Sunday, May 9, 2010

Gregory Girard: Political Prisoner













 Arrest this man! Civilian disarmament in Massachusetts Colony, 1775: The Regime deployed Redcoats. Civilian disarmament in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, 2010: The Regime deploys SWAT teams and psychiatrists. 



Massachusetts resident Gregory Girard has never been formally charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one. Yet after spending four months in jail, he will spend the next four years as a ward of the court.


Girard's legally obtained firearms will remain in the possession of the thieves in uniform who stole them on February 9, the same day he was kidnapped by a SWAT team. He will undergo involuntary psychiatric evaluation and treatment, including the administration of psychotropic drugs.


If it is deemed "necessary" by any of the legal or therapeutic apparatchiks who are now in charge of his life, Girard will be taken into custody for "in-patient treatment."


This would almost certainly occur if Girard were once again to express the unacceptable political views that resulted in his four month imprisonment, to wit: The Regime ruling us will eventually send paramilitary goon squads to confiscate legally owned firearms and imprison those who own them.


Because possession of such views made Girard a "danger to the community," a paramilitary strike force was sent to seize his guns, and he was summarily imprisoned.Under the terms of a "continuance without a finding" announced by Salem District Court Judge Richard Mori, Girard will avoid prison only if his conduct and attitude meet with the approval of people who can consign him to the psihuska at whim.



The local Vyshinsky disciple, District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, isn't satisfied with this arrangement and most likely won't relent until Girard is sent to prison. The 45-year-old inventor was initially charged with possession of five "infernal devices" -- which proved to be legal smoke and tear gas grenades -- and four counts of "carrying" what were described as "dangerous weapons" -- police batons and hunting knives he had legally stored in his home.



The remaining accusations involve discharging a weapon in a home-made target range on his property, and possession of two items ambiguously identified as "silencers." Girard and his attorney maintain that the cylindrical objects, which were found on his boat, are flash suppressors he intended to use in order to avoid violating a law against sending up a false distress signal.


It's doubtful that even in Massachusetts a jury would find a reason to send Girard to prison. Yet Blodgett, according to his errand girl (or, as she prefers to be called, assistant DA) Michelle DeCourcey, was "very troubled by the presence of the two silencers and felt it merited a jail sentence" of at least two years.


Gregory Girard has no prior criminal record. He is not accused of committing crimes against person or property.


The same Jonathan Blodgett who is determined to send Girard to prison for possession of two cylindrical pieces of metal is anxious to protect the people who beat Worcester resident Kenneth Howe to death last November 25. That's because Howe's murderers are among the numinous personages swaddled in government-issued costumes and invested with the presumptive authority to kill.




Kenneth Howe  was co-owner of a barbershop, a husband, and father of three children. His contributions to society were immeasurably more valuable than anything done by a tax-feeder in an “official” capacity. Last November 25, he has the misfortune of riding in a car that encountered a "sobriety checkpoint."




This particular roadblock -- or "joint sobriety enforcement operation" -- involved the Andover Police Department, the Essex County Sheriff’s Office, and the Massachusetts State Police. Like all such operations, this was an orgy of overtime for people who wear government-provided costume jewelry.  For the helots on wheels who are forced to endure them, checkpoints of this kind are pregnant with the possibility of lethal violence, as Howe and his friend learned.


Police accounts say that Howe was observed making a “furtive movement” as the car in which he was a passenger approached the checkpoint. The driver says that Howe, who had been smoking a marijuana cigarette, was trying to snuff it and put on his seat belt.


When Jodi A. Gerardi, a female state trooper, approached the car, Howe told her, “It’s only a marijuana cigarette.” After being ordered from the vehicle, Howe tried to flee. (In the official police version, the middle-aged man supposedly jumped through the passenger-side window -- something that would tax the athleticism and agility of a Parkour master.)



As Howe tried to flee, the distaff tax-feeder shrieked, “I’ve been assaulted” — something the driver, the only objective eyewitness, disputes: In fact, that witness claims that it was Gerardi who placed hands on Howe, rather than the reverse.


Gerardi’s account describes Howe as “releasing” a pit bull and “assaulting everyone in his path” as he fled the scene. This is of a piece with her claim that Howe busted a move that would have put the Prince of Persia to shame.



Once again, the other eyewitness to the events doesn't support Gerardi's version. However, he did testify that at least a dozen -- and as many as 20 -- police officers swarmed Howe, beating and otherwise brutalizing him, after their little tag-along (or was she a camp follower?) claimed that he had laid an unholy hand on her sanctified person.



Shackling a dying man: Several members of the thugswarm that killed Kenneth Howe cuff him and put leg restraints on him as he slowly dies from the injuries sustained at the hands of at least a dozen police officers. 


Somehow, despite his Jedi-level physical prowess, Howe was taken to the ground “where he continued to disobey orders to ‘stop resisting’ by several other officers,” Gerardi reports, reflecting the common assumption that Mundanes must patiently endure whatever abuse their plunder-supported betters see fit to inflict on them.



After being “softened up,” Howe was  handcuffed and placed in leg restraints. He died at a local police barracks shortly after midnight on the morning of November 26.



In a very real sense, Howe was a victim of the federalized Homeland Security State, which underwrites checkpoints as a way of keeping the local condottieri loyal to the Regime. He could also be considered a casualty of Leviathan’s longest and most destructive war, the federal “War on (Non-Government-Approved) Drugs.” More to the point: It is a matter of settled fact that he was a homicide victim.


The Essex County Medical Examiner ruled that the official cause of death was homicide by way of  “blunt impact of the head and torso with compression of the chest.” This means that the 45-year-old father was beaten to death, at an East Berlin-style checkpoint, by a tax-subsidized thugswarm.



Acting out of solidarity with the rest of the tax-consuming class, the ME's office moved quickly to take the edge off its findings.



“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner uses the term homicide to mean a death at the hands of another,” explained the M.E.’s attorney, Jacqueline Faherty. “A medical examiner does not offer an opinion regarding criminal wrongdoing or civil liability.”


In keeping with routine procedure in any case involving the death of a helpless Mundane at the hands of the Bullies in Blue, the Medical Examiner eagerly described the victim’s cardiovascular disease as a “contributory factor” in the death.


 Death by Government: Rest in God's Peace, Kenneth Howe. 


When someone dies at the hands of an assailant or assailants whose violence is  sanctified by the state, we are supposed to believe that the victim wasn’t killed by the police — he just happened to die in their custody.


Thus victims of lethal Taser strikes succumbed to “excited delirium,” rather than being murdered through electro-shock torture. The state-licensed assailants similarly seek to exculpate themselves when an innocent person suffering from heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, or other medical problems is beaten or suffocated to death by a police mob.


Curiously, “contributory factors” of that kind aren’t treated as mitigating factors when someone is fatally beaten or otherwise subjected to lethal violence by a gang of bullies who do not bear the insignia of state “authority.”  


By way of contrast, when violent deaths are inflicted by commonplace criminals, the victim’s health problems — if they are mentioned at all — are taken as evidence of the exceptional viciousness of the crime.


Despite its patent viciousness, the beating death of Kenneth Howe -- although ruled a homicide -- will not be treated as a crime. “There is absolutely no way reasonable force was used in this case,” insists attorney Frances A. King, who is representing the murder victim’s widow and children. “He has handcuffs on part of that time and leg irons and [the police] are beating him to death.”


Let it not be said that DA Jonathan Blodgett -- the same law-and-order zealot presiding over the persecution of Gregory Girard -- was indifferent to the events of November 25, 2009. In fact, his office was prepared to file charges and prosecute ... the victim, Kenneth Howe, for the supposed offense of "resisting arrest." If Howe had survived the beating inflicted on him, he most likely would be in jail awaiting trial.

Predictably, Blodgett has displayed no measurable interest in building a case against the people who beat Howe to death. Like practically everyone else in his profession, Blodgett apparently assumes that police are entitled to kill anyone at any time who displays anything other than immediate, complete, unconditional submission.


That totalitarian assumption makes a nice matched set with the one undergirding Blodgett's Soviet-style persecution of Gregory Girard -- namely, that Mundanes seeking the means to protect themselves against the Regime's armed enforcers should be treated as fodder for the gulag.



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Dum spiro, pugno!







Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Murder as a Punchline
















 (Do) Fear the Reaper: A Predator-B or "Reaper" unmanned drone, one of the Regime's most celebrated kill-gadgets, takes to the skies.



The same theory of criminal conspiracy being applied to the prosecution of Michigan's Hutaree Militia would justify the arrest and trial of President Obama for conspiring to murder the Jonas Brothers. In fact, the case against Mr. Obama -- based on previous criminal conduct and the means at his disposal -- is far stronger than the single-ply tissue of speculation and innuendo that constitute the federal case against the notorious Michigan Nine. 






"[Obama's young daughters] Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys [addressing the Jonas Brothers, who were seated in the room], don't get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming."


In response, the audience rendered unto Caesar the dutiful laughter required anytime the Pontiff of the Civil Religion favors us with an insipid specimen of pre-fabricated presidential "wit." 



None of the spangled sycophants in attendance displayed a tremor of discomfort at the thought that the individual who had just made a joke about assassinating Americans by remote control actually attempted to kill a U.S. citizen -- New Mexico-born radical Muslim cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki -- by way of a Predator drone strike last December. The Obama administration, which admits to maintaining a hit list of U.S. citizens subject to summary execution, has annihilated hundreds of innocent civilians in Pakistan and elsewhere over the past year. 



Such thoughts, if they occurred to anyone in the room last Saturday, weren't allowed to taint the revelry. Perhaps at next year's dinner Obama could get his Caligula freak on, calling out individuals by name and describing various horrible things he could do to them at whim; that routine would surely bring the house down like a Predator-deployed Hellfire missile! (Drum kick.)



But seriously, folks, this kind of thing is funny -- until someone gets killed. That's the entire point: people are getting killed, at the orders of the guy who was willing to read from his Teleprompter a line intended to extort humor from the slaughter.



Some might contend that a bad joke doesn't constitute evidence of a criminal conspiracy. The people responsible for compiling the indictment against the nine Hutaree defendants apparently think otherwise, since they are treating ill-advised talk about killing people -- at least some of it best characterized as misguided juvenile attempts at humor -- as evidence of a "seditious conspiracy."



In her order granting pre-trial release (under conditions of house arrest and electronic surveillance) to the Hutaree defendants, U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts provides extensive excerpts from the evidence. This includes redacted transcripts of conversations in which militia David and Joshua Stone, Michael Meeks, and Kristopher Sickles talk about killing judges and law enforcement personnel. 


The ellipses littering the transcript are tangible evidence of cherry-picking by the prosecution. 


Even orphaned from context, however, the recorded conversations don't amount to evidence of a criminal conspiracy, but rather a tendency to engage in the worst kind of self-deluded, adolescent locker-room braggadoccio. 


Here, in its entirely, is the "evidence" adduced by the prosecutors to substantiate the supposed plot to kill police and then ambush the mourners, gleaned from a recorded conversation that occurred on February 20:



                                                                   David Stone: 


Or, or better yet, we shoot one, from a distance, high powered rifle, you sit back you take him out -- you go, kapop! -- You just shoot one. And then you just kind sit back, they'll pack out a huntin' [sic] for ya. Try to find out who you are, but they have this thing, that everybody has, and it's called a funeral. Now for that funeral, you'll have cops from every state of the country come where? To his funeral.
 
[...]


Why not just take care of the situation? Kabunk! Kabunk! [Sound effect] 


[...]


I'm thinkin' IEDs and you just blow the whole convoy up. Boom!


[...]
                                                               Kristopher Sickles


Sneak in their house, poison their milk.


[...]


                                                              David Stone

No, no, you set their house on fire and you have another team sitting back watching the local fire department try and come down the road and it's just pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! As trucks go baba, "we're over heating," Rrrr [sound effect]. "Hey, we're not gonna make it to this fire."


[...]


I mean, there's a hundred and one scenarios you could use.


(End of excerpts.)


The ellipses in the excerpt above are from the original transcript, as provided to Judge Roberts by the prosecution. We're not reading a conversation; we're being fed lurid soundbites carefully juxtaposed in a way intended to elicit maximum outrage with minimal detail.



The prosecution insists that the foregoing demonstrates a "general concept of operations" in which the defendants were preparing to ambush and murder police. But if there was an actual agreement to carry out such acts, or preparations to do the same, the relevant excerpts were left on the cutting room floor. This is the "A-list" material the prosecution cited in its effort to deny bail to a group accused of seditious conspiracy involving weapons of mass destruction. 



"Discussions about killing local law enforcement officers -- and even discussions about killing members of the Judicial Branch of Government -- do not translate to conspiracy to overthrow, or levy [war] against, the United States Government," wrote Judge Roberts. She followed with the observation that during the recording, "the Defendants laugh, make sounds, and appear to talk over one another. There is also a discussion of strippers." 



This wasn't a strategy session conducted by a terrorist cabal, but a bull session involving angry people who -- most likely under the influence of an adult libation or similar conversational lubricant -- indulged in what Roberts calls "hate-filled, venomous speech" that enjoys unconditional First Amendment protection. 


The most extensive expression of the Hutaree's "seditious" intent, Roberts points out, was a lengthy address written by David Stone that "speaks of reclaiming America, not overthrowing the United States Government."


Reduced to what John Wayne would call the "spitting out words to watch them splatter" mode of argumentation, the Feds insisted that the Hutaree defendants "pose a danger to the community because they lack respect for lawful authority." 


The prosecution could demonstrate that the Hutaree defendants had abundant contempt for the government -- what perceptive person doesn't? -- but it hasn't demonstrated that they were hostile toward lawful authority (which of itself wouldn't constitute a crime, either).



The American political tradition, beginning with that instrument of sedition called the Declaration of Independence, clearly distinguishes between government and lawful authority, making the former subordinate to the latter, which itself is vested in the people. That same literary product of irrational anti-government fanaticism also states unambiguously that there are times when defense of lawful authority requires that the people "alter or abolish" the government ruling them.


By any honest reckoning, the government ruling us is the single most promiscuous law-breaker on record, and the contempt of our rulers for the legal authority under which they supposedly operate -- the U.S. Constitution -- is inexhaustible. This helps explain why the Regime's secret police infiltrate and entrap inconsequential groups of socially marginalized people who live in rotting mobile homes, while their Dear Leader -- an individual who lives in a fortified mansion, and has at his disposal power sufficient to destroy human life everywhere -- can make puerile jokes about his ongoing murder spree.


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Dum spiro, pugno!








Thursday, April 29, 2010

"Mysteries of Policy": Officially Sanctioned Murder



To prove that these sort of policed societies are a violation offered to nature ... it needs only to look upon the sanguinary measures, and instruments of violence, which are every where used to support them.



Let us take a review of the dungeons, whips, chains, racks, gibbets with which every society is abundantly stored, by which hundreds of victims are annually offered up to support a dozen or two in pride and madness, and millions in abject servitude, and dependence.



There was a time, when I looked with a reverential awe on these mysteries of policy, but age, experience and philosophy have rent the veil; and I view this
sanctum sanctorum ... without any enthusiastic admiration.


-- Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)


Troy Meade killed Niles Meservey in the parking lot of Everett, Washington's Chuckwagon Inn last June 10. Meade shot the unarmed, intoxicated man seven times in the back. These facts are not in dispute.


In his recently concluded trial, Meade justified his lethal assault by describing it as self-defense: At the time of the shooting, the drunken Meservey was behind the wheel of his Corvette, and Meade was standing behind and to the left of the vehicle.


The jury rejected the claim of self-defense, because Meade was never in significant physical jeopardy. Meservey had plowed his car into a chain-link fence; if he had put the car in reverse, he wouldn't have hit Meade.


Trial testimony established that Meservey was not backing up when Meade pulled his gun. The wrecked Corvette was still embedded in the fence when the crime scene investigators arrived.


Meade was charged with first-degree manslaughter and second-degree murder. The same jury that rejected Meade's self-defense claim acquitted him of both counts.


Guilty on the facts, acquitted by the jury: Officer Troy Meade and his wife react to the verdict.


If the killing of Niles Meservey wasn't self-defense, how could it be something other than an act of criminal homicide?



Since Troy Meade is a police officer and his victim was a mere Mundane, this question typifies what Edmund Burke described as the "mysteries of policy" -- those special exemptions from the moral law claimed by the exalted beings controlling the state's apparatus of coercion.


Any other individual who killed a man under the circumstances recounted above would almost certainly be found guilty of criminal homicide. Because Meade was dressed in the sacerdotal vestments of the state's punitive priesthood, his lawless act of lethal violence was transmuted into an act of policy.


To borrow the expression used by the government ruling us when it audits the shortcomings of other officially established criminal syndicates, this was an "extra-judicial killing" -- a term found in descriptions of murder rampages carried out by police in such places as Nigeria, Pakistan, and Latin American dictatorships of yore. Meade's extra-judicial killing of Meservey was a form of "street justice" by way of summary execution.


"Time to end this -- enough is enough!" According to Officer Stephen Klocker, who was on the scene at the Chuckwagon on June 10 and on the stand as a prosecution witness at Meade's trial, this was what his fellow officer exclaimed as he drew his gun and killed Meservey.


Klocker, a 21-year police veteran, offered his testimony against his own professional interest -- and, as police whistleblowers elsewhere would attest, at some risk to his physical safety.


During the trial Everett's municipal government -- which faces a lawsuit by Meservey's family, and thus had an interest in seeing Meade acquitted -- took the remarkable step of providing the defense with documents intended to undermine Klocker's reliability as a witness. It is ironic, but hardly inexplicable, that the city government didn't make an issue of Klocker's credibility until he testified that another cop had killed a citizen without legal cause or justification.


According to the jury, this purely discretionary killing was not a criminal act. Apparently the lethal fusillade was just an unusually assertive way to bring "closure" to an encounter between an obstreperous drunk and a stressed-out police officer.


That encounter lasted less than a half hour. There were no exigent circumstances involved. By exercising minimal force and exposing himself to an all-but-undetectably small amount of personal peril, Meade could have deprived Meservey of his car keys, immobilizing him until he was either unconscious or cooperative.


Nah. Too risky. The only safe option here, obviously, was open gunplay.


The reasoning behind the verdict seems to be roughly this: "Sure, the circumstances didn't legally justify the use of lethal force, but we have no right to second-guess a decision reflecting the inscrutable wisdom of an agent of state authority."


Somewhere (eternal judgment not being my prerogative, I don't claim to know where) Joseph de Maistre, the 18th Century apostle of absolutism, is smiling with approval over the verdict in the Meade trial. In Meade's acquittal, Maistre would find vindication of his foundational authoritarian maxim:


"[A]ll greatness, all power, all social order depends on the executioner; he is the terror of human society and tie that holds it together. Take away this incontrovertible force from the world, and at that very moment order is superseded by chaos, thrones fall, society disappears."


In Maistre's vision of the world, terror is the foundation of "society." His contemporary, Edmund Burke, drew a crucial distinction between "artificial" or "policed" societies, on the one hand, and "natural" societies, on the other.


The latter are rooted in tradition and cooperation; the former are controlled through "sanguinary measures, and instruments of violence" -- institutionalized terror and officially sanctioned homicide.


Cheerfully oblivious to besetting reality, many still believe that our society is governed by laws, rather than the arbitrary will of individuals.


The morally contorted verdict in Troy Meade's trial offers a useful corrective by starkly illustrating that sanctified official violence is the foundation of the "policed society" in which we live.




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Dum spiro, pugno!