Cop Tasers Minor Five Times for Not Getting Off His Bike Fast Enough
By Digby, Hullabaloo
Here's a story about a teen-age bicyclist who was tasered five times for failing to respond to a police officer's order to "get off the road." It is written by a lawyer who specializes in bicyclist rights and he asks the fundamental question: do you have a right to not comply with a police officer? It's at the heart of the taser question because nine times out of ten, people are not being tasered because they are threatening the cop or anyone else; they are tasered because they fail to comply with a police officer's order. So, the question is, do the police have a right to shoot someone with electricity simply because he or she is arguing with them or refuses to promptly obey their order?
If police used these things sparingly and had to answer to board of inquiry whenever they are used, it would be one thing. But they are using them pretty much in any situation and often when they already have someone in custody. And while it's true that as a practical matter one is well advised to cooperate with police, I find it difficult to see how we are a free people, with rights guaranteed by the constitution, if the government is allowed to shoot citizens with electricity solely because they fail to do what agents of the government tell them to do.
Digby is the proprietor of Hullabaloo.
© 2009 Hullabaloo All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com//138309/
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Friday, August 22, 2008
McCain wasn't tortured, just ask BushCo
Here we have an amusing post regarding Andrew Sullivan's expose of alleged torture techniques that had been used on John McCain during his imprisonment in Viet Nam, all of which have been called merely "enhanced interrogation" by the craven Bush Administration. Via Daily Kos.--Pete
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/19/162329/868/983/570573
Daily Kos - From Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish: "In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
"According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured. Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."
Sullivan's coup de grace: "In the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/19/162329/868/983/570573
Daily Kos - From Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish: "In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
"According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured. Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."
Sullivan's coup de grace: "In the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue."
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Our Government's Need For An Irrational Enemy
Daniel Larison, at the ACLU Blog, has an interesting piece about our government's absolute need for an irrational enemy. He posits that this is tied to the authorized use of torture by agents of said government.
Mr. Larison believes that in order to sell the use of torture by our own peace-loving government agents to the American public, that the enemy must be portrayed as being completely without a scintilla of rationality, and definitely not accepted as self-interested, rational parties to the general disagreement. For many, Larison has already crossed the line of thinkable thought, since they have been completely mesmerized by the spectacle on their televisual persuasion devices and have surrendered to the notion of "cooler heads in our leadership", a notion which has been shown to be completely ludicrous.
Be advised that Daniel Larison also writes for The American Conservative magazine.--Pete
Read more:
http://blog.aclu.org/2008/05/20/daniel-larison-on-the-necessity-of-an-irrational-enemy/
Mr. Larison believes that in order to sell the use of torture by our own peace-loving government agents to the American public, that the enemy must be portrayed as being completely without a scintilla of rationality, and definitely not accepted as self-interested, rational parties to the general disagreement. For many, Larison has already crossed the line of thinkable thought, since they have been completely mesmerized by the spectacle on their televisual persuasion devices and have surrendered to the notion of "cooler heads in our leadership", a notion which has been shown to be completely ludicrous.
Be advised that Daniel Larison also writes for The American Conservative magazine.--Pete
Read more:
http://blog.aclu.org/2008/05/20/daniel-larison-on-the-necessity-of-an-irrational-enemy/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)