Joe 'Crime Bill' Biden for President ?

So, as individuals close to cuddly Uncle Joe Biden continue to hint at a run for the Democratic nomination, suddenly everyone in the media's dredging up pesky facts from that ole' thing we used to call 'history.'  Here, from Slate:

A large part of running for president is intense scrutiny on personal history and political records. But once you’re in office, that scrutiny subsides. Once you’ve left, it almost disappears. Right now, Biden is beloved, an avuncular and light-hearted figure who contrasts the president’s stoic cool and adds a touch of heart to the seemingly mechanistic Obama White House. Forgotten (at least, outside academia and a few corners of political media) is Biden’s earlier persona: a leader in America’s drug war. For a generation, Biden was at the front of a national push for tough drug laws and police militarization.

If you consider her time in Bill Clinton’s White House, that’s true for Hillary, too. The difference is that she was first lady—an advocate for her husband’s policies, but not a lawmaker. That’s why she’s able to meet face to face with members of the Black Lives Matter movement and not look disingenuous when she says she has changed her mind on the subject. Biden’s Senate career, by contrast, was defined by his aggressive and vocal support for the drug war. Here are the highlights of that history:

In 1984, he worked with Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond and the Reagan administration to craft and pass the Comprehensive Control Act, which enhanced and expanded civil asset forfeiture, and entitled local police departments to a share of captured assets. Critics say this incentivizes abuse, citing countless cases of unfair and unaccountable seizures....

In 1986, Biden co-sponsored the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which created new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including the infamous crack-versus-cocaine sentencing disparity. A crack cocaine user with only five grams would receive five years without parole, while a powder cocaine user had to possess 500 grams before seeing the same punishment. The predictable consequence was a federal drug regime that put its toughest penalties on low-level drug sellers and the most impoverished drug users.

Biden would also play an important role in crafting the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which strengthened mandatory minimums for drug possession, enhanced penalties for people who transport drugs, and established the Office of National Drug Control Policy, whose director was christened “drug czar” by Biden.

His broadest contribution to crime policy was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, commonly called the 1994 Crime Bill. Written by Biden and signed by President Clinton, it increased funds for police and prisons, fueling a huge expansion of the federal prison population. As journalist Radley Balko details in The Rise of The Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, it also contributed to the rapid growth of militarized police forces that used new federal funds to purchase hundreds of thousands of pieces of military equipment, from flak jackets and automatic rifles to armored vehicles and grenade launchers.

The “crime bill” also brought a host of new federal death penalty crimes, which Biden celebrated in his defense of the bill. “Let me define the liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” he said to Sen. Orrin Hatch, “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties … the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 100,000 cops. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 125,000 new state prison cells.”

Senator Joe Biden speaks at the signing of the 1994 Biden Crime Bill.

Say it ain't so, Joe !  Not our lovely fuzzy liberal icon onto whom we can project all our progressive fantasies !

But never mind about all that.  It's not as if the real-life consequences of those policies are being highlighted more than ever as the prison-population continues to soar, largely filling up with the poor and ethnic minorities, and as every day seems to bring new stories of unarmed men, women, and children shot dead in the street by militarised cops who see themselves as occupying forces in American cities.

Let's return instead to our obsession with that presidential candidate who conducted government business over a private e-mail account on a privately-owned server.  And resume our outrage over the presidential candidate who avoided scrutiny of private e-mails used to conduct governmental business by deleting them.  Millions & millions of e-mails deleted !  Simply scandalous !

Maybe the GOP is Right about Obama's Foreign Policy

This is pathetic.

Obama team, military at odds over South China Sea

Some U.S. naval commanders are at odds with the Obama administration over whether to sail Navy ships right into a disputed area in the South China Sea — a debate that pits some military leaders who want to exercise their freedom of navigation against administration officials and diplomats trying to manage a delicate phase in U.S.-China relations.

The Pentagon has repeatedly maintained it reserves the right to sail or fly by a series of artificial islands that China is outfitting with military equipment. The Navy won’t say what it has or hasn’t done, but military officials and congressional hawks want the U.S. to make a major demonstration by sending warships within 12 miles of the artificial islands and make clear to China that the U.S. rejects its territorial claims.

By not doing so, they charge, Washington is tacitly accepting China’s destabilizing moves, which are seen by U.S. allies in the region such as Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam as highly threatening.

“We continue to restrict our Navy from operating within a 12 nautical mile zone of China’s reclaimed islands, a dangerous mistake that grants de facto recognition of China’s man-made sovereignty claims,” Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told POLITICO.

I hate to agree with John McCain, but he's right here.

Sources in the military and within the administration acknowledge the difference of opinion privately, but would not go on the record to discuss the differences between Navy leaders and the administration.

...

The dispute is more than just a naval territorial dispute — there are global economic implications if China claims ownership of this part of the sea, which sees trillions in goods shipped between Asia and the rest of the globe.

...

China claims it has exclusive control over waters hundreds of miles off its coast, and U.S. officials say Beijing believes the man-made islands strengthen its claim to the disputed Spratly Islands chain, which China and several Southeast Asian countries claim as their own.

...

The artificial islands have added to a broader disagreement between Washington and Beijing over freedom of navigation. The United States and most other countries, citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, maintain that a coastal nation has the right to regulate economic activities such as fishing and oil exploration within a 200-mile economic exclusionary zone and that it cannot regulate foreign military forces except within 12 nautical miles off its shores. China, however, has insisted it can regulate economic and military activities out 200 nautical miles.

...

More than $5 trillion worth of international trade, from Middle East oil bound for Asian markets to children’s toys bound for Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., pass through the South China Sea each year. If China can restrict the passage of ships through what today are considered international waters, that could cause shockwaves for the world economy, U.S. officials warn.

...

The National Security Council also declined to discuss the dispute or outline the White House’s view, referring questions to the Pentagon.

But the Obama administration is increasingly seen as eager to avoid a confrontation by actually doing so — at least publicly — and Republicans are trying to pressure President Obama ahead of the Chinese leader’s visit to more aggressively assert himself in the face of China’s controversial behavior.

Just think back at the reaction of the US, when Russia annexed its own historical territory in Crimea, with the agreement of most of the Crimean population.  The PRC is, with its ridiculous EEZ-claims*, and creation of military outposts out of open ocean, effectively claiming exclusive ownership of and control over an entire sea !  At the expense of the actual territorial waters of the countries in the area, and at the expense of the entire international community's rights of navigation.  And the US response ?**  'Pretty please, don't do that, huh ?  What if we ask you really, really nicely ?'  Which is pretty much what I'd expect from a government that puts short-term corporate profits ahead of all other interests.

The US can't be counted on to stand by the Philippines or Viet Nam, here, can't be counted on by its Asian allies generally, if it allows this to stand without even attempting to assert its own legal right of navigation.  Sailing in international waters is an act of provocation towards a country a thousand kilometres away ?  Is that really a precedent you want to set ?  No-one's asking you to go to war with China.  Just assert your damn legal rights, and let the PRC take the first shot, if that's really where they want to go with this.  Shit !

Oh, but they left the best piece for last in that article:

But at the same time U.S. military leaders are advocating for something else — for the U.S. Senate to ratify the UN Law of the Sea treaty that it repeatedly cites as as the international framework for navigation of the high seas.

“We undermine our leverage by not signing up to the same rule book by which we are asking other countries to accept,” Gen. Joe Dunford, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate earlier this month.

That's right, as with so many other international agreements, the US signs up for something, then won't fucking ratify it, 'cos historically, the US has kinda not given a shit, figuring it will just do what it wants, regardless of the international community.  Which becomes somewhat problematic, when it comes up across another country with the same arrogant attitude, and the muscle to stand up to the US.

In the case of the UNCLOS, the US finds itself in a club that also includes the likes of North Korea & Iran.  But not the PRC, which ratified the agreement...but then just ignores it anyway.


* And absurd territorial claims based upon a bullshit made-up map from nineteen-forty-fuckin'-seven.

** Never mind the EU's silence on the matter.

On Police Shootings

US police kill more than two people a day, report suggests

Data collected by the Washington Post newspaper suggests that the number of people shot by US police is twice as high as official figures claim.
The paper said that during the first five months of this year, 385 people - more than two a day - were killed.
The number of black people was disproportionately high among the victims, especially unarmed ones.

Well, that's not really surprising.  Probably even more than that.

A national debate is raging about police use of deadly force, especially against minorities. To understand why and how often these shootings occur, The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting by police in 2015, as well as of every officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty.

Do we have to pretend there's some mysterious secret here ?  The cops are trained to behave in a certain way, are encouraged to see every civilian on the street as a potential threat, especially since the era of the 'War on Drugs' and then the 'War on Terror.'  They are heavily armed, and have access to military-grade firearms.  They often wear body-armour.  Their departments obtain armoured vehicles scarcely distinguishable from tanks, along with all kinds of ex-military equipment via generous federal programmes.  The cops themselves are sometimes scarcely distinguishable from soldiers, even wearing camouflage uniforms.  And they are trained to value their own safety over that of those they supposedly serve.  And they are human.

Fear is the strongest emotion in the human brain.  And humans are hard-wired to distinguish between in-groups and out-groups, to see out-groups as a potential threat.  Our fears are of course often deeply irrational, and rooted in internal prejudices, often including, partly as a result of our inherent wiring, racism.  But generally, we are given to fear The Other.  (A fear frequently manipulated by the political classes, but that's another subject).  The Other may have a different skin-colour, may be of a different class, may wear different clothing, may suffer from a mental illness, may speak with a different accent, may have a slightly different form of worship.  In a way, it doesn't matter.  They are Other, and we fear them, even when we know our fears are irrational.

Just about everyone knows this experience, and probably from both sides.  That homeless guy mumbling to himself looks a little suspect.  Better step over to the other side of the street.  Every person of colour in America has been on the receiving end, probably for most of their lives.  Everyone who in any way looks or sounds a little different from their peers has experienced it.  Teenagers experience it from their elders.  Every man at some point has probably experienced it, from women understandably wary of physical assault or rape at the hands of men, not knowing who that guy on the subway or walking in the park is, what kind of person he might be.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, the imagined threat is non-existent.  But it could be so very real.

Of course, the majority of cops aren't women.  And the majority aren't from minority racial groups.  They're mostly white men, often policing communities in which they don't themselves live.  On foreign turf.  On what, with their increasingly military-style training they eventually come to see as a battlefield.  And the primary tool with which they are equipped as they do their rounds is a gun.  Not on a rack back at the precinct.  Not a gun securely stowed away in the patrol-car.  A gun strapped to their hip.  Ready at hand for all eventualities.

And then they come into contact with The Other.  Maybe they were called to the scene.  Maybe they were on patrol.  But there he or she is.  The possibly dangerous drug-addict or homeless person.  The woman with the scary tattoos.  The possibly Middle-Eastern-looking (quick, they do wear turbans over there right ?) guy speaking in a foreign language.  The sixteen-year-old black kid who somehow becomes magnified in the cop's imagination into a hulking monster.  Senses on high-alert, pulse racing, hand on hip...  Wait, is he reaching for ?...<BAM>  He was just reaching for his driver's licence ?  Too late.  He's dead.  Shit.  Better get the story straight.  Call it in.  'Shots fired.'  What will you tell the interviewing panel ?

Police are authorized to use deadly force only when they fear for their lives or the lives of others. So far, just three of the 385 fatal shootings have resulted in an officer being charged with a crime — less than 1 percent.

Well, it doesn't really matter.  You're not going to be charged.  Your fellow officers may even help cover up evidence if it keeps you out of trouble.  And why not ?  You were just doing your job.  Following training.  What if he had a knife ?  He could have been on me in an instant.  Twenty-one foot rule, remember.  Got to get home safe at the end of the day.  And you were afraid.

'Officer involved shooting' in Pasco, Washington

Another day in America.  Really, it isn't surprising that a disturbed homeless guy throwing rocks at American police would end up with his body riddled with bullets -- That's as likely to be the result of someone, especially of the non-melanin-deficient variety, looking at a cop the wrong way in the United States.  What's really surprising is that he somehow survived a incident a year earlier in which he supposedly 'grabbed for one officer's gun while he was being detained'.  Michael Brown could perhaps tell us how that might go down...were he not very dead, from his own encounter.

Ah, Seattle...

Video: Seattle Police Jail Elderly Military Veteran for "Walking in Seattle While Black"

Ah, Seattle...  Guess this story's been around a while now, probably a little buried as the PD's of NY, Saint Louis, and Cleveland drove Seattle from the headlines.

Lucky the poor bastard with limited hearing was only carrying a golfclub.  Were it a (perfectly 100% legal) whittling knife, he'd have been dead, seconds from the cruiser's approach.  Lots of speculation online about the police-officer in question, much of which, in my opinion, seems disturbingly centred upon her gender and/or sexual orientation.

Fact is, cops are, and have for a long time now, at least since the so-called 'War on Drugs' been trained in such a way, that they see the general public, BY DEFAULT, as a potential threat, as the enemy, as a hostile force to be subdued.  Actual military forces in hostile territories are taught more discretion in their dealings with civilian populations than day-to-day cops in the modern-day militarised US.  And no, while there may well be/is a racial component to this, this is not primarily a racial problem.  This is a problem of training, of psychology, or mindset.  A problem that is that much more exacerbated by an officer's pre-existing prejudices, such as they may be...  Firing this particular fool won't protect the next stupidly targeted senior citizen, or other innocent.