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Writer Peter Watts Sentenced; No Jail Time
shadowbearer writes "SF writer Peter Watts, a Canadian citizen, whose story we have read about before in these pages, was sentenced three days ago in a Port Huron, MI court. There's not a lot of detail in the story, and although he is still being treated like a terrorist (cannot enter or pass through the US, DNA samples) he was not ordered to do any time in jail, was freed, and has returned home to his family. The judge in the case was, I believe, as sympathetic as the legal system would allow him to be."
Look, obviously to most people, this whole thing is bullshit - just like most of the US border / TSA crap.
But honestly, in "today's new world", if you give the TSA / Border Drones shit, you're going down. The lesson? Be polite, give 'em what they ask for, and say "yes, sir". Otherwise, expect a bad outcome.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Just because it's written on a sign doesn't make it the law. Same for what some fat doughnut muncher tells you to do. All this "failing to comply" is bullshit, it's just an excuse for cops to invent laws on the spot, and it's high time it stopped.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Whatever. Close the door on your way out.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You live in lala-land. A fantasy land you have constructed in your own head that has nothing to do with the real world.
If you are lucky, then as an average white middle aged guy you will have little to do with the police other then perhaps to have reported some crimes, that go typically unsolved. You think of the police as a bunch of semi-idiots who don't really matter all that much to you. As you get older, you might have your life saved by one of these semi-idiots, but young guys typically aren't self-aware enough to realize that when the shit happens, you need someone else to fix it because you will be a gibbering mess. (Just count the number of people that will protest this, but will be unable to deal with broken traffic lights on a busy intersection).
The "justive" system, of which police and border guards are part are the "parents" of society. And sometimes if you find two kids fighting, you just kick the shit out of both of them so they won't do it again. Bad parenting? Maybe, but law & order ain't so much about the two kids lying bleeding on the floor after some applied justice but about all of society, all the other kids on the playground who might get the idea to start fighting to.
Civilization is very very thin. If you look at places were Law & Order has broken down, most of Africa, New Orleans after Kathrina, then it shows that when people get it in to their head that their are no cops with sticks to beat them down, will get up to all kinds of nastyness. You might argue poverty and all such excuses for theft and robbery, but how does it excuse rape? "Oh I am poor and the system is against me, so I rape someone from my own class?"
But Law & Order ain't subtle or nice. We don't like police "brutality", which is the police doing what we think they should do to other people, not to us. Normally we can go about our business, closely following the rules blindly and being carefully regulated by years of training. Go ahead, drive the wrong side of traffic, walk against the stream of people. When you come to a double door, which door do you take? Wanna bet it is the same door as the side of traffic you drive on? Do you first let people out of the elevator before going in, arrange yourself so the person that has to go highest goes furthest to the back?
These are simple rules that are so ingrained in us, we don't even think about them, that make civilization work. They make it possible for a society to exist with more then two people getting constantly in each others way.
The BBC is airing a docu about India's railway. The people in India seem to have a careless disregard for what we in the west would see as simple basic unbreakable rules. Forget about crossing the lights, they think it is normal to cross the track anyplace, even on stations. Lots of people die and established official procedure is when a person gets killed for the driver and guard to pull the bits out, put them beside the track, drive on and leave a note at the next station that there is a body to collect!
THINK ABOUT IT. THINK ABOUT IT AND HOW WE DO THIS IN THE WEST.
All train traffic is stopped on the section and the emergency services are called and do their work and traffic be damned, first priority is to secure the scene and investigate what happened. And no way in hell is that train driver going to be allowed, let alone expected, to continue the journey. In India trains run with bits of human stuck to them! Law & Order broken down, no, not entirely, it ain't Africa. But a significant part of it doesn't work, the railway police has been unable to stop people from breaking the law and so they no longer can enforce the law and so the law is no longer followed.
And the effect goes further then just a lot of dead people (3000+ in Bombay). You can forget about running faster trains. And how many murders are going unnoticed? Who investigates whether that body was mangled before or after the train hit it? Nobody.
The US has borders that it wishes to control. There a
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Police aren't walking around gas stations beating people for being there.
That is EXACTLY what they are doing.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=71096
http://cops-busted.com/articles/52/1/Larry-Pugh-Jacksonville-Texas-Police-Officer-incarcerated-for-Rape-and-Retaliation/Page1.html
That is the type of person you are defending! You are a sick sick human being.
I wouldn't even wish rape and being left for dead on YOU, the very person here saying how perfectly justified it is!
The law is that police officers get to defend themselves when they find a perceivable threat. Going about your business is the opposite of that.
No it is not. In our country (The one being discussed in the article) the law allows for ANYONE to defend their life.
Our law does NOT say only police can defend their life, and you as a citizen are required to allow the criminal to kill you.
Here, we are all allowed to defend our life.
Posting anon just in case a police officer is reading, and wants to defend his life from my slashdot posting.