The World's Largest Street Gang

  Sure, the "3,000 Boys" are a group of tattooed thugs from Los Angeles who spend a lot of time in jail, share cryptic hand signs, have a cultivated sensitivity to being "dissed," routinely beat up people at parties and instigate fights in bars -- but don't you dare call them a "gang."

While law enforcement officials will concede that the group engages in "gang-like activity," they refuse to designate the group itself as a gang. This may have something to do with the fact that this little knot of miscreants is composed of LA County Sheriff's Deputies employed at the Men's Central Jail.

For years, inmates have complained about "horrific" conditions in the 3000 Block of the Men's Central Jail, particularly the routine abuses carried out by the violent clique of guards called the 3,000 Boys. Those protests were consistently dismissed as ACLU grievance-mongering -- until members of that officially sanctioned prison gang assaulted a fellow members of the sanctified guild of official coercion during a Christmas party at L.A.'s Quiet Cannon banquet hall last December.

A comment that was interpreted as a "diss" provoked seven of the 3,000 Boys to swarm and pummel two other deputies. A female officer who tried to intervene was punched in the face. "This was not mutual combat, this was not one-on-one," related an attorney for the victims. "This was a beat-down."

Gang signs: "3,000 Boys" represent. (KTLA photo.)

One of the participants in that assault was fired; six others were subject to various forms of "discipline." None of them was brought up on criminal charges. A lawsuit filed by the victims accuses LA Sheriff Lee Baca of fomenting a culture of "lawlessness" among the deputies working as jail guards -- an accusation made, it should be recalled, by two of Baca's own deputies.

If the victims had been Mundanes, even the trivial, perfunctory "punishment" of termination most likely would have been avoided. This was demonstrated in the case of bar bouncer Chris Barton, who had a run-in with Deputy David Ortega, a member of the 3,000 Boys.

Barton was attempting to clear out the Slidebar in Fullerton at closing time. Many of the customers probably grumbled a bit when Barton made the familiar "I don't care where you go but you can't stay here" announcement, but nearly all of them left. Three sullen, uncooperative males lingered at a table, conspicuously ignoring Barton's instruction that they leave so the business could comply with applicable local ordinances.

One of the loiterers truculently informed Barton that "he's a cop, and it doesn't matter what we say or what [the] laws are," the bouncer recalled in a television interview. "He's a police officer, and if he wants to do something, he can do it."

Ortega tried to provoke Barton by spitting on him three times. Somehow, Barton and his staff managed to get Ortega and his chums out of the bar, but the threats continued to dribble down the inebriated deputy's chin. First he told Barton that the 3,000 Boys would "take care" of him. Then he said that Barton would be beaten severely and left to die in a pool of his own blood. Finally, Ortega made an explicit death threat.

"At that time he decides to say he's going to shoot us," Barton recalled. "So he reaches behind his back like he's going for a gun. That's when [I] and another bouncer tackle him."



Ortega was arrested and charged with four counts -- assault, battery, fighting, and making a terroristic threat. All but one charge was dismissed. Ortega was sentenced to a fleeting term of probation, and demoted within the department. As of May 4, reported KTLA, Ortega was "still working in the Men's Central Jail."

When police cohere in ultra-violent cliques and behave like the Droogs from A Clockwork Orange, the custodians of acceptable opinion liberally apply one of their favorite semantic cosmetics -- the term "rogue." Thus the 3,000 Boys are habitually described as "a group of rogue Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputies," despite the fact that the only unforgivable "rogue" behavior appears to be inflicting injury on a fellow officer.

Furthermore, membership in a police gang of this type is a time-honored tradition in Los Angeles. Witness the fact that Paul Tanaka, the current Los Angeles Assistant Sheriff, is a veteran of notorious Lynwood Vikings police gang. Tanaka "was tattooed as a member of the Vikings while a young deputy in 1987 -- a year before he was named in a wrongful-death lawsuit stemming from the shooting of a young Korean man," reported the Los Angeles Times in 1999. "The department eventually settled for close to $1 million."


At the police station in Lynwood, the Vikings were notorious for adolescent pranks -- such as shooting a dog and tying its carcass to the commander's squad car, or decorating various surfaces with human feces. They displayed a similarly playful touch in dealing out unwarranted violence toward local residents. In 1989, Capt. Bert Cueva, a "no-nonsense" commander with the executive disposition of Dirty Harry, was sent to Lynwood to clean out the gang infestation.

When Cueva started to transfer Vikings to other precincts, these tat-wearing, bad-ass veterans of the street wars responded in a fashion worthy of the bespectacled, briefcase-toting pencil-necks they so heartily despised: The filed a discrimination lawsuit, which lead to an out-of-court settlement and Cueva's inglorious retirement in 1992.

Four years later, tax victims in Los Angeles were forced to underwrite a $9 million settlement arising out of civil claims filed by victims of Viking-related violence. By that time, the perpetrators had been dispersed throughout the LAPD and the LA Sheriff's Office, where many -- Tanaka most prominently -- now have leadership positions. This would certainly help explain the culture of "lawlessness" described in the Quiet Cannon lawsuit.

"You keep your mouth shut and obey the code of silence," explained former Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy Mike Osborne, who had been invited to join the secretive Vikings society, in 1999. "Any illegal acts you witness by other deputies, you don't say anything. If you're asked, you say, `I didn't see nothing.'" Osborne and his wife, who was also a deputy, retired in 1996. Mrs. Osborne violated that code by accusing her training officer, Jeffrey Jones, of evidence tampering. At about the same time Jones -- who eventually pleaded no contest to felony charges -- was arraigned, the Osbornes and their two children were terrorized by a drive-by shooting at their home.

Quasi-official street gangs can be found embedded in many major metropolitan police departments, often making their presence known to the public through episodes of severe off-duty violence. Such was the case with the near-fatal beating of Milwaukee resident Frank Jude, Jr. in October 2004.

 Jude, a male dancer hired to perform at a bachelorette party, was set upon by a thugscrum of off-duty officers who accused him of stealing a badge. Jude was thrown to the ground, beaten, kicked, and choked; a knife was put to this throat, and a pen was jammed into one of his ears.

The near-fatal beating inflicted permanent brain damage. None of the relevant facts were in dispute, but a jury accepted the claim that the beating was an effort to "subdue" a resisting suspect with a criminal history (Jude wasn't charged in connection with the incident).

Former Milwaukee Police Officer Jon Bartlett, the ringleader of the gang beating, was eventually convicted -- along with six others -- on federal civil rights charges. An internal affairs investigation revealed that Bartlett and other officers who assaulted Jude belonged to a tattooed street gang calling itself the "Punishers," described by MPD Commander James A Galezewski as "a group of rogue officers" -- there's that sanitizing adjective again -- "who I would characterize as brutal and abusive."

This "gang-like" group -- don't you dare call it a "gang" -- borrowed its name and its logo (a stylized skull) from a nihilistic comic book vigilante. By the time he was convicted on federal charges stemming from the attempted homicide of Frank Jude, Jon Bartlett -- who had long been known to be a "troubled" officer -- was serving a prison sentence for calling in a bomb threat to his former police station.

Galezewski offered a detailed description of the Punishers in official reports filed on two separate investigations -- one in 2005, the other in 2007. He also described his findings at length in a sworn deposition in November 2010. One training supervisor and at least one active-duty police officer have been identified as current members of the gang. Nonetheless, last January MPD Chief Edward Flynn stated that the existence of the gang was merely a matter of "rumor" -- which, in light of the evidence collected by his own department, could be construed as Flynn's attempt to obey the "code of silence" referred to by Mike Osborne. 

All governments, as Augustine observed, are merely criminal syndicates, distinguished from apolitical robber bands "not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity." As the state's enforcement apparatus, police are, by strict definition, a street gang invested with "authority" to establish a monopoly of coercive violence. Thus it shouldn't surprise us when members of the officially sanctioned street gang begin to affect the accoutrements, identifying gestures, and patois of their competitors as a way of enhancing morale within their brotherhood of sanctified violence.

Prison offers the most congenial environment for cultivating quasi-official police gangs, and the talent pool from which jail and prison guards are drawn is usually a stagnant pond of otherwise unemployable Epsilon-class bullies. Thanks to a decades-long prison construction binge, there is no shortage of incubators in which those proto-fascist fraternities can put down roots and thrive.

The residential real estate bubble collapsed years ago, and the commercial real estate market is imploding, but one segment of the housing market continues to thrive – incarceration. As with any other Federal Reserve-driven economic bubble, the prison economic boom reflects government intervention, not market demand.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the national crime rate began a precipitous decline in 1994. Measured in terms of reported offenses per 100,000 people, the national crime rate was 18 percent lower in 2004 than it was in 1970. The homicide rate is the lowest it has been since 1965. Yet prison construction, and the concomitant expansion of its support industry, continues unabated.

Civic leaders in many economically depressed communities increasingly look to the prison industry to fill the void created when farming, mining, manufacturing, and construction jobs disappear.

Mark of the Beasts: A "3,000 Boys" tattoo. (KTLA photo.)

“Jobs, jobs, jobs – it doesn’t get much more important than that simple four-letter word,” insisted Pennsylvania state representative Bill DeWeese, whose district was selected as the location of three “campuses” for the new, $200-million state prison. “Those are recession-proof jobs at a good, family-sustaining wage level,” added Vincent Vicites, Chairman of Pennsylvania’s Fayette County Commission. “We sought the prison because this could mean several hundred more good-paying jobs for the county.” DeWeese was inconsolable when incoming Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett killed the prison project, complaining that the austerity-dictated decision killed a vital public "investment."

Most people in the productive sector would find it odd that the political class would be eager to expand the local criminal population, rather than reducing it. A generation ago, “prisons were often seen as dark blotches on the landscapes … but this has changed,” observes civil libertarian James Bovard. "In small towns and depressed areas across the nation, politicos applaud government policies that turn other people into fodder because it keeps their own local prison-based economies humming."

Through the dubious miracle of federally subsidized social engineering, a prison is transformed – in the eyes of government officials, at least – from a wretched slough of despond into a veritable field of dreams: If we build it, they – inmates and the accompanying subsidies – will come. 

No society in human history has put more of its own people in cages than the United States of America. The U.S.A. accounts for more than one-quarter of the world’s estimated prison population of roughly 8 million people. China, a country with four times our population and an avowedly Communist government, has a prison population less than half the size of ours. 

As of as of 2008, observes Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, the U.S. imprisonment rate was 751 people per 100,000; the closest competitor was Russia, with 627. The median global rate is 125. This means that in addition to having the world’s largest prison population, America incarcerates people at more than six times the average world rate. Can any honest observer conclude that the current system is six times more effective at punishing and deterring violent crime? 

Any government-run enterprise will yield minimal benefits at maximum expense. It’s difficult to find a better illustration of that axiom than the prison system. Rather than enhancing public safety, the prison-industrial complex is a public works project for the tax-devouring class, which has an ironic interest in enhancing the problem of crime – through exaggeration or redefinition, if necessary – rather than minimizing it. 

The prison economy displays all of the perverse incentives typical of any other form of applied socialism. Former Treasury Department official Paul Craig Roberts writes that between 1980 and 2000, as our national population grew by 21 percent, "the number of state and federal inmates soared by 312%." James Bovard points out that "prisoners become tokens redeemable for extra federal aid for housing, road building, environmental concerns, and social spending.... Local governments also collect federal windfalls because most prisoners have zero income--thus making the locales appear to be poverty zones."

Professor Stephen Cox of the University of California/San Diego, author of The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison, notes that the prison industry has become “the states’ primary source of pork-barrel spending.”

The California “correctional” system, which encompasses a total of 30 prisons, employs 69,000 people, making it one of  the largest bureaucratic organizations in that bureaucrat-plagued state. The prison guards union, which calls itself the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, is one of the most powerful revenue-devourers’ lobbies in the country: The union donated generously to Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign, and Brown made one of his few post-election, pre-inaugural public appearances at the union’s January convention in Las Vegas. 

Although California’s state economy is circling the bowl, Cox relates, “Governor Jerry Brown has just negotiated yet another Rolls Royce contract with one of the biggest beneficiaries of state government, the prison guards' union.” 

“The California prison system is so corrupt that it is hard to sort through all the issues,” writes Orange County Register columnist Stephen C. Greenhut, author of Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives, and Bankrupting the Nation. During the reign of Governor Gray Davis, the prison guards union extorted a 34 percent pay hike in the teeth of a state budget crisis. They also wrangled a "3 percent at 50" retirement plan “that allows a guard who has worked for 30 years to retire at age 50 with 90 percent of his final pay,” continued Greenhut. “Furthermore, the former governor fulfilled the guards' main goal - closing down many of the private prisons that compete with the union-operated prison monopoly.”

Earlier this year, Californians were treated to a memorable display of the depraved ingenuity of the union’s negotiators, and their sociopathic indifference to public safety.

The February 4 Los Angeles Times reported that prison employees, more than half of whom belong to the prison guards union, “are the main source of smuggled phones that inmates use to run drugs and other crimes.” This is because prison staffers, including guards, are exempt from the invasive searches that all private visitors must endure. 

Like other unionized tax-feeders in government-issued costumes, the prison guards union demands public respect for their supposedly indispensable service in holding back the surging tide of crime. Yet allowing criminals to run their enterprises from inside a prison defeats the advertised purpose of the institution. Rather than supporting the obvious solution to this growing public safety threat – requiring guards and other staffers to undergo searches – the union saw the issue as an opportunity to wring more money out of California’s tax victim population.

“While union officials' stated position is that they do not necessarily oppose searches, they cite a work requirement that corrections officers be paid for `walk time’ — the minutes it takes them to get from the front gate to their posts behind prison walls,” recounted the Times. While it would take only a few minutes for an individual prison guard to pass through a metal detector, those minutes would add up quickly, meaning that in the aggregate the unionized prison guards “would have to be paid millions of dollars extra to be searched on their way into work.”

The prison-industrial complex – a sprawling enterprise of subsidized social engineering and official corruption – may not survive the ongoing economic collapse. This would be an unalloyed blessing. It would provide an opportunity to build a justice system devoted restitution for the benefit of individual victims, rather than “rehabilitating” the aggressor and compelling him to pay a supposed debt to a vaporous abstraction called “society.”

Of course, it’s also possible that the economic and social meltdown could result in the irreversible transformation of the U.S.A. into a monolithic prison state, a development prefigured by invasive, degrading treatment of customers at airports, the proliferation of police checkpoints, and the ever-increasing surveillance of inoffensive citizens in everyday settings. Indeed, it seems likely that, unless we kill it now, the prison-industrial complex will metastasize until everyone living in America is, for all practical purposes, an inmate at the mercy of the State's officially sanctioned prison gang.

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I am profoundly grateful to everybody who has generously donated to help me keep Pro Libertate on-line. I am also deeply regretful that my output here has declined dramatically in recent months.

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The continued existence of Pro Libertate doesn't depend on success in fund-raising: Whatever happens I intend to continue publishing this blog as my circumstances permit. The same is true of my weekly radio podcast at the Liberty News Radio Network, the daily Liberty Minute radio commentaries, and the other publishing ventures in which I'm involved. (I'm frequently asked, "Are you working?" "Sure -- I work all the time, it's just that I almost never get paid for it," is my standard reply.)

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The Lethal Illusion Called "Authority"

Killer on the loose: Ian Birk, seconds before he gunned down John T. Williams.

"Why did you shoot that man? He didn't do anything!"

The question was wrenched from a woman who had watched in horror as Police Officer Ian Birk pumped four shots into the body of John T. Williams on a Seattle street corner last August 30.

Birk claimed that he had been "threatened" by Williams, a 50-year-old alcoholic woodcarver who was carrying two closed knives at the time of the incident. The autopsy, however, documented that Williams wasn't facing Birk when he was shot: The officer approached him from behind and to the right, and Williams was shot in the right side of his body from an estimated distance of about ten feet. A fifth shot that missed the target was never accounted for.

No reasonable person would have considered Williams a threat to Birk; in fact, since the victim was partially deaf, it's likely he never clearly heard Birk's demand that he drop his carving knife, and died before understanding what was going on. The entire lethal encounter lasted less than eight seconds.

There were several eyewitnesses to the homicide. None of them saw Williams display threatening behavior of any kind. Then again, none of them was a member of the State's punitive caste, which means that they hadn't been indoctrinated to perceive even a momentary lack of cooperation by a Mundane as a "pre-attack indicator." During the January inquest into the shooting, Birk explained that he gunned down John T. Williams on a Seattle street corner because he didn't like the way the 50-year-old chronic alcoholic looked at him.

Seconds to live: Williams, just before Birk shot him.

While prowling Seattle’s streets last August 30, Birk saw Williams in a crosswalk carrying a knife and a block of wood.  Birk reported that he was going to perform a "shake" -- an informal contact with a potentially suspicious person. He exited his police cruiser and, with his firearm in the "Sul" position, commanded Williams to drop his knife. No more than four seconds passed between Birk’s demand and the first of five gunshots fired by the officer. The entire encounter lasted roughly seven seconds.

Significantly, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, Birk specified that he had killed Williams for refusing to drop the knife, not because of threatening behavior of any kind. He also told another police officer that Williams "was carving up that board" -- which, if true, meant that Birk had seen the knife used as a tool, rather than a weapon.

In the dashcam video, Williams appears to be a small, middle-aged man with a shambling, tentative stride. While crossing the street the artisan does appear to be working with the wood in some fashion. Birk can be seen exiting the car and speaking casually into his portable radio before bellowing "Hey! Hey! Hey! Drop the knife!" Nothing in Birk's posture or tone of voice suggests that he was confronting a potential assailant, or in fear for his life.

Perhaps the most important fact, given Birk's claim that he was "threatened" by the confused, partially deaf woodcarver, is the fact that the officer was the one who was closing the distance in the seconds leading up to the shooting.

Williams had a troubled past characterized by alcoholism and occasional fits of improper public behavior. He was well known to the police as a “chronic inebriate.” In a video recording of an earlier encounter one officer is heard telling another that “I write him a ticket every time I can.”

In the days just prior to the August 30 shooting, Williams was stopped by police on several occasions. In one confrontation, Williams -- who at the time was so deep into his cups that he could barely stand upright -- can be heard making what was described as a “threat” to kill “all you police force.” This “threat” wasn’t taken seriously by the officers, who simply shrugged their shoulders and let Williams shuffle away.

John T. Williams with his handiwork.

 The Seattle police were familiar with Williams, his alcohol abuse, and the occasionally unsavory public behavior that resulted from it. Officers had also seen him carrying a carving knife and a block of wood on previous occasions. 

While he wasn’t always pleasant to be around, Williams wasn’t known to be disposed toward violence, and in any case wasn’t physically capable of any.  At the time Birk killed him, Williams was carrying two knives, both of which were legal under Seattle municipal ordinances (their blades were under 3.5 inches in length) and  were closed when photographed by crime scene investigators.

Officer William Collins, who arrived in response to Birk’s “shots fired” report, told him, seconds after the killing,  that he had done a "good job." All that Collins knew at the time was that a fellow member of his coercive brotherhood had just killed a Mundane -- and that's all he needed to know.

During the January shooting inquest, Seattle police brutality lawyer Tim Ford asked Collins if a closed knife constitutes a threat to "officer safety." A closed knife is "a major threat," Collins maintained, "just as big as an open knife.... It's extremely dangerous, and you have to treat the person with utmost caution.... [I]f you don't drop it, you may be shot" -- even if it is closed at the time. After all, Collins insisted -- regurgitating a familiar self-pitying police cliche --"We don't get paid enough to be hurt."

Detective Jeff Mudd, who also testified at the inquest, also asserted that Birk's decision was appropriate: "We're trained to shoot people who pose a threat to us."

In what sense was this puzzled, decrepit old alcoholic, "armed" with a small, closed knife, a "threat" to the young, vigorous, highly trained paladin of public order who confronted him with a drawn gun? The answer offered by Birk was that he was justified in shooting Williams because the woodcarver had given him a dirty look.

 "He had a very stern, very serious, very confrontational look on his face," Birk testified during the inquest. "He was still holding the knife up in front of himself ... in a confrontational posture." Birk's use of the word "still" means that Williams's "posture" hadn't changed from the time the officer supposedly saw him "carving up that board" -- which may have been unwise, but couldn't be construed as "confrontational."

A detailed account of the inquest published by The Stranger points out: "No witnesses reported seeing Williams act aggressively toward Birk or anyone else. No witnesses reported seeing a knife in Williams' hand."

Birk mentioned that he and other police are taught the "21-foot rule," which dictates that a knife-wielding subject should be considered a lethal threat within the prescribed distance. But it should be remembered that it was Birk who insisted on closing the distance. Birk also testified that "I motioned for him to come over and talk to me. He walked away."

If Birk, pursuant to the "21 foot rule," considered Williams to be a "threat," why did the officer instruct the woodcarver to come closer? When asked to elucidate that point, Birk stated that "if he would've complied with that command, it would've been a sign that he was compliant with what was going on."

Of course, if Williams had "complied" with that demand, it's entirely possible that he would have been gunned down anyway -- and that Birk would have claimed that the victim had "threatened him" by closing the distance between them.

Birk's testimony, which was clearly scripted for him, is a splendid example of what police call "creative writing" -- or what more honest people call perjury. He claimed that somehow, during the course of their very brief encounter, he saw Williams become "increasingly aggressive.... His brow was furrowed, eyes were fixed in a thousand-yard stare. His jaw was set."

Somehow, in a matter of nano-seconds, the forlorn and inoffensive American Indian woodcarver had -- at least in Birk's eyes -- assumed the fearsome demeanor of the ancient Irish warrior Cuchulain, whose "eyes were dark, his expression sullen."


In a fascinating piece of performance art, Birk recreated for the courtroom the sullen expression and "attack stance" that caused the valiant defender of the public weal to soil his skivvies.

The officer supposedly recognized and acted on these "pre-attack indicators" within the space of about four seconds. The situation "escalated more quickly than I had predicted," Birk insisted on the witness stand. So this was a "split-second decision," correct? Well -- perhaps for the police officer, but not for the victim, who according to Birk had all the time in the world to comply. "Mr. Williams had ample opportunity to do a number of things preventing this situation from becoming what it ultimately became," Birk declared on the stand.


Birk's lavishly detailed description of Williams' threatening behavior is difficult to reconcile with his own behavior in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Nowhere in the video recording of the incident can Birk be heard telling other officers or onlookers that Williams had threatened him with a knife. In his on-scene interview with the above-mentioned Detective Mudd, Birk said nothing about "pre-attack indicators." In his testimony at the inquest -- a pseudo-judicial procedure that is neither a criminal nor a civil trial -- Birk recited his lines like a well-rehearsed soap opera actor, displaying the composure of a sociopath in assigning all of the blame to the victim.


The jury at the inquest was not convinced that Birk had told the truth about the supposed threat posed by Williams. On February 15, Seattle PD's Firearms Review Board ruled that the fatal shooting was "unjustified," and recommended that "Officer Birk must remain stripped of all Seattle Police powers and authority, as he was on October 5th, 2010 when he surrendered his gun and badge."

Birk had clearly committed an act of criminal homicide, and his only "punishment" was to be "stripped" of something nobody really possesses -- the supposed power and authority to engage in discretionary killing.

As we’ve seen on numerous occasions, contemporary law enforcement officers are on a war footing, which means that their default setting is “overkill.” (Birk, like so many other police officers, is a military veteran, having served as a paralegal in the National Guard.) It likewise means that they are functionally immune from prosecution when they commit acts of criminal homicide.

Shortly after the decision of the Firearms Review Board was made public, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced that although the murder of Williams was “troubling,” no criminal charges would be filed against the murderer. This is  because it Satterberg believes it would be impossible to demonstrate that the unjustified killing was the product of malice.

“A jury would be compelled to find Officer Birk not guilty,” Satterberg claimed. This should be taken as an oblique admission by Satterberg that he would have thrown the case if it had gone to trial. The state’s homicide statute recognizes that it is not necessary to demonstrate malice in cases where death results from criminal neglect.

Furthermore, the relevant section Washington’s criminal code describes an offense called “homicide by abuse” in which one person, in “circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to human life,” causes the death of ” a developmentally disabled person”; although this statute was written to apply to cases in which mentally handicapped or otherwise dependent people die from prolonged mistreatment, a properly motivated prosecutor could find a way to convince a jury that the statute should cover an incident in which a police officer summarily executes a deaf, mentally challenged woodcarver.

As is generally the case when a member of the Krypteia slaughters a helot, the only ones punished are the local tax victims: The City of Seattle has announced a $1.5 million settlement with the victim’s family.

Birk himself will probably join the ever-growing ranks of "Gypsy Cops" and turn up somewhere else swaddled in a government-provided costume and invested with the spurious authority to kill.

Police authority" is a strange, mystical property that leaves a heavy residue of privilege even in those, like Ian Birk, from whom it is withdrawn.

Consider what would happen if the situation had been reversed on that Seattle street corner last August 30: What if Birk had been ordered to divest himself of his weapon by a member of the productive class? What if Birk had been the one gunned down four seconds after that demand had been made by someone who later claimed that he felt "threatened" by Birk's facial expression?

Were a sanctified personage in a police uniform to be killed in that fashion by a Mundane who displayed no malice, D.A. Satterberg would probably find the motivation, and summon the necessary creativity, to build a criminal case.

In a recent case of that kind in Eugene, Oregon, a woman reportedly suffering from schizophrenia allegedly gunned down Officer Chris Kulcullin, who -- his chosen profession aside-- appears to have been a genuinely decent man, with a wife and two children. While the specifics of that horrible episode differ from the killing of John T. Williams, both of those incidents were random acts of unjustified lethal violence. Ian Birk faces no criminal charges. Cheryl Kidd, who allegedly murdered Kulcullin, has been charged with aggravated murder, and could face the death penalty.

The only thing separating those two acts of criminal homicide is "authority" -- that quantity, at once elusive and illusive, that supposedly elevates the State's hired enforcers above the hoi polloi, permitting them to inflict summary punishment on any Mundane who displays so much as a flicker of defiance. It is this ineffable gift that allows Ian Birk and his ilk to gun down, without serious consequence, any Mundane who dares give them a dirty look. 

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Dum spiro, pugno!

Emmanuel Goldstein's Dark Victory

In related news, Francisco Franco is still dead, too.

Whether Osama bin Laden departed the mortal realm for an unpleasant eternity years ago -- as sober and serious people have reported -- or last week in a firefight suitable for a sweeps week episode of NCIS, this much is certain: The government ruling us managed to turn that despicable creature into a prophet.

"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden gloated shortly after 9-11. "The U.S. government will lead the American people, and the West in general, into an unbearable hell and a choking life." 

Osama's fondest wish was to see a civilizational conflict between the West and the Islamic world. A subsidiary desire was to see the United States spend itself into oblivion by carrying out that demented crusade. He doubtless was delighted to see the United States become mired in an intractable war in Afghanistan, and to see Washington expand the compass of its conflict with the Muslim world to include Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia.

Bin Laden was almost certainly gleeful to witness the collapse of the most recent Fed-engineered financial bubble in 2008, and probably emitted a chuckle or two over the dollar's rapid disintegration. Assuming that CNN or Fox is available in hell, bin Laden will probably be permitted a fleeting moment of satisfaction when the United States descends into a hyperinflationary crisis worthy of Weimar Germany or contemporary Zimbabwe -- something that could occur before the end of this year. 

As a CIA-nurtured student of post-Leninist terrorist tactics, bin Laden understood the revolutionary formula outlined in Carlos Marighella's Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerrilla. 

The purpose of terrorism, explained Marighella, is to "to intensify repression," resulting in draconian measures that "make life unbearable" for the subject population. When faced with "revolutionary violence," government will eagerly resort to  "police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people [that] make life in the city unbearable.... " Rejecting the "so-called political solution," the urban guerrilla must become more aggressive and violent, resorting without letup to sabotage, terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnappings, and executions, heightening the disastrous situation in which the government must act...."

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who published and widely disseminated Marighella's terrorist tract, was a millionaire Marxist publishing magnate (yes, such people do exist). He concisely summarized Marighella's strategy as using relentless violence against the innocent in order to provoke an "authoritarian turn to the right" -- the imposition of dictatorial measures and the consolidation of power by a State that ere long will fall into the hands of the revolutionaries. 

Whatever else bin Laden was, he understood that dynamic and eagerly promoted it. Whether or not it was a product of conscious design, bin Laden and Washington's Power Elite existed in symbiosis. Every action taken by the government ruling us that abridged individual liberties and enlarged the public debt was a small victory for bin Laden's vision. The same is true of every CIA-conducted Predator drone strike that wiped out a helpless Muslim family, thereby sowing seeds of rancor that will blossom into anti-American terrorism.

Not a scene from a debt-ridden Third World nation. No, wait...

 Some people have long suspected that worms had gagged on bin Laden's mortal remains long ago, and that his name and likeness were being used in a "Weekend at Bernie's"-style hoax by our rulers. 

 Every once in a while the image of the omnipotent troglodyte -- who supposedly had the power to threaten our very existence while living in a cave somewhere in the Tora Bora Mountains -- would be resurrected to rally the public on behalf of the Long War. This routine succumbed to the law of diminishing returns about five years ago.


By now, however, the Regime no longer requires bin Laden's service as a hate figure. The purpose of such a totem is to personify an abstract "Enemy." Over the past two years, proponents of a civilizational conflict with the Muslim world have succeeded in convincing a large and growing segment of the population that Islam itself -- everywhere it exists, in whatever form it takes -- is the Enemy, and that coexistence isn't an option.

Although he would be on the opposing side of the proposition, bin Laden would appreciate the War Party's efforts to criminalize the practice of Islam in the United States. This is the objective of the "anti-Sharia" enactments that are sprouting like poisonous toadstools wherever the War Party and its acolytes have fertilized the ground with that malodorous substance in which such fungi thrive. 

Bin Laden would have admired the clarifying fanaticism behind the original version of Tennessee's proposed anti-Sharia ordinance, which would have treated peaceful belief in Sharia law as a felony punishable by up to twenty years in prison. He would be delighted to see the same U.S. government that is bombing, invading, and occupying Muslim nations abroad actively working to suppress the religious liberty of American Muslims at home. What better way to validate bin Laden's claim that war between Islam and the West is inevitable? 

Ten years ago, the image of the Enemy was that of an unabashedly hostile self-proclaimed sheik who reveled in his hatred for America. By now, much of the Right has been convinced that law-abiding American Muslims who conduct peaceful commerce and profess to love our country are the most insidious threat we face. 

When sectarian collectivism has metastasized into the marrow of our culture,  an apparition like bin Laden is no longer necessary. 


Assuming that the official narrative of bin Laden's death as a recent event is reliable, this development fulfills a promise made about a year ago by Attorney General Eric Holder, who told a congressional committee that bin Laden "will never appear in an American courtroom." Bin Laden was indicted for mass murder and other terrorism-related offenses (although, intriguingly, not the 9-11 atrocities), which means that it would have been entirely proper for him to be arraigned before a criminal court in an appropriate jurisdiction. 

The Regime has a deep bench: Al-Awlaki.

But that's not how things are done now by the Regime ruling us: The post-Bush doctrine of presidential war powers dictates that the incumbent dictator, as our "living Constitution," can order the summary execution of anyone on the planet for any reason he deems suitable. A corollary to that doctrine is that a "terrorist" is anyone thus designated by the Regime.

For a decade bin Laden was used to demonstrate the supposed necessity and wisdom of these totalitarian innovations. Anwar al-Awlaki, a "radical cleric" in Yemen who was clearly groomed as bin Laden's understudy for the past two years, will now assume the marquee role. 

Al-Awlaki -- who, like bin Laden, was cultivated by the National Security State before being designated an Official Enemy Of The People -- is a U.S. citizen targeted for assassination by a presidential order. This kind of thing was all but unimaginable ten years ago, but is now treated with torpid indifference by the people responsible for shaping public opinion. 


Thanks in no small measure to the ministrations of such people, much of the American public will be praising the government ruling us for sending Osama to hell, oblivious to the hell that the same government has stored up for the rest of us.




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