As a patrol officer in Minneapolis, Michael Griffin is paid at least $60,000 a year, but he is much more expensive to the city’s tax victims than his salary alone would suggest. Two lawsuits filed against Griffin for crimes committed off-duty will cost more than $400,000.

Last month, the city council approved a $140,000 payout for attorney fees in the case of Ibrahim Regai, who was punched and kicked by Griffin following an incident in a bar. Griffin, who was off-duty, took offense at something Regai said, followed him to another club, beat him to the ground, called another cop, and charged the victim with assaulting an officer. The charge was dropped after video evidence demonstrated that Griffin lied about the incident.

In a second episode, Griffin got into an argument at a bar with three men. After they left, Griffin called another officer to the scene to detain them. Griffin assaulted two of the men, knocking one of them unconscious then picking him up and kicking him in the face. The victim, Jeremy Axel, suffered a concussion and had to have several teeth replaced.

Despite losing the subsequent lawsuit, Griffin is still on the force, and hasn’t faced criminal charges. This is typical of Minneapolis, which has made nearly 100 payouts totaling $14 million for police misconduct since 2006.

As is the case nearly everywhere else, police in Minneapolis have a tendency toward “privileged” criminal violence while off-duty. Former Minneapolis Police Sgt. David Clifford was recently sent to prison after being convicted of first-degree assault in an unprovoked attack on a 40-year-old man.

The victim in the June 2012 attack, Brian Vander Lee, is a father of four who employed in the productive sector. He was talking on a cell phone when Clifford confronted him at a table outside a bar and grill. The SWAT operator, who took offense over something Vander Lee had said, hit him with a punch to the head that knocked him to the ground. As a result of falling head-first onto a concrete surface, the victim suffered trauma so intense that it required two brain surgeries and 40 hours on life support.

The heroic SWAT operator who sucker-punched the unarmed and puzzled victim – and then, displaying the valor for which his profession is celebrated, ran away — insisted that he acted in “self-defense.” Last July he was sentenced to at least twenty-five months in prison.

Although Minneapolis police are bold as Achilles in their dealings with unarmed, non-threatening bar and restaurant patrons, they are much more reserved when dealing with violent criminals. Rafael Lopez was robbed and severely beaten by a gang of at least 10 men on the street outside the Aqua nightclub in Minneapolis — less than ten yards away from the 1st Police Precinct station.

Bruised and bloodied, Lopez attempted to enter the station to file a complaint, only to be met by Officer Aaron Hanson, who angrily told him to leave. As Lopez tried to explain what had just happened to him, two of Hanson’s comrades “came out, put their gloves on and were yelling at me, telling me to get out,” he later recalled.

Lopez had tried to help a friend named Josh Rivera, who was beaten even more severely than he had been. Desperate for assistance, Rivera’s wife Magdalena called 911 A few minutes later – long after he could have provided any help – Officer Hanson ambled outside. After Magdalena described what had happened to her husband and their friend, the officer blithely explained “that he didn’t need to deal with this because it happens all the time,” she testified in an official complaint. Without offering to call an ambulance, or even asking if anybody had been seriously hurt, Hanson quickly retreated into the station and locked the door behind him. It was “literally 10 seconds and he was already going back inside,” Magdalena observes.

Later that morning, Lopez went back to the station to file an incident report.

“He figured police surveillance cameras on the street and at the police station captured the assault,” related the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. “He hoped the videos would lead to the identity of the assailants, whom he suspected were members of a gang because they were all wearing white and red shirts. It turned out he wasted his time.”

A few days after the September 2, 2011 assault, the Minneapolis PD dispatched an official notice to Lopez informing him that “this case does not meet our threshold for investigative assignment at the present time.”

The gallant men of the Minneapolis PD couldn’t be bothered to investigate a violent gang rampage that took place less than thirty feet from a precinct station – in full view of the department’s surveillance cameras. But they can be counted on to mulct the productive citizenry on behalf of the municipal government that pays them, and whose subsidized insurance indemnifies the victims of criminal acts committed by law enforcement officers when they’re off the clock.

“Army Wife,” read the bumper sticker I saw on a car the other day. It was below the bumper sticker that read “Don’t Be a Dick” and above the one that read “Life Is Short, Party Naked.” (No, I am not making this up.) I agree, being an army wife is the toughest job in the military. Your husband might be sent to fight some unnecessary foreign war and neglect his family. Not to mention that he might get injured, become suicidal, visit a prostitute, get hooked on drugs or booze.

All governments, as St. Augustine observed, begin as criminal bands that achieve dominance over a territory. Even after such syndicates claim the title of “government,” their behavior remains indistinguishable from that of common thieves; the gangs that call themselves “governments,” Augustine emphasized, distinguish themselves from ordinary robbers “not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity.”

Elaborating on that true principle, Albert Jay Nock pointed out that government police agencies do not fight crime; instead, they seek to enforce a monopoly on crime:

“Everyone knows that the State claims and exercises [a] monopoly of crime … and that it makes this monopoly as strict as it can. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or alien.”

The insights of Nock and Augustine are fully vindicated wherever we find a small-down speed trap, and the tiny village of Hampton, Florida might be the definitive case.

The criminal clique in charge of Hampton converted a 1,260-foot stretch of a busy interstate into one of the country’s most lucrative speed traps. With the revenue it acquired, the municipal government built a police force of nearly 100 officers to patrol a population of about 480 people. The cops were deployed on lawn chairs at roadside, using radar guns to harvest revenue from motorists, thereby dispensing entirely with the pretense that they were at all interested in protecting persons and property.

Since everything the state has is stolen, every political government is a kleptocracy, and Hampton was one of uncommon purity. A recent municipal audit discovered that as much as $1 million in city revenue had simply disappeared. Abuse of official credit cards and cell phones was rampant. City officials were appointed on the basis of nepotism and wildly overpaid. The last mayor, Barry Lynne Moore, exploited the criminal enterprise called drug prohibition by operating a narcotics ring with the connivance of city police until he was arrested by sheriff’s deputies (who acted as representatives of a more powerful criminal organization).

The Florida state legislature seeks to dissolve the municipality, offering it as a scapegoat on the altar of civic piety.

A North Vegas Police Officer shot and killed a 38-year-old man for the supposed crime of walking away from a cop.

David L. Robinson was shot in the head by an unidentified North Las Vegas cop in the backyard of an abandoned home. He had been accosted by the officer while trying to cross the street. According to NLVPD propaganda officer Chrissie Coon, Robinson was “uncooperative” and “backed away” from the armed stranger, which will make it unusually difficult to claim that the victim acted “aggressively” toward the government functionary who killed him.

The killer has been placed on paid vacation while the department and the police union work on a cover story to justify his inevitable exoneration.

The nasty Bruce Bartlett, who is just too darn serious a thinker to be troubled by ideas that aren’t endorsed by the New York Times, lashes out at LRC for noting the crony capitalism of the transcontinental railroad. This isn’t “relevant” for Bruce, since it happened over 10 minutes ago. That Obama cites it in support of his own crony-welfare spending today is a detail I dare not raise with Busy, Important Bruce.

Bartlett started off working for Ron Paul, then switched to Jack Kemp when that seemed more opportune, and later switched to supporting Obama. Each time hoping to ride a wave of approval. Instead, no one cared.

My reply to Bruce:

@BruceBartlett Poor Bruce won't-someone-love-me Bartlett has bent over backwards to be "relevant" and trendy; has zero following. #lesson

— Thomas Woods (@ThomasEWoods) March 11, 2014

Faux News just reported that there will be 3,500 police officers lining the 26-mile Boston Marathon route this year.  That’s about 135 cops/mile, or one every 40 feet.  There will be hundreds of police dogs as well, with SWAT tanks on nearly every street corner.

It should be a record day for Boston criminals.  Knowing that every last cop is on the marathon route, they will feel free to rape, steal, and murder at will everywhere else.

On Crimea. (Thanks to Robert Hiett)

Bruce Bartlett, who’s almost twice my age, and apparently had some sort of “important” job back when I was in grade school, says I’m “living in the past” for talking about the transcontinental railroad:

Ron Paul's favorite website attacks the transcontinental railroad. Way to stay relevant, guys. http://t.co/dykGcDh2Nb

— Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) March 11, 2014

@BruceBartlett @delong The 19th century railroads were the original 2Big2Fail corp-welfare monsters. Is it so awful to say so, Bruce?
— Chris Faille (@ccfaille) March 11, 2014

@ccfaille If you like living in the past, think no current issues are worth bothering with.

— Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) March 11, 2014

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Judge Napolitano will be Stewart’s guest and they will be debating Lincoln.

Whatever happens as a consequence of Ukraine, one thing is for sure. It’s a whole lot of trouble for nothing, as far as most of us in America are concerned. It shows once again very clearly that the U.S. government does not act in the interests of Americans at large, but in the interests of those in it and behind it.

(This post has been updated and clarified.)

When a citizen jokes about killing the president, he’s committing a felony. When the president jokes about killing a citizen, we’re supposed to pretend to be charmed by his puckish wit. Child-killer Barack Obama, who decanted a drone-killing joke at the expense of the Jonas Brothers a few years ago, performed a variation on that riff during a recent appearance on the absurdist on-line sketch program “Between Two Ferns.”
“I have to know – what is it like to be the last black president?” inquired alleged comedian Zack Galifianakis, playing the host of an achingly awkward public access program.

“Seriously? What’s it like for this to be the last time you ever talk to a president?” replied Obama, his face essaying an unconvincing tough-guy smirk as he recited the carefully scripted line. Sure, this could simply mean that Galifianakis would be deprived of the blessing of a royal audience as punishment for his impudence. A more sinister construction — one justified by Obama’s official behavior — would make this punchline an oblique threat to “disappear” the offending host. It’s worth recalling that Obama has the power to kill people at whim and routinely does so.

This installment of “Between Two Ferns” was released on the same day that a West Virginia man named Robert Dale Tasker was charged with making threats against the life of Barack Obama and his family – threats that he could not possibly carry out, because his current residence is the Tygart Valley Regional Jail. For making an empty threat against the life of another human being – which is precisely what Obama has done at least twice, albeit for “comic” purposes — Tasker faces the prospect of fifteen years in prison.

Today (March 11), an Arizona resident Nicholas Savino pleaded guilty to a threatening the life of Mr. Obama. The branch of the Regime that calls itself the “Justice” Department concedes that there is no evidence that Savino was planning to carry out that threat, which was brought to their attention by geographically displaced East German resident living in Arizona who saw an e-mail from Savino and contacted the secret police.

News accounts make ominous mention of the fact that Savino had an “assault rifle” and “11,000 rounds of ammunition in his home” – inviting the public to believe that he somehow posed a plausible danger to a ruler who is ringed by armed bodyguards and accompanied by a military aide who carries the device that can be used to unleash apocalyptic nuclear destruction. Savino now confronts a potential five-year prison sentence, but because of what his captors call “serious mental health issues” will most likely be sent to the psihuska – something that may become quite commonplace for dissidents under Obamacare.

Flogging “enrollment” in Obamacare was the purpose of the Child Killer-in-Chief’s appearance on “Between Two Ferns.” White House propagandist Dan Pfeiffer said that this was “an extension of the code we have been trying to crack for seven years now.” This is a significant admission of failure on the part of the administration: The online sketch comedy show’s audience skews toward Obama’s chief constituency, and apparently the White House isn’t being successful even when it preaches to the converted.

Obama’s conservative critics will probably complain that this gesture undermines what we are supposed to regard as the “majesty” of the office. They will quite likely contrast Obama’s effete comic jousting with a third-tier comic actor with the stage-managed “alpha-male” antics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian ruler who is both their enemy du jour and the model of a Dear Leader they would serve. Matters of personal style aside, Obama is the more prolific killer of the two rulers, and Putin clearly doesn’t consider murder to be the subject of mirth.

Obama’s “comedic” threat offered an opening a genuinely witty person would have exploited. If Galifianakis had been an heir to George Carlin – an insightful man who used comedy to dissect official lies – rather than a court jester for the Regime, he would have asked Obama if the family of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki — a 16-year-old US citizen murdered by a drone strike ordered by Obama — would find his performance amusing, not that they would have the opportunity to tell him in person.

*The original version of this post misrepresented Obama’s statement by quoting him as saying “What’s it like for this to be the last time you ever talk to a person?” My thanks to several LRC readers who corrected my error.

FDA nutrition labels are getting a makeover. “This is the first overhaul for nutrition labels since the FDA began requiring them more than 20 years ago.” As a libertarian, my comment is simply this: No nutrition labels should be required by the government and the FDA should not exist in the first place. Now, how many so-called constitutionalists in Congress agree. They don’t have to be “libertarian leaning.” They just need to follow the Constitution they claim to revere. I would say that the answer is none.

)
(Thanks to Travis Holte)

Hospitals “are mulling how to handle charity care for uninsured, non-Medicaid-eligible patients who come in for treatment and who could have but did not obtain subsidized coverage through the federal insurance exchange. Their question is whether such patients should receive full charity care—either free care or deep discounts on their bills—when they had a source of affordable coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and did not take advantage of it. … [Hospitals] fear that … patients may see [the hospitals'] financial aid as a better deal than having to pay premiums, deductibles and coinsurance…”

I’m no soothsayer, but I predict that we’ll hear in a few years how “private” charity and hospitals’ stingy profit-motive failed the poor, uninsured hordes, so of course Our benevolent Rulers had to step in and save the day.

One of the joys of writing novels is autographing them when very kind readers won’t settle for the standard issue from Amazon. Unfortunately, as a free-lance writer without a corporate account at FedEx or UPS, I then entrust the books to Our Rulers’ abysmal Post Office for delivery.

Well. One day in mid-January, I mailed books to four recipients. I sent each via Priority Mail with $5.75-worth of stamps rather than heading to the PO and standing in line for the pre-printed adhesive receipts to stick on the envelopes. I dropped the packages in a mail-box, blithely ignoring the little sign that adorns it: “Achtung: Mail over 13 ounces must be submitted in person to our barely civil dimwits at the dirty, crowded PO because we’re a bunch of paranoid idiots who fantasize that you might be a terrorist mailing a bomb” (or words to that effect). No one I knows pays any attention to this lunacy; I certainly never do, and I’ve mailed a great many books.

Priority Mail supposedly arrives in 2 days, but I long ago gave up hope of such a feat: I’m happy if books reach their recipients in a week. And while 3 of the 4 packages I sent in that batch arrived, the fourth didn’t…and didn’t… and didn’t. It finally returned to me yesterday, as bedraggled as anything would be after languishing in Our Rulers’ clutches for two months, with this notice: “Important Customer Information: We regret that your mail was not collected or is being returned to you due to heightened security requirements. All mail that bears postage stamps and weighs more than 13 ounces MUST be taken by the customer to a retail service associate at a Post Office.” [Emphases original.]

Let us cogitate on the jaw-dropping absurdities here. If I am mailing explosives, isn’t a long line the worst possible place to order me? And if my books were explosive (I happily admit that they are, though not literally), the package certainly had enough time to detonate after two entire months of sitting around one postal purgatory after another.

The Post Office: stupid, inefficient, a boondoggle, and so desperately in need of abolition you know politicians will fight to the death for its existence.

The U.S. promoted a coup in Ukraine and blessed and supported it, aiming to install new leaders of its choosing. A new government with an extreme right-wing composition came in by violent means, approved and accepted by Washington but not by Russia or by all Ukrainians. In particular, the Russified portions and people in certain Ukrainian areas, such as Crimea and Donetsk, responded negatively to the overthrow of the government. Russia objected for several reasons, including its military facilities in Crimea, its relations with Ukraine, the nature of the coup, and the evident attempt by the West to shift Ukraine’s orientation toward Europe.

Russia acted in the Crimea by supporting local militia. Its own forces applied pressure to Ukrainian military installations within Crimea and have taken over some of them without shots being fired. It supported a referendum on the question of federating with Russia.

The U.S. and Russia are attempting negotiations, but they are not succeeding.

The main sticking point is that the U.S. accepts the new government and Russia does not. As the headline reads “Kremlin says Washington’s stance on negotiations unacceptable because it accepts ouster of Yanukovych as fait accompli.”

Ukraine is near default on its debts, and that’s been building up for years. If the U.S. and IMF bail out Ukraine, as they have begun to do, this doesn’t resolve the confrontation. It is an economic response to Russia’s military response.

Henry Kissinger has an op-ed on principles to end this confrontation and replace the developing negative sum game with a positive sum game. Much of what he says is what I have been saying, and so I agree with much of his analysis and recommendations. Specifically, I’ve called for mediation that includes the Ukrainians and Crimeans who are divided. Kissinger says “A wise U.S. policy toward Ukraine would seek a way for the two parts of the country to cooperate with each other. We should seek reconciliation, not the domination of a faction.”

What Kissinger says makes a great deal of sense. It requires that all parties now looking into the abyss of renewed cold and/or hot war draw back and express a willingness to discuss the issues, which entails a willingness to hammer out new roles that depend on greater understanding of each other. This is not retreat. It is not compromising principles. It is seeking solutions that take into account everyone’s interests. New solutions do require changing existing positions, however. Stubborness will not resolve the Ukraine problem.

I think there may be something to your thesis, Butler, that the Russians may justify their actions in Crimea with the excuse that “Crimea doesn’t pay” its debts to them.  I recently heard a rumor that the Crimeans are considering novel ways of coming up with money to pay all their debts, including suing the American song writer Arthur Hamilton, author of the song “Cry Me a River,” for stealing the title from The Crimea River.

Crimea’s population is majority Russian (58%), but it has a significant Muslim Tatar population (12%) and 24% Ukrainian. The Russian natives of Crimea have been organizing militias in Crimea, according to this article. They may be homegrown, not sent in by Russia and therefore not Putin’s thugs, but these militias have intimidated Ukrainians and Tatars, we are told. Tatars fear for their future.

In view of the Russian majority, the referendum would probably go the same way, even if no militias formed. This is not going to be a “clean” vote. Still, the West can’t dismiss it out of hand, as it has. The U.S. cannot blame a Putin invasion for what has happened and is happening in Crimea.

The U.S. cannot do any good for the Crimeans of any nationality by seeking to isolate Russia because it’s the overthrow of the Kiev government followed by an immediate attempt to outlaw the Russian language that has stimulated the native Russians in Crimea. It is not Putin’s direct doing.

The U.S. places its own expansionary and hegemonic interests first and foremost. That is why it is focusing on Putin and pressuring him when the more important considerations that are relevant to the people in Crimea revolve around the politics within Crimea and their relations with the usurpers in Kiev.

The U.S., if it were genuinely interested in peace and democracy, would not immediately have blessed the usurpers in Kiev and be shunting aside a Crimean referendum, clean or not. Instead, it would have sought to legitimize a referendum and create a clean vote in which voters would not be intimidated and afraid to vote. If it truly believed in democracy, it would have offered to help form a team consisting of various nationalities to oversee a peaceful voting process, before, during and after. Furthermore, the U.S. would have led the way in staying neutral concerning the Kiev government and found a way to introduce discussion and dialog as between a broad range of Ukrainians and Crimeans.

Obviously, the U.S. could not have behaved in any of these ways because it was creating the revolution that is now the source of the unanticipated Crimea problem. The Crimean majority wants an association with Russia, it appears, not with extreme right-wing thugs in Kiev. Instead of any of this, the U.S. was busy deciding who should be installed after the coup d’etat was over, and it was busy beforehand stoking this revolution and supporting mass shootings of innocent protesters.

The U.S. has tried to maintain the status quo ante of Crimea with respect to Ukraine, but the political upheavals have altered that situation sharply.

Washington has painted itself into a corner over Crimea. Its only way out now is through diplomacy. War over Crimea is an impossibility. Sanctions against Russia will not compel her to knuckle under. They will prove counter-productive as Russia finds ways to retaliate.

At this point, it’s going to take creative diplomacy to find a way for the 4 parties involved (Crimea, Kiev, Russia and the U.S.) to resolve this matter and stop playing a very large negative sum game.

The rhetoric about isolating a large country and power like Russia is utter nonsense. It’s quite stupid. The notion that Russia has engaged in some sort of mass invasion and must be punished is nonsense as well. The idea that Russia has engaged in aggression is tripe. The idea that the U.S. is the global leader who must police this imagined aggression is rubbish. Americans have heard this before and been there, done that. All these ideas circulating in Washington and the country’s press and big media are delusions. The people saying these things are divorced from reality, living in a world of their mythical imaginings.

Crimea, after all, has been linked with Russia for centuries. The Ukraine also has been close to and part of the Russian system. That entire region has seen many upheavals and many kinds of people running it. Even the nearby Poles at times waited for the Russians to push the Germans out.

Americans are simply out of it when it comes to this region. This is Russia’s orbit. Must the U.S. empire mindlessly push on until it produces an utter catastrophe?

In the military. An Army sergeant who had been accused of secretly photographing and videotaping at least a dozen women at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has pleaded guilty in a court-martial. A Fort Hood sergeant who was a coordinator of the post’s sexual assault and harassment prevention program faces multiple charges after he was accused of setting up a prostitution ring involving cash-strapped female soldiers. And by the way, the Army’s top sex assault prosecutor has been suspended after a sexual assault allegation.

Reason enough to stay out of the military even without the military fighting senseless foreign wars and intervening all around the globe.

Thanks to T.M.

Rand Paul has spoken out at length on Ukraine. I find his approach very seriously and fundamentally wrong-headed. I find his remarks confused and contradictory. I also think that they fail badly if viewed as a political appeal to Republicans.

I was honored to have been asked to appear on RT’s “The Truthseeker” program discussing the role of US-sponsored NGOs in the color revolutions and regime change operations worldwide:

Walter Block – The Errors of Friedman, Coase & Buchanan [Australian Mises Seminar 2012].
Here I speak at The Australian Mises Seminar of 2012. My lecture is about Friedman’s positive externalities’ argument of public schools, his broken window fallacy concerning WWII, the tradable emission rights, Friedman’s road socialism. I talk about the flexible exchange rates. I go on with Friedman on eminent domain, democracy and anti-trust. I also viciously attack Coase’s LightHouse article and his anti-property rights beliefs and more!

For the first few years after 9/11 every time I saw a group of camouflaged “troops” walking through an airport a spontaneous round of applause would break out.  Then that pretty much died out.  A few airlines tried to kiss up to the fascistic American public by announcing priority boarding “for all active duty military.”  I haven’t heard that announcement in a couple of years now.  Then just this morning, before announcing that my flight was about to board in a very crowded gate area with about 100 people sitting there, the boarding agent made a ridiculously long plea for everyone to thank, thank, thank, thank, thank, and thank again “the members of our military for their service.”  No one paid any attention to him, applauded, or said anything.  Everyone just kept sipping on their Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, reading the paper, etc.  Could Americans be experiencing war propaganda weariness?

Literally. Virginia is planning its first official commemoration of K-9 Veterans Day to recognize “the contributions of the dogs who have served side by side with soldiers and with police and other first-responders.” What a shame that these fine animals are used in the war on drugs.

I am interviewed by Robert Wenzel of the Economic Policy Journal to discuss the background and latest developments in the US/EU/Ukraine/Russia stand-off. Who started it? Who are the main players? Where might it lead? Are we really that close to all-out war?

Follow me.

Perhaps what is taking place in Crimea is just the tip of a financial bubble that is about to burst.  Perhaps Crimea is a debtor to the Russian government, and has long been delinquent in making its payments.  If this is so, then the Russians could defend their actions on the grounds that “Crimea doesn’t pay!”

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford and used her tuition money to start her own company, Theranos. Now her new method of blood-drawing and testing requires only one drop–rather than multiple vials–and is far cheaper and faster than the old-fashioned, painful way. (Thanks to Mark Luedtke)

Historian Andrew Bacevich takes the MSM to task for their selective cherry picking of history in making their editorial anti-Russian, and anti-Obama statements. They are trying to propagate a new myth, which is that Obama’s weakness has elicited tyrannical aggression from Putin. Bacevich disposes of them all.

Last night, I watched Barbara (2012), a movie that’s set in East Germany in 1980. It captures the police state atmosphere of that country fantastically, the suspicion, spying, distrust, the lack of privacy, ordinary people coopted into spying on one another, feeling of constantly being observed, no music, everyone guarding their statements and conversations, gloominess.

The main thought I have is that an American or British or you-name-it country’s police state of 2014 doesn’t have to look like the East German one; and yet it can still be a police state. Life, history, people, societies, technology, aims and circumstances are all so variable that the outcomes need not mirror precisely the past. And yet there can be enough that is common to produce the same result: fear, suppression of the person and personality, control and other negative feelings and consequences in people.

One IMDb reviewer from Norway visited East Germany and writes

“I visited Eastern Germany 1988, before the wall came down…I visited the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, and I experienced the railways where there was no smile to see, the feel of total depression and bleak or hardly any colored lights, as an opposite to the sparkling neon lights of the West, and the total surveillance of the center of Berlin. No western lyrics and western music was allowed, hardly any Western cars. If it could have any kind of opposition interpreted into it, or dreams of the Western freedom, it was disallowed. If you tried to flee to the West, you would be instantly shot! I was terrified for four hours in my last trip back to Western Berlin was halted for four hours when they took my passport and ran away with it.”

This person then makes a comment about today, presumably in Norway:

“Today it seems we’re not afraid of being under constant surveillance. This is just another reminder of how terrible it is not to have a free will, and not have the right to your own life. It’s so inhumane and humiliating. But we’re in our way right into the same kind of society.”

(more…)

I speak of course of the political agenda of  Republican Party senate “leaders” like Mitch McConnell who have voted for all of these things and have announced them as the way of the GOP future.  Mitch is apparently enraged over the creation of a few conservative PACs that oppose these things.  Doing his best Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation, he recently announced that “I think we are going to crush them everywhere.”

Charles Koch call your office!!  Didn’t you spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars over the past thirty-five years on D.C. “think tanks” with your “market-based management” business plan to influence members of Congress, especially Republicans?  How’s that working out for you?  Sounds like a lot of money down the toilet to me.