Individual Cop Blamed For Department Fostering OUR Social Referees’ Subcultural Intolerance

  RT headlined New York City refuses to defend the cop who pepper-sprayed OWS protesters, printing New York City will not provide a defense attorney for Police Officer Anthony Bologna, who was caught on camera pepper-spraying Occupy Wall Street protestors and now faces a civil lawsuit. The now-notorious cop, a 29-year veteran of the NYPD and a deputy inspector, will have to cover his own legal fees, with the help of his union the Captains Endowment Association.

  The widely seen YouTube video showed Bologna pepper spraying at least two girls who fell to the ground, screaming and crying in pain, at an Occupy protest, while the officer allegedly turned and walked away while recorded. A month after the Sept. 24 incident, a police investigation found that the cop had violated NYPD guidelines. Patrol Guide 212-95 lists situations in which an officer may legally use pepper spray. It may only be used in situations where the officer must protect himself or another from harm, establish control of someone resisting arrest or someone trying to flee from custody, establish control of an emotionally disturbed person or prevent an attack from a dangerous animal. The officer, as recorded, undoubtedly violated that rule.

  Officer Bologna’s immediate punishment was a command discipline docking his vacation by 10 days. He accepted the punishment, hoping he could move on with his career, according to RT, that makes it sound as if the officer hasn’t been hounded by remorse one iota. But in February, his two victims filed a lawsuit against Bologna for illegally spraying them. An unrelated group of two protesters filed an additional lawsuit against the officer on Tuesday. Aside from paying for his own defense, Bologna may also be held personally liable for financial damages that could arise out of the suit.

  Even though he claims he did not intend to spray the women, and in the video does seemingly spray in a general area rather than directly, it is nonetheless too aggressive in intent according to the law. The city is only required to provide “representation and indemnification if the employee was acting in the discharge of his or her duties and was not in violation of any rules or regulations of his/her agency at the time in question,” said Muriel Goode-Trufant, chief of the Law Department’s Special Federal Litigation Division, in an e-mail correspondence with the Wall Street Journal.

  In 1,376 federal civil rights cases pending against NYPD officers, the city has refused to cover defense costs in fewer than five per cent of cases, said Goode-Trufant. An attorney representing the pepper spray victims said she believes that the YouTube video of the incident affected the city’s decision not to defend the officer. “If it wasn’t on video, I think it would be another he said-she said case,” the attorney said. Wonder what the percentages of he/she said-they say cases are?

  RT states: But the scene, which clearly shows the officer bringing two harmless protesters to their knees, is a powerful image that may have embarrassed the NYPD and the city, leading to their refusal to be associated with the defendant. That the Wall Street Journal refers to as the department distancing itself from the officer.

  Now, here we are, once again, with the powers that be and apparatus at hand prepared to judge an individual. But as anyone who is familiar with New York City protests knows, at one time police management had better communicative relationships with protestors and in fact, quite efficiently, even protected protestors from unwarranted disagreeable bystanders. In fact cordoned off areas were as much for the protection of protestors as the outside public. Then came the 2004 Republican National Convention to Manhattan with street pens for on the spot imprisonment and a new intolerance that possibly happened because a new inappropriately trained or mis-inspired superior officer class attitude was directed toward any grievance that can be contrived as an intolerable nuisance in our police officers’ controlled day.

  Everyone has an attitude. But since 2004 intolerance was encouraged, or accepted community-wide in the police department, though I’ve met many friendly officers but being mad is written all over the pepper spraying officer’s face. He’s upset and frustrated as if thinking why can’t these people just accept what others in power think best for them? Right, distance yourself my proud, sometimes unnecessarily assaulted, fine New York City Police Department. But remember, the culture of intolerance spawned that officer’s reaction, and some day, somehow, a full accounting will come to pass and just blaming an individual will not fly.

  Occupy Wall Street isn’t particularly mad at individual bankers who got caught up in the frenzied money madness mess. What they’re complaining about is the pervasive industry indifference that led to the problem of money, that doesn’t really disappear, finding ways to hide from general circulation among the population. Sure, the officer made a mistake and he’ll pay. But pity is a two-way street. If you can’t help your own, how are we to expect the next happening of this sort to be squelched before more victims pile up, angry our peace officers neglect to care about everyone’s peace but their own and their privileged friends? We know better. Don’t we?

8/6/2012

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Individual Cop Blamed For Department Fostering Our Social Referees' Subcultural Intolerance

8/6/2012: Occupy Wall Street isn’t particularly mad at individual bankers who got caught up in the frenzied money madness mess. What they’re complaining about is the pervasive industry indifference that led to the problem of money, that doesn’t really disappear, finding ways to hide from general circulation among the population. Sure, the officer made a mistake and he’ll pay. But pity is a two-way street. If you can’t help your own, how are we to expect the next happening of this sort to be squelched before more victims pile up, angry our peace officers neglect to care about everyone’s peace but their own and their privileged friends? We know better. Don’t we?

September 5 - October 7, 2018

Blinded By The Light’s One Thing, 

But Mesmerized By Gold’s Quite Another

  For all the lights bells and whistles, (and there are numerous lights, bells, and whistles), hope resettlement holds a steady course in Team Jargon's facing, at least some, shame for itself. Magical huh, how frames of mind dictate tactic and strategies for, perhaps the whole purpose of, smudging nuance? Interpreted slant, and an embellishing trance that voids perspective isn't an easy admission? Especially when so much money's involved. As if that matters, because, even when little's involved, the stakes are that much more higher.

  Respect for the presidency is more than any man or woman. More than loyalty to your land of dominion's assaultive causes. When strength's exploited to excuse virtually anything, even outright flaws, it's made difficult to grasp an incapability of maturing into the presidency? Sir, you practically said you're more corrupt than Hillary. But people didn't want to believe it for the greater cause of unlimited power. That's when a country of, by and for, the people's been had. 

  Unrealistic as this is, the president's only way out of infamy's gaining a broader understanding of ideas such as some in the following film. 

A Dark Sidewalk Reading 

By Roy Cohn’s Townhouse 36:00

Last 24 minutes is the first Tuesday following the 2016 Presidential Election

     Hard to believe the country's lost without intellectual curiosity? Scope has little to do with pounded out political messages, other than knowing how you're influenced matters no matter your political slant. 

Strung Together Verbiage Striking The World In Various Myriad Ways 

  Nothing's perfect, but the "no one would understand" comment on the Puerto Rico hurricane crisis during the president's "great job" of outlining for the country the imminent danger of a "tremendously big and tremendously wet" hurricane that's directly hit North Carolina was a doozy. Might not Walter Cronkite have gone daffy, as well, incessantly communicating all the time? Perhaps none of us are immune? ... Put down your phone and think about it?

  The public's problem with being picked on for various idiosyncrasies, is we're detoured from following actual facts that have some difference between being bent or broken. 

  Of course there's explanations for the president's being tuned to the country's business all the time. Why there's not enough left over to be pressed on substance between the endlessness of backtracked evasiveness. Fake concern? Atop it all, acting out naked, in need of clothes.

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Mother Nature's Always Kept Telling Something's Wrong

  Fascinating what a North of Ithaca, New York farmer knows without ever having seen the reality before. The power of documentation, of course, but also, no doubt, from the act of noticing nature more intimately than civilian life generally offers. The farmer'd never seen one before. But spying it, the realization was instantaneous. The Cicada, which emerges from dormancy at between 13 - 17 years, had alighted on the never before worn golden t-shirt. They both looked amazed at the largest insect the t-shirt wearer'd ever seen, before attending The Pocono Garlic & Harvest Festival at the base of Shawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania. 

  A lot happens in between the times the drumbeat of propaganda raises its' fevered pitches of fastballs, curves and sliders that so mystify, demystifying's a hobby generally forsaken by the general public's awareness. The onslaught so immensely intense, the fleeting moments, for holding the dearest times dear, are washed away in the drenching of the public's feelings with disorienting pablum that confuses obliterating any focus at all. 

  This cicada appeared to have huge eyes.

  Some length of time the cicada kept to the shirt and crawled up to adhere to the neck before enticed to fly away by a viewer not alerted to the encounter's benign nature. Reality's rough, especially when the key to nature's balance is the politics of human self-interest. When the cause of most imbalance are the consequences of what's not affordable. For fear the well of money will dry up, brought hurricanes in tandem? ... Earthquake Assistance Program. Yada, yada, yada, huh? As the first sentence alludes.

  The other North of Ithaca farmer, wife of the aforementioned North of Ithaca farmer, said he liked the t-shirt's wearer and the consensus was the insect was drawn to the unaccustomedly, never before, worn gold t-shirt. 

  Opening the drawer the selection entered the process by the volume of shirts prepared for the laundry. But even then it'd not been the type of flamboyance the wearer'd wear. Meant to be an undershirt at most, as, after all, at a higher elevation the sweatshirt would be normal protocol. And the grey shirt, for the trip, could be worn in a pinch. 

  Not really best, the whimsical approach, especially when applied to regrinding yesterday's politically issued blemishes. 

  The Carlos Santana Tribute Band, Jingo played an originally interpreted set. 

The Soapbox View pursues the Twin Legacies 
Andy Rooney and I.F. Stone

Legal System Physicians Heal Thyselves?

  The chasm between truth and public presentation makes the light of day as blurry as the self-deception behind why sheltered truth happens. Every day, life is as a court of law where any point conceded dooms the rest of the case. Admit nothing. That wins. But I turn away, which is how I wish we all treated this dilemma. All of usrefusing to be involved rationalizing every form of criminal behavior anymore.

  The New York Times investigated, under the title, In Police-Stop Data, Pockets Where Force Is Used More Often, written by RAY RIVERA, the fact, we all know, that police have to protect themselves to protect us. Spawning some of the reasons for Mr. Rivera’s report, contributed to by Daniel Krieger, Randy Leonard, Sarah Maslin Nir, Nate Schweber and Tom Torok.

  The writer begins by describing the worst case scenario where two Bronx precincts have higher rates of violence during police stops than other New York City precincts. The West Bronx’s crowded neighborhoods come alive at night with residents, young and old, clustered around door stoops and teenagers filling playground basketball courts, with police officers from the nearby 44th and 46th Precincts patrolling and, from time to time, stopping and frisking young, mostly black and Latino, men. And when stopped for interrogation, statistics show, physical force is used far more often than anywhere else in the city.

  So – The New York City Police Department has been under increased scrutiny over the racial disparities and sheer volume of street stops under their “stop, question and frisk” crime-fighting technique policy that allows officers to stop people they reasonably believe are committing or about to commit a crime. Last year, the police stopped a record 680,000 people as more than 80 percent were black or Latino. A federal judge this summer approved a class-action lawsuit accusing the department of using race as a basis for the stops.

  Couldn’t be as a police state would, intend to put the fear of crossing them in the minds of their subjects?

But The Times being The Times stops short at an accusation of that magnitude. However continuing, The Times prints, but, often overlooked,(though the article’s intent is continuing scrutiny), is how frequently police officers use some level of physical force in these encounters. People who have been stopped say if they show the slightest bit of, even verbal, resistance they can be slammed against walls, forced to the ground and, on rarer occasions (thank goodness for that at least), officers’ guns pointed at their heads.

  According to an analysis by The New York Times, the police used some level of physical force in more than one in five stops across the city last year. The West Bronx’s rate was more than double that. Yet the high level of force seldom translated into arrests, raising questions among black and Latino leaders about whether officers were using enough discretion before making the stops in the first place, much less before resorting to force.

  The four precincts with the highest use of force all include or have included what the police call “impact zones,” violent pockets routinely flooded with officers, often in their first assignment out of the academy, in an effort to suppress crime. That combination of inexperienced officers and worst neighborhoods may be one reason force is so high, residents said. Adding the encounters, while apparently not leading to a higher number of physical injuries, do create lasting feelings of resentment and a distrust of officers. Us vs. them we deny but all live with and through, perhaps needlessly according to the laws that are supposed to rule This Great Land Of Ours.

  Felipe Carrion, 42, who runs a 44th Precinct barbershop on the Grand Concourse, said, “I feel sometimes a lot of the rookies that come out don’t have the proper training, and it’s actually a fear factor on their part. They’re actually afraid of getting hurt themselves.”

  Ever watch COPS, the television event? Controlling the subject is rule number 1. Period. Gotta subdue and nip improper attitudes in the bud before they’re out of hand. Hello! Everyone.

  Two months ago, Mr. Carrion said, he was standing outside his shop when two officers confronted him. “They asked me what I was doing in front of the shop and I said I was the owner,” and, “They said, ‘No, you’re not. You’re not the owner. Let’s see some ID.’” But as Mr. Carrion reached for his identification, the officers shoved him against the wall. “I was like, ‘You’re using police brutality. You’re not supposed to be doing that. Let me show you ID.’” Then the officers calmed down after seeing identification, but not before shoving him against the wall again and searching him. Both officers, he said, “looked like they were right out of the academy.” Or ready to go back?

  Police officials defend the stops as an effective crime deterrent. According to The Times, They downplayed The Times’s findings about use of force, saying the only reason the four precincts had such high levels was officers checked a box marked “hands on suspect” more often on the form they are required to fill when conducting stops. Other boxes include “suspect on wall” and “suspect on ground.” Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said “hands on suspect” was a subjective category that “may be reported anytime the officer’s hand comes into physical contact with the subject. This could occur during a frisk or to guide a suspect to the sidewalk,” he wrote in an e-mail.

  But The Times found, John A. Eterno, a former New York Police captain, who used to train officers on the stop-and-frisk tactic, who disputed that explanation, saying officers are trained to only check the box “whenever some sort of force is used to control the situation, or to make sure that either the officer’s safety or somebody else’s safety is maintained.” Dr. Eterno, who retired in 2003 and is now a criminologist at Molloy College on Long Island, added, “You could frisk a person without any use of force at all.” While all policemen ever had to do is ask me.

  It was in the 46th Precinct that Christopher Graham said he was stopped by two officers last winter as he and a friend were leaving his friend’s apartment building. The officers guided them to the wall of the building and began frisking them, Mr. Graham, 19, said. When the officer got to his groin area, Mr. Graham flinched, he said. “I said, ‘Whoa, what are you doing?’” Mr. Graham recalled. “The cop put his hand on the back of my cap and, boom, smashed my head into the wall of the apartment, for no reason.”

  The reason is power and also the reason not to.

  The resulting gash sent blood gushing down Mr. Graham’s cheek that took six stitches to close. Mr. Graham, who was neither arrested nor issued a summons in the stop, still bears a scar next to his left eye.

  You see that’s all that’s between us and state sponsored anarchy. A system of checks and balances, otherwise possibly millions could be lost and the keys to their cells thrown away. Thank God the police have to answer to lawyers, otherwise, poof, police state. But no one in, or running for, public office would admit that. Fuzz-y is as fuzzy self-righteously does, huh?

  City Councilman Fernando Cabrera, who represents the West Bronx, called the numbers “alarming. If indeed they were resisting arrest, or if there were any other kinds of crimes being committed that would call for that kind of aggressiveness, you would expect to see a correlation in arrests,” he said. “Instead, we see the total opposite.”

  That’s right, if only all the riff-raff could be legitimately arrested and gotten out-of-the-way?

Police officials also noted complaints, filed last year with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent panel that investigates complaints of excessive force, were at the lowest level since 2003, and only a tiny fraction of those were substantiated. But many citizens interviewed by The Times said they had either never heard of the board, or did not believe complaining would do any good. Those interviewed said the use of force seldom led to physical injuries. No, The Times would never accuse the police of violence with the intent to not leave marks. No, not in this country. Ha! ?

  The Times interviewed dozens of people in the 32nd, 44th, 46th and 113th Precincts who told stories of physical encounters with the police. Many said they were stopped multiple times without any force. But if they displayed any resistance, even verbally, like asking why they were stopped, the police sometimes got rough. Corroborating their stories is difficult because police data does not name those stopped or the officers making the stops. When most-likely computerized visual documentation of every action an officer is involved in is possible. What, something profiteers can wait to get their hands around when there are so many other ways to lucratively squeeze the public? So why wouldn’t the officer on the street want in on the action? Humans aren’t that complex. Most of what anyone does is for kicks no matter how our actions are rationalized otherwise.

  The presence of impact squads in high-crime areas is not enough to explain why force is used so often in some precincts. The 73rd Precinct in Brownsville, Brooklyn, has the city’s highest violent crime rate, and the police stop residents at nearly three times the rate as in the 44th and 46th Precincts. Yet the police used force in only 14 percent of stops in Brownsville last year, well below the city average.

  State Senator José R. Peralta, a Democrat of Queens whose district includes the 115th, said he was already concerned by the high number of stops taking place in the area. But he said he was surprised to learn, from a Times reporter, how many of those encounters involved physical force.

“Those are very troubling statistics,” he said. “The community has some pockets of high crime,” he added, but the overall amount does not correspond “to the extent of the force being used.”

  So, we need to protect the police to protect us and, if nothing is done about adversarial justice, nothing will be done as has happened for centuries now under our lazy haphazard system of self-righteous ignorance of what crime should actually be defined as by the state. Amen.

8/15/2012

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Legal Physicians Heal Thyselves?

8/15/2012 concluded: So, we need to protect the police to protect us and, if nothing is done about adversarial justice, nothing will be done as has happened for centuries now under our lazy haphazard system of self-righteous ignorance of what crime should actually be defined as by the state. Amen.

January 31 - February 20, 2019

The Modern Day Maginot Line

  Fairly accustomed to alternative slant, but bent over in agony spewing the results of narrowed public opinion? However much elucidation reveals about the artless allusions to historical embellishment glossing over current replications of indifferent swagger. Why bother facing, in the broad public forum, (media empires, word-of-mouth etc.), how much this proposed Great Wall Between Mexico and the United States is haunted by the symbolism of the Maginot Line. Symbolic for its being constructed for peace of mind security against a possible reoccurrence of World War I. Forget that that line just reinforced aggressive tensions, while the current modern day americanism line isn't intended to deter an actual invading military force. Because beyond the argumentative minutiae, once again military might may well be the great end all. Except culture's the over-riding force and the idea of this new border wall is a direct shrugging of responsibility for nightmarish occurrences of capitalist and socialist corruption. Getting over is the easy part of salesmanship. While the Criminal Enterprise System that's been reaped requires solution. Not another shaky symbol that nothing's our fault.  

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Well, It's Always Something

  Reading well written journalism with artful arcs of weighed perceptions, the experience itself has a standout dynamic. Specifically, accurately using pseudo-patriotic frenzy to describe a fault line at which societies are portrayable without backdrop with simplistic props. 

  Whereas, could the country see, as written, an elucidating tale while tied to scapegoatist iconography? Right. Politics aren't reducible to an impossible Shangri La the social fabric's nowhere near, anyway. Where the realistic thing's been not to face how the Criminal Enterprise System's challenged integrity runs amok. Ethics For Everybody 

  So what's to be done's undone by political jargon that closes off avenues of perception when every street has to possibly be taken. 

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"Past Is Prologue"

  That there are even individuals to point to as culprits, on either side, is somewhat remarkable. Not that that's not always the case, having somewhere specific to load all the blame. But that cartoonish status can be painted across any piece of imagery such that real life events become caricaturized right before, and in, the public's eyes. Relegating the most extreme examples of chicanery to modest outrage at best. Ah, the land of international entertainment complexes and the apparatuses of corruption we're too slow and late tearing down. Rebuilding a legal society is not quite as thrilling as chasing the desperate criminality raised by the Criminal Enterprise System's apparatus.

  Right. Roger Stone's so brilliant as to have created himself out of whole cloth when the cynical self-servingness he'd evolved from has plagued humanity throughout time. One could imagine, if so inclined and not beholden to an ideal that the separate white race is a treasure in and of itself. That what's probably true is wealth's as much a result of creativity as ruthlessness infects its' roots. Tell us Roger Stone? How satisfying power is for power's sake? 

Steven Colbert 

History Doesn't Judge When EVERY Regret's Undermined. PERIOD.

  Some day? Some day passed many times over when the angels of conscience are torn asunder by the beliefs of the receptively coerced self-righteous. For instance an NFL quarterback called the greatest of all time, who benefited from the NFL's FINALLY protecting quarterbacks from out-right injurious assaultive practices. That perhaps has a correlation to the currently in vogue practice of belittling congestion pricing without the slightest allusion to the fact the automobile's been subsidized for over a century. Undermining an actual thoroughly thought out transportation system. History already reads this way. But who gives a hoot over regretting that previous generations self-absolved themselves of responsibility, too? History as enemy continues to be crafted through generations of passing along problems because purchased adherence is one way of the world. Johnny Unitas' career was on the NFL's conscience way, way, too long. Or that too is just another example of swept under the rug as this year's Super Bowl imagery attests. And Fox News trumpets. Anyone lately, or ever, during appearances, hear Broadway Joe asked, "How're the knees?"

  I've always been against taxing our way to any solution. Especially since the roots of all problems are cultural. Even collecting tax. But that doesn't mean congestion pricing is wrong to the extent that New York City's radio talkers, between songs, flippantly regard the unfairnesses. But if people were, and are, more responsible last resorts wouldn't be necessary. That there's no plan whatsoever to transition the world's already operating petroleum vehicles to environmentally cleaner fuel is proof the transportation industry's heart really isn't in everyone's interest. Although the president seems terribly satisfied with our getting away with this self-absolution too. Maybe some histories won't read this way for centuries. Or ever. Because there's just too much dough riding on separate truths? No face. For shame. For shame. 

WOW! HOW MUCH FREE SPEECH HAS RUSSIA WON?

     The New York Times headline, Moscow Court Finds Kasparov Not Guilty of Illegal Protest During Pussy Riot Trial, written by ILYA MOUZYKANTSKII and ROBERT MACKEY is as welcome an independent-ish announcement of a judicial decision out of Russia as, well, maybe, there ever was. Nothing greater so far? Even if there’s elitist imagery of lenience toward a World Chess Champion, still, it’s a step.

     The Times begins – MOSCOW – A judge here ruled on Friday that former chess champion Garry Kasparov was not guilty of participating in an unsanctioned political demonstration outside the courthouse where three women in the punk band Pussy Riot wereconvicted of hooliganism last week and sentenced to two years in prison.

The Times states – long active in opposition politics, Mr. Kasparov was arrested while giving interviews to journalists, in a crowd, outside the courthouse, anticipating the guilty verdict laid on the three women who staged The Anti-Putin demonstration inside the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in February.

     The Times continues that – This acquittal of Mr. Kasparov is a rare victory for a member of Russia’s political opposition. Rarer still the remarks fromJudge Ekaterina Veklich, who said she did not believe some of the police testimony in the case. “The facts recorded in the police report,” she said bluntly, “do not correspond to reality.” Because Mr. Kasparov was able to present contrary evidence. Oh please, oh please be a real body of legal responsibility for the Russian conscience. Please, oh noble judiciary?

     In an interview in the courtroom after the decision, Mr. Kasparov, 49, seemed stunned and exhilarated. “It’s like Christmas,” he said. One can imagine him beaming. “I’m still speechless,” The Times quotes he added. “But, I think this is quite a symbolic moment which may give hope to many of our activists who have been harassed by the police. The judge, for the first time in many years, refused to take police testimony as an absolute truth.”

     Ahead of the hearing, Mr. Kasparov had mined social media sites for photographs and video documenting his arrest. And according to The Times this is the police wrestling with Garry Kasparov inside the paddy van. Using information, Garry Kasparov argued the police report was inaccurate, pointing to video evidence which showed that he was not chanting “Russia without Putin,” at the time as the police claimed. And also produced a photograph of the original police report and time-stamped images of officers dragging him away that proved he was, in fact, arrested more than an hour before the time listed in the final police report.

     Garry Kasparov found – 754 images of my illegal arrest & beating by police.

     Before the verdict came in, Mr. Kasparov said he was gratified that the judge had accepted the video and photographic evidence submitted in his defense, instead of relying solely on the police report. He said the authorities were perhaps mindful of the fact that his arrest “had huge publicity, thanks to all the social networks and journalists,” who were present at the time. Yes, a hopeful verdict that could be read in the stars, so to speak. But here on earth? The sad news is, the question is, is everyone ready for peace that does not require manhandling anymore?

     After he was acquitted, Mr. Kasparov said the judge’s ruling offered some hope for opposition activists charged with illegal assembly. Having previously, said, noted The Times, “police officers always had immunity to provide false testimonies. Now the judge said, ‘No, they are contradicting each other.’ People who supported me, and, again, the journalists, who were so good in submitting all these video and photos today, I mean, they saved me today!”

     Under a toughened law intended to tamp down on unapproved political protests, a guilty verdict against Mr. Kasparov could have resulted in a fine of nearly $1,000, The Times calculates, then speculates – Despite Mr. Kasparov’s optimism, there is no reason to believe his case will change anything for other political opposition leaders, several of whom are under investigation or already facing prosecution. Unlike some prominent young opposition leaders, like anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny, Mr. Kasparov is not viewed as posing any serious threat to the government. Then, too, he occupies a very different category in the public imagination than the brash performance artists of Pussy Riot. He is still revered as a national hero by Russians who deeply respect chess skills. Yet not enough respect to absorb his constituency within the country’s political process?

     The Times recites – Mr. Kasparov became the youngest world chess champion in history winning the title at age 22 in 1985. He retired from the game in 2005, and since then has been active in politics. He created an advocacy group called the United Civil Front, dedicated to promoting electoral democracy in Russia, and also a political union called theOther Russia, in opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin. In 2007, he briefly ran for president.

     Immediately after he was cleared on Friday, Mr. Kasparov said he hoped this ruling would also “help me to demolish the stupid case on biting.” Mr. Kasparov scuffled with police officers at the time of his arrest and has been accused of biting one of the officers on the hand. The incident remains under investigation and was not part of the case decided on Friday. Mr. Kasparov, who insists the biting allegation is false, said he intends to sue the police for illegal arrest, assault and slander. And really, why exactly are police handling protestors? That’s not keeping the peace, but holding it down.

     Outside the courtroom, Mr. Kasparov elaborated on the importance of the decision in remarks to reporters, which were translated into English and posted online by the Other Russia.

     Summed up by The Times – Mr. Kasparov said: I have a strange sensation, it’s hard to even find words for, because my lawyers, friends and I didn’t expect anything besides another typical guilty verdict. And when, over the course of so many years, all opposition activists have been inevitably convicted in courts like this, it’s hard to imagine that the day would come when the courts could provide us with legitimate consideration. Actually, today was very unusual, because from the very beginning, as opposed to many other previous similar cases, the judge agreed to allow motions by the defense.Moreover, all of the defense’s motions were accepted, including those that called witnesses to the stand and those that entered video and photographic material as evidence. Of course, this was a very, let’s say, unusual sign, but we didn’t understand that it would influence the final verdict so much. … The result was a full acquittal, and this is a very important step forward. I don’t intend to stop here; I want to have charges brought against the officers who illegally detained me. We’ve already filed the necessary paperwork with the investigative branch for the Khamovniki region. And I hope that this verdict will give us additional evidence so that my detention and beating will be given due consideration by investigators.

     There you go. If the lawyers don’t keep establishing precedent then just as a business dies that doesn’t grow, precedent is set judicial independdence will deteriorate. So let’s hear of more principled decisions in the courts. Because, for one thing, if you don’t find enough for lawyers to do, eventually they come looking for you. Smirk.

     The Times writer, Ilya Mouzykantskii, who reported from Moscow, concludes – It’s hard for me to say what sort of consequences today’s verdict is going to have for the Russian opposition on the whole. I even feel slightly guilty, because until now all of these verdicts have been guilty ones, and so many of my friends are still experiencing this pressure. We know that the widespread investigation of the May 6th events on Bolotnaya Square is still ongoing. But nevertheless, this is a very important step forward, and I’m going to do everything in my power to help those who need defense in these matters, because not everyone is so lucky to have their detentions and the police violence they experienced be covered so fully by the press.

     Yes, judicial justice from the top, for the top of the social strata, could one day trickle down?

President Putin?

8/27/2012

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WOW! HOW MUCH FREE SPEECH HAS RUSSIA WON?

8/27/2012 concluded:Yes, judicial justice from the top, for the top of the social strata, could one day trickle down?

President Putin?

March 27, 2020 - ? ?, 2020 

Narcissism's The Enemy?

     In the midst of possibly one of the worst calamities of our lifetimes, it's probably not just the President of the United States circling the wagons to protect a self and public image.

     There's an end of Dr. Strangelove aura about all of this. Anticipating who'll be receiving the vaccine first, once invented. 

BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL Submission

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     Read UP COUNTRY by Nelson deMille, kind of a tourist/criminal investigation with honorable allusions to emotionally reconciling the destructive Vietnam War. 

     I do apologize for being away from essaying every weekday. I was focused on finishing a film submission for the Bicycle Film Festival.