. Fearing that she was about to be attacked, Louise retrieved her revolver from her bedroom. Meanwhile, the man began pounding on Louise’s front door, saying, “We’re the f@#$ing police; open the f@#$ing door.” Identifying himself as a police officer, the rifle-wielding man then opened the door, pointed a gun at Goldsberry and her boyfriend, who was also present, and yelled, “Drop the f@#$ing gun or I’ll f@#$ing shoot you.” Ironically, the officer later justified his behavior on the grounds that he didn’t like having a gun pointed at him and because “I have to go home at night.”
These incidents underscore a dangerous mindset in which civilians (often unarmed and defenseless) not only have less rights than militarized police, but also one in which the safety of civilians is treated as a lower priority than the safety of their police counterparts (who are armed to the hilt with an array of lethal and nonlethal weapons), the privacy of civilians is negligible in the face of the government’s various missions, and the homes of civilians are no longer the refuge from government intrusion that they once were.
It wasn’t always this way, however. There was a time in America when a man’s home really was a sanctuary where he and his family could be safe and secure from the threat of invasion by government agents, who were held at bay by the dictates of the Fourth Amendment, which protects American citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.
The Fourth Amendment, in turn, was added to the U.S. Constitution by colonists still smarting from the abuses they had been forced to endure while under British rule, among these home invasions by the military under the guise of writs of assistance. These writs were nothing less than open-ended royal documents which British soldiers used as a justification for barging into the homes of colonists and rifling through their belongings. James Otis, a renowned colonial attorney, “condemned writs of assistance because they were perpetual, universal (addressed to every officer and subject in the realm), and allowed anyone to conduct a search in violation of the essential principle of English liberty that a peaceable man’s house is his castle.” As Otis noted: “Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient.”
To our detriment, we have now come full circle, returning to a time before the American Revolution when government agents—with the blessing of the courts—could force their way into a citizen’s home, with seemingly little concern for lives lost and property damaged in the process.
Actually, we may be worse off today than our colonial ancestors when one considers the extent to which courts have sanctioned the use of no-knock raids by police SWAT teams (occurring at a rate of 70,000 to 80,000 a year and growing); the arsenal of lethal weapons available to local police agencies; the ease with which courts now dispense search warrants based often on little more than a suspicion of wrongdoing; and the inability of police to distinguish between reasonable suspicion and the higher standard of probable cause, the latter of which is required by the Constitution before any government official can search an individual or his property.
Indeed, if Winston Churchill is correct that “democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman,” then it’s safe to say that we no longer live in a democracy. Certainly not in a day and age when the Fourth Amendment, which was intended to protect us against the police state, especially home invasions by government agents, has been reduced to little more than words on paper.
WC: 1638
Second, a drunken psychopath of a cop gets turned down by a girl in a bar, and shows his true self, going nuts pulling his gun, beating her and feeling her up as he handcuffs her only we surmise to possibly drag her out to his truck to rape and/or kill her, he was stopped in the act finally when cops showed up. Even though the whole episode was on video his boss, the Sheriff of Richland County, South Carolina backed him up claiming it was justified, surprise... We need to get rid of these thousands of murderous cops and incompetent chiefs of police and sheriffs.
Lee Murray
Drunken off-duty deputy tried to arrest woman at bar when she resisted his advances
Richland County Deputy Paul Allen Derrick gets handsy with an innocent woman he was trying to arrest. (Source: YouTube)
COLUMBIA, SC — A drunken sheriff’s deputy was recorded during a strange and inappropriate altercation when he tried to arrest a female soldier at a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Columbia, because she allegedly turned down his advances. On October 7th, 23-year-old Brittany Ball, a USMC member out of Fort Jackson, was allegedly upset at the restaurant when approached by Richland County Deputy Paul Allen Derrick. She apparently did not want anything to do with him, which caused the aggressive deputy to become enraged and the two began to argue. Derrick, a 17 year veteran, left the restaurant to go retrieve handcuffs and his gun from his vehicle, then returning to try and arrest Ball. He was recorded screaming at her and barking orders as he twisted her arms behind her back. The report states that Derrick handcuffed her, pulled her to her feet, and slammed her head into a metal table. The video shows the berserking officer repeatedly ordering the woman to “STAND UP” and “SIT DOWN.” While he held her in handcuffs against her will, he wrapped his arm around her neck and kept resting his hand on her breast. “Let her go!” shouted a woman from off-camera. Onlookers showed concern for the woman and told the raging officer that he had “crossed the line” and should let her go. Restaurant-goers murmured that somebody should “call the “real cops.” When a few men approached the officer, he threatened to arrest them. “You wanna get an attitude? STEP AWAY!!” Shortly thereafter, Columbia police arrived. They spoke to witnesses and saw the cell-phone video. They ordered that Derrick release Ball, then took him into custody and charged him with assault and battery. Sheriff Leon Lott initially backed Derrick — disagreeing with Columbia Police — saying that he had authority to make an arrest, suggesting that Ball was “resisting.” After a week of pressure and reasoning, Sheriff Lott placed Derrick on leave without pay, according to WISTV. Fortunately everyone made it out of the tense situation alive, and Derrick did not go further with trying to abduct the woman. But what should be done when officers attack? Capturing cell phone video is good for evidence, but at what point is it necessary and justified to physically intervene with an “assault and battery” in progress, assuming the assailant is an armed and dangerous government agent?
Born about 15 miles from where I was living when I started blogging, at the Norwich NY Hospital. Grew up in Oxford and Tyner NY, we moved to South New Berlin. We had lived in town in Oxford until my father decided he wanted to be a farmer. So we moved to a farm in Tyner. The house burned which is when we moved to South New Berlin onto another farm. Then to Southern Calif. in Fullerton, went to Buena Park High School. My Aunt lived out there in Anaheim, had from her time in the service (WWII). My interest in the occult (it means unknown) stemmed from hearing her talk about Edgar Cayce.
Lived there for next 30 years or so. Got into sales f/t.
Moved to NY in 12/91 figuring to stay awhile and go back to Calif. Still here 18 years later, selling Rascal scooters in home in 98, then the new VA div selling to VA hospitals in 99. Still there covering 98% of upstate NY. Working on raising the money to get back to Calif. 2011, finally back to Calif couldn't take another NY winter. Living in Fullerton again, still in sales, a great job in Orange.
