This is worth reading … Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street. It demonstrates something I’ve seen — police becoming fixated with ‘keeping order’, and applying strong-arm tactics to people who are not their normal clientele, and will inevitably apply ‘scrutiny’ to their civil-rights-cramping actions.
I’ve been caught by this myself, and from experience, it’s instructive all round. The police learn they can’t just push everyone around like the battered souls they encounter every day. Sickly white liberals (like me) work out they’re bloody lucky not to be police officers themselves, and to have people willing to do the dirty work … and that sometimes the saying ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs’ has wider applications.
When we brush up against police restricting our civil rights, we tend to bristle, and challenge it. But sometimes the machine is bigger than us and we get caught up in the flywheel … unaccustomed to the routine trampling of our dignity which can be the norm for people repeatedly dealing with the police. (Because they’re crims.)
Ms Wolf’s story also shows the give-an-inch-take-a-mile latitude that makes me reluctant to extend police/security powers. Sometimes, as we’ve seen recently here in NZ, the ‘but they’re real bad buggers’ justification is trotted out to boost powers (covert video surveillance in the latest instance, firearms, tasers) … but then the powers are deployed inappropriately, unguardedly, against people who aren’t terrorists, gang members or P-smugglers … like, say, left wing or religious-based social activists.
We put more tools at the disposal of the state/security apparatus … but who watches the watchers? Not everyone whose rights are abused turns out to be a writer for the New York Times.
– P
Not all of “them” are crims.
Many of “them” are ordinary people – for some – their only crime is that they are young or have made mistakes. It could appear to many that “leeway” has now given way to “zero tolerance” – of what – of everything.
Great admirer of the plods – but they need to have distinct controls on the baser instincts that haunt all of mankind – including the plods.
The thought police are only one more piece of rushed legislation “under urgency” away.
The only way to get action from the Key Government – is to actually pose a threat to the Key Government and its naked emperor. If not a threat – you get things like black beaches and credit downgrades.
And the media keep sucking on the giant cock of the National Government on and on and on. Like a bad porno. A living example of the arrogance of our Government was evident in the attitude of Ali Williams and Sonny whatshisname … a pair of cocks on legs if i ever saw them – in the interview where they used each other to answer each others questions. Jim Kays from TV3 had the balls to call these two arrogant little pricks out on their behaviour. This team are largely taxpayer funded – the average suffering taxpayer is footing the bill so they can strut about with their meaningless little game with its supposed relevance to us.
About time they acted like the role models we were all brought up to believe they were.
Oh, gee, aren’t you being a bit tough on those players? No big deal, I thought, having watched that interchange on 3News on demand…
http://www.3news.co.nz/VIDEO-All-Blacks-clowning-put-in-place-at-press-conference-full/tabid/1593/articleID/230097/Default.aspx
I don’t know Jim Kayes, or the path he’s trodden with the players etc … but I don’t think I would have made a story of it.
They settled down after his rebuke, didn’t they? It’s not like it was nasty, nor was it an extended period of tomfoolery. Think of the tension they must be feeling, the weight on their shoulders. Our expectations.
(I’m quite repulsed by your sucking image, BTW. Yuk.)
– P
Well sucking aside (the image is meant to be repulsive – thats entirely the point) – the two persons involved made a story of it – not Jim Kayes. They were quite – well – arrogant and dismissive. And no – from what was screened on firstline this morning – no they didnt settle down. They continued smugly on their way.
Its the way some politicians treat the voters. Taxpayers and more importantly ratepayers have subsidised their little ‘fest’ … they are paid the equivalent salaries and perks of most senior execs at the top of the tree – earn it. Behave accordingly.
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