“We have a weapon more powerful… than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon… is our refusal!”
- Michael Collins
The police in America have proven once again that they are above the
law and have a license to kill as the charred remains of Christopher
Dorner were cooling in the cabin in California. The more thuggish
aspects of the constabulary were on the mainstream news despite the
twisted and sycophantic relationship of the press in lionizing tyranny
everyday in the hero worship of the thin political black and blue line.
The readers who have read my essays over the years are aware of the
case I have made for why cops are the primary danger to all individual
freedom and liberty in any tax jurisdiction on Earth. No political bad
actor in any account of human history could deprive anyone of liberty or
enforce tyranny absent a police force. The vicious and nonsensical
drug war has so retarded human progress with the caging and maiming and
killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans and permeated the entire
American society with laws piled on laws to do everything from making
every financial transaction transparent to the rulers for “money
laundering” to the creation of a legal system whose only sense of
justice is in name only.
Two important questions have surfaced after the Dorner tragedy;
first, have the police in California stepped over a Rubicon with the
summary execution of Dorner in broad daylight?
The increasing militarization of police and the literal criminalization of everything has
seen the rise of the fabled and dreaded Orwellian state where no one is
safe and if one pays close attention to what just happened in the
mountains of California, you discover that all judicial processes and
civil rights niceties were overlooked and the police immediately
murdered Dorner by burning him alive. They were even so brazen as to
casually issue the orders to fire the cabin most likely under the guise
of officer safety, the curious mantra that gives the police their
license to kill and get away with it. The officer safety conceit
releases them from all responsibility that saddles the averages citizen
in self-defense thus the hundreds of thousands of videos on the internet
and written and oral testimonials of victims of this officer safety
madness. Will Grigg, the most able chronicler of police misbehavior in
America, has already made the rock solid case of just how risk-free and
safe is the occupation of the praetorians in America.
Dorner was hunted in the fashion he was because he was not one of the
98 percent of bad cops that give the two percent a bad name. The media
is between a rock and a hard place because if Dorner were a
“right-wing” man who did not belong to an Federally accredited victim
group whose opinions of gun possession were quite the opposite of his
manifesto, he would be the poster child of why the police are not only
right but should immediately move to phase two of seizure and
confiscation of all cosmetically offensive weapons in individual
citizen’s hands who are not wearing a statist costume of one stripe or
another. But Dorner is Diane Feinstein in male drag with the usual
government supremecist superstitions that so pollute the minds of our
rulers and their sycophantic media. The notable exception is that the
Senator would not deign to handle weapons herself (except the pistol she
has a permit for) and leaves those to her peons in her security detail.
Quite clearly, the police across America will be further emboldened
to continue the kind of murder spree which just happened in California.
Indiscriminately shooting up vehicles with occupants who bear no
resemblance to their “suspect”, roughing up citizens at their leisure
and, of course, employing the very weapons most wish to strip the
Mundanes of. We are fortunate in America that in case after case, the
absurdly poor quality marksmanship and weapons handling of the cops in
the nineteen thousand law enforcement departments of America
has saved lives but more tragically led to the lead poisoning of many
innocent bystanders who then sue the cops and the taxpayers who are
occupied by the police are forced to cough up millions to pay for the
armed thuggery and malpractice.
The second and greater question that I hope becomes a meme in the American future: what would Michael Collins do?
What the LAPD and more importantly, the Federal government have not
taken a measure of is the unintended consequences of unleashing the
million plus statist goons in blue not only in the zealous attempted
murder spree on view in California but combined with the looming threats
of disarmament of the populace may be an uncorking of a genie the
government will regret letting loose.
In California, one man made the law enforcers fill their
pants, cower in their homes with protective details surrounding them and
led to the aforementioned (comedic if not tragic) Kalifornia Keystone
Kops antics where seven detectives let loose a fusillade of rounds into a
newspaper delivery truck not even matching the description of Dorner’s
vehicle and hit the two Hispanic women with two rounds and perforate the
truck. Fortunately, the legendary and widespread abysmal weapons
proficiency of the thin black and blue line saved their lives.
Michael Collins faced a similar foe in Ireland at the turn of the
twentieth century as England was closing on the eight hundredth
anniversary of their occupation of Ireland. Collins adduced correctly
that the locus and focus of all alien governance in Ireland was the law
enforcement arm of the Englisg state augmented by British military
forces.
Michael Collins was what one could suppose is any government most
dangerous adversary. He was a practical visionary. Not only did he
envision a free Ireland, he had a concrete plan to get there. Like
Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry before him and Giap after him, he blended
a unique talent for the political chess game and calculus of violence
that would enable the resisters to overwhelm the will and outmatch the
ferocity of the British occupiers. While a contemporary of T. E.
Lawrence, they did not know each other but crafted an eerily similar
game-plan to defeat their foes. Collins knew that the “golden hour” for
independence and all the planets aligning for the political tectonic
shift were on the horizon and he simply had to arrange the events and
orchestrate the players. Those six years between 1916 and 1922 would
prove to be the precise moment when the Irish could loose the English
fetters that had harnessed their nation for nearly 800 years.
Who was Michael Collins?
Collins worked as a clerk in London from 1906 until he returned
to Ireland in 1916. He fought in the Easter Rising, was arrested and
held in detention at Frongoch, Merioneth, but was released in December
1916. In December 1918 he was one of 27 out of 73 elected Sinn Féin
members (most of whom were in jail) present when Dáil ireann (Irish
Assembly) convened in Dublin and declared for the republic. Their
elected president,Eamon de Valera, and vice president, Arthur Griffith,
were both in prison. Hence, much responsibility fell on Collins, who
became first the Dáil’s minister of home affairs and, after arranging
for de Valera’s escape from Lincoln jail (February 1919), minister of
finance. It was as director of intelligence of the Irish Republican Army
(IRA), however, that he became famous. As chief planner and coordinator
of the revolutionary movement, Collins organized numerous attacks on
police and the assassination in November 1920 of many of Britain’s
leading intelligence agents in Ireland. He headed the list of men wanted
by the British, who placed a price of 10,000 on his head.
After the truce of July 1921, Griffith and Collins were sent to
London by de Valera as the principal negotiators for peace
(October–December 1921). The treaty of Dec. 6, 1921, was signed by
Collins in the belief that it was the best that could be obtained for
Ireland at the time and in the full awareness that he might be signing
his own death warrant. It gave Ireland dominion status, but its
provision for an oath of allegiance to the British crown was
unacceptable to de Valera and other republican leaders. Collins’s
persuasiveness helped win acceptance for the treaty by a small majority
in the Dáil, and a provisional government was formed under his
chairmanship, but effective administration was obstructed by the
mutinous activities of the anti-treaty republicans. Collins refrained
from taking action against his former comrades until IRA insurgents
seized the Four Courts in Dublin and civil war became inevitable.
William Thomas Cosgrave replaced Collins as chairman when the latter
assumed command of the army in mid-July 1922 in order to crush the
insurgency. About five weeks later, while on a tour of military
inspection, Collins was shot to death by anti-treaty IRA.
Collins was the right man at the right time in the right
historical place. Absent his strategic & operational brilliance,
tenacity and charisma, Irish independence may not have happened. In the
larger schema of history, this became yet another chapter in the long
succession of nation creation and destruction that has marched through
Western history from it Hellenic roots in ancient Greece. Not only was
Collins seceding from a larger tax jurisdiction but he was creating a
wholly independent tax jurisdiction that would go on to become an odd
amalgam of capitalism and socialism that would completely collapse
economically at the beginning of the 21st century.
Key aspects of his campaign were the careful grooming of auxiliary
organizations in the mass base of the greater population, a consistent
and wholesale campaign to legitimize Irish independence in the minds of
the Irish and his charismatic leadership.
He also employed a savage violence that led to the events of 21
November, 1920 when he effectively killed and destroyed the essential
elements and personnel of the UK intelligence organs in Ireland proper.
T. Ryle Dwyer, author of The Squad and the Intelligence Operations of Michael Collins quotes Collins:
“My one intention was the destruction of the undesirables who
continued to make miserable the lives of ordinary decent citizens. I
have proof enough to assure myself of the atrocities which this gang of
spies and informers have committed. If I had a second motive it was no
more than a feeling such as I would have for a dangerous reptile. By
their destruction the very air is made sweeter. For myself, my
conscience is clear. There is no crime in detecting in wartime the spy
and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them
back in their own coin.”
Most historians agree this crippled British intelligence operations
(in this case, the Cairo Gang) from this point onward and made the
withdrawal of British interests inevitable. Absent the sophisticated
network of spies and informants, the war would be fought blind. More
atrocities in response to this were visited on the Irish by constabulary
and military forces and this merely stiffened the spine of the major
and minor elements of the Irish resistance. That same day, British
forces fired on spectators at an Irish football match which left seven
dead and dozens wounded.
David Leeson in “Death in the Afternoon: The Croke Park Massacre, 21 November 1920” describes part of the aftermath.
“Two military courts of inquiry into the massacre were held, and
one found that “the fire of the RIC was carried out without orders and
exceeded the demands of the situation.” Major-General Boyd, the officer
commanding Dublin District, added that in his opinion, “the firing on
the crowd was carried out without orders, was indiscriminate, and
unjustifiable, with the exception of any shooting which took place
inside the enclosure.” The findings of these courts of inquiry were
suppressed by the British Government, and only came to light in 2000.”
The Cairo Gang was responsible for surveilling and torturing a number
of innocents and genuine guerrillas and Collins know that making them
dead would send a message. It did. Fighting would intensify and
British response and overreach to the incident would lead to the
withdrawal of all British forces in a little over two years. One can
debate the morality and efficacy of assassinating constabulary and
military forces but the Irish justified their actions in much the same
way one would put down a rabid dog. There are instances where defensive
violence is the answer. Kirby Ferris provides an interesting perspective on this question:
“Perhaps the world isn’t the way we wish it would be. We all
might wish that evil men could be persuaded from their vile behavior
with bleeding heart entreaties, a kiss on the cheek, or proper toilet
training. But it ain’t that way, folks, Pacifism is a sickness, an
actual moral perversity, and dangerous when its effects spread to anyone
else beside the pacifist. You may choose to walk to the cattle car, but
damn you if you let your children be led up the ramp. You must never
allow any group or government to steal your right to exercise armed
lethal force in a just situation.”
Collins is instructive and the perfect storm brewing in America bodes
ill for the over-reach of police forces in America. There are a myriad
of cultural hurricane indicators gathering. When one looks at the
Rubicon crossed in California, the gravely ill economy and the deep and
dark pent-up rage against law enforcement by the tens of millions of
families ravaged by the drug war and the interminable harassment of ten
of millions of citizens for victimless crimes and the increasing
militarization of cops, the recipe for confrontation is not far away.
And it won’t be one man.
“And how we burned in
the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every
Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had
been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to
his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in
Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had
not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of
the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had
understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the
downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers,
pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly
have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding
all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness
of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that
happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I dedicate this essay to my friend Stacy.Source
0 comMENTS:
Post a Comment