by Denis G. Rancourt
This essay was first posted at the Activist Teacher blog.
FALLACIOUS PROPERTY DAMAGE VERSUS HARM TO A PERSON
I was reminded again recently in court about the charade that passes for logical and objective propositions made by the brilliant legal minds that are the gatekeepers of society’s “justice” system.
The issue at hand was the attribution of bail for a political crime in which the entrance lobby area of a neighbourhood branch of a multi-national bank was set on fire in the middle of the night. No person was harmed and the fire did no damage to any personal property. [1][2]
The value of the so-called (see below) property damage was reported in the media first as three hundred thousand dollars, then as five hundred thousand dollars, then as one million dollars, and in court today as 1.2 million dollars. The value of the damage increases as more and more estimates are made. And these ballooning estimates of course are not questioned, in the media or elsewhere. It seems obvious to this observer that an entire new building could be erected with all its furnishings for far less than one million dollars, never mind an entrance lobby area and two cash dispensing machines?
In any case, the point is that the accused has no past criminal charges or convictions of any kind and that, as correctly stated by the defence, the relevant legal precedents show that alleged multiple murderers are regularly released on bail under the principle that one should be assumed innocent until proven guilty, except if there is compelling evidence of significant risk of danger to society (to people).
Next the defence lawyer is found arguing that, in terms of the severity of the charge, one should compare multiple murders to relatively less serious million-dollar property damage.
Hello? Does anyone in the courtroom recognize an error in argumentation? Nope – not a peep. Both sides and the judge appear to concur.
The problem is that “property damage” is a loaded term. No person wants his/her personal property to be damaged. And one million dollars worth of damage to one’s personal property would to most persons be an excessive amount of damage that would cause significant personal grief and suffering. But this is not personal property damage. It is insignificant financial liability to a multi-national bank with yearly profits which fluctuate by the billions depending on undemocratic decisions about interest rates and user fees.
To use the psychologically loaded term “property damage” in the proceedings should be disallowed in favour of a more accurate and objective term such as “corporate financial liability perturbation”. The corresponding damage to the bank clients is not detectable when superposed on the vagaries of bank policy regarding “user services”. So where is the damage to a person compared to murder? After all, this is about people being harmed, is it not?
And should we not compare the harm to bank clients from a fire to the harm to working persons when banks are allowed to merge and to monopolize national economies or to participate in mass financial fraud for which no one goes to jail? [2] (Not to mention the physical harm of keeping the “assumed innocent” accused in jail for months on end while the Crown and police “continue to investigate.” [3])
The fact that a just system would consider and evaluate the likely benefits to society (to persons) of the political action in question of course does not even arise. It cannot. This makes it quite plain that our brilliant legal minds are working for the corporations and the corporations’ undemocratically controlled interests. [4]
And of course the Crown characteristically argues that the term “property damage” unduly minimizes the severity of the crime. This despite the fact that it is a legal term and it is the legal charge in question… He argues that the “property damage” in question is a reckless and politically motivated crime rooted in anti-establishment and anti-oppression ideology steeped in disrespect for the law… a very serious offence… (to which no harm to a person can be attributed).
OKeeey.
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS VERSUS AUTHORITARIAN REPRESSION
And I want to end with a general example of a pervasive legal “argument” that is an obscene muddle intended on the face of it to project paternalism and authoritarian control over people’s lives: The accepted notion that one’s individual rights are limited by infringement of the rights of others.
It would be interesting to review the history of this concept, no doubt first put forth by some illustrious academic service intellectual (renowned philosopher).
How could such hogwash have passed for authentic ethical reasoning? How could it have been sucked up so organically by the entire legal establishment? The answer is that it so conveniently negates the concept of individual rights.
You have a right to life. When would your right to life interfere with the rights of others? In which circumstances would you need to be killed in order to preserve the rights of others? Given a high probability that you will kill others and as evaluated by whom? No. Your right to life is absolute. It does not interfere with the rights to life of others but your actual attempt to kill another does and is a crime which can be stopped and punished. But the punishment cannot violate your individual rights. A right is a right is a right or it is nothing.
You have a right to free expression. This right never negates the rights of free expression of others. If you are screaming loudly to prevent another from being heard you are both expressing yourself and preventing another from doing so. The first is absolutely protected whereas the latter is inadmissible and can be stopped and punished. But the punishment cannot violate your individual rights.
If you are an army general and you give an order to commit a war crime then you are both expressing yourself and committing a war crime. The first is absolutely protected but the latter can legitimately be stopped and punished.
Just punishment is justice, not a violation of the criminal’s rights. A punishment cannot be a violation of a criminal’s rights. The general can be demoted and discharged, and forced to provide reparation, but his/her right to life and his/her freedoms of expression, association, and movement must not be violated beyond the negotiated requirements of reparation.
Social status and class and hierarchical status are not rights and can be removed as punishments. Mass or disproportionate accumulation of wealth and power is not a right. Likewise, you have no right to hide your proven crimes from public knowledge.
However, freedom of movement and association are fundamental rights. Prisons are illegitimate violations of individual rights and negate the possibility of reparation and rehabilitation.
Personal property ownership is a right. Reparation for theft is immediate and need not involve negating rights. The thief keeps his/her right to personal property but must repair the damage caused and does not keep the illegally acquired property. Harm to persons is the reference.
Weapons are allowed for defence but cannot be used offensively. Rebellion is defence against an illegitimate master.
And so on. There is no need ever for a system to violate individual rights. The notion that criminals surrender their rights is barbaric. It only arises in hierarchical societies, which are violently oppressive by design.
The prison system is a system of mass torture and mass violations of human rights. It is a systemic symbol of hatred of humankind and a testament to a very sick society. The existence of a few pathological serial killers on the planet cannot begin to justify the crime against humanity that is the modern prison system.
And the entire genocidal prison system is enabled by exactly the kind of “brilliant legal mind” madness that is the concept that individual rights are constrained by the individual rights of others. This logic relativizes rights thereby negating them and simultaneously wrongly justifies removing the rights of criminals.
Rights are rights. Wrong is wrong. Lawyers and judges are sick; as sick as a society with prisons and that practices genocide. There is no need for the obvious class and racial analysis of the prison population to assert the latter conclusion. Sick, sick, sick.
Endnotes:
[1] “Sacco and Vanzetti in Ottawa: How Media and Police are Politicizing the RBC Arson Case” by Jesse Freeston
[2] “Ottawa RBC firebombing – Terrorism seeded by the University of Ottawa?” by Denis G. Rancourt
[3] At the first failed bail appearance the Crown actually argued that the accused could not be granted bail because “the police investigation was ongoing”. The defence and the judge did not bat an eye at this preposterous position. The arrest had followed two months of intense police surveillance after the RBC fire and over a year of police agent infiltration and occurred days before G20 in Toronto.
[4] “G20-Toronto property damage is a good thing” by Denis G. Rancourt
ADDENDUM (August 16,2010): If your rights depend on the circumstances, on charges, accusations or convictions, then they're not rights. If you only have your rights as long as you obey or aren't noticed, then they're not rights. If you only believe in your own rights because you obey (because you are deserving) then you do not believe in human or individual rights. It's like freedom of expression: If you don't want those you disagree with to have it, then you don't believe in freedom of expression.
RELATED POSTS:
G20-Toronto and lost sovereignty - A critical examination of the role of the CCLA
G20-Toronto property damage is a good thing - Their law versus sanity and justice
They’re not just pigs
On the racism and pathology of left progressive First-World activism
G20-Toronto and lost sovereignty - A critical examination of the role of the CCLA
G20-Toronto property damage is a good thing - Their law versus sanity and justice
They’re not just pigs
On the racism and pathology of left progressive First-World activism
Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See rancourt.academicfreedom.ca]
16 comments:
Dr. Rancourt you have to stop writing essays about shit you know shitall about. Seriously what the fuck are you talking about!
When a person is accused of a crime their rights are now limited decided on a case per case way. That's how it works. Maybe it shouldn't be like that but if that's what you think then write a fucking fiction novel and stop it with your stupid essays about "reality".
Charged of crime = no right to right to rights.
The justice and punishment system is really designed for things like spousal abuse, street fights and bar brawls, and all that.
So if some dude stabs a bro then he gets a weapons prohibition and is not allowed to communicate or associate with the victim.
And just like that if some unknown old man with no previous criminal record blows up a bank out of nowhere and it's a planned and executed militant operation while he spouts religious garble you fucking lock that crazy motherfucker up and keep him in there until you know 100% he's not a criminal mastermind plotting 20 more bank bombings around the world.
You are a privileged school teacher who thinks he knows everything about everything well I want to see the world you advocate for because I bet you everything I've got it would be just as shitty with more violence and more people getting hurt because you know nothing about the realities of simple life you've been locked up in your ivory tower for so long.
I hope someone blows up your one-bedroom apartment maybe then you'll understand. How'd you feel if that person walking free the next day? You would be so scared that he would come back at you with a weapon that you would be in court advocating he gets locked up forever and then you would move to another city.
Someone blows up your pad and you say "Let him walk free he has rights", and then he stabs you in the face the next day and you die.
Welcome to the world of crime you school teacher.
to Anonymous:
You make a clear and helpful criticism but, in my opinion, it would be of greater constructive benefit to you and to society if you did not use the cover of anonymity.
It would make your position appear more credible and would give you the occasion to receive feedback from those who know you.
It would be a start towards breaking the fear reaction that you describe.
I think if the law (the system) was not so brutal and allowed everyone dignity then there would be little need to fear dudes with knives.
And I also believe that your particular fears (knives and bombs wielded by "crazies") are irrational displaced reactions to your economic and societal oppression. Focus on what is actually harming you bro.
"The justice and punishment system is really designed for things like spousal abuse, street fights and bar brawls, and all that. "
No its not mate, at least not anymore, its all commerce.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0IM7Hobd_k
Maybe with Common law (Old Bailey) it is, but that is synonymous with gun ownership, police are a secondary consideration in that respect.
No its not mate, at least not anymore, its all commerce.
Precisely. It's designed to create a criminal class of persons, and increasingly this criminal class, in this declining economy, are being used as free labor for the same shareholders who own the prisons.
Next week, we have Cool Hand Luke scheduled for the family movie. It's appropriate viewing for this conversation, since the context was a work/labor prison camp in the Southern U.S. It's a classic for those who haven't seen it and well worth watching.
Denis, you would appreciate Luke. I know I did...and do. He was persecuted for being disobedient. Fascists demand obedience before all else.
My children are 8 and 11. Both have been Montessori educated since age 3. My wife is an AMI certified Primary Guide working toward her Masters in Montessori. As Denis knows, Montessori embraces all of his ideas about independent, critical thought and creativity. There are no grades and homework with Montessori. Maria Montessori was chased out of Fascist Italy for her disobedience.
Denis, it's refreshing to know there are others like us out there. My wife and I are committed to the quest for education that promotes independent, critical thought and engenders the creative process in all those who seek enlightenment.
Our hope is to see this process in place from age 3 all the way through graduate level and beyond. Perhaps we should join forces and endeavor to make that a reality. A model educational system of the future. It can serve as the paradigm for positive change nurturing seeds into saplings that will eventually grow into a rainforest of creative, independent thought. Then, maybe, we, as a species, can finally evolve.
to Morocco Bama:
I find the prospect of a school system designed to produce independent thinking to be frightening.
Like "department of justice" and "military intelligence" kind of frightening.
I find the kind of social engineering that you propose to be nightmarish.
It seems to me we are all better off when it is obvious that the state institutions are violently oppressive (as is the case with public schools now) rather than creating more sophisticated layers of self-deception and self-management. I prefer a system that keeps the beyond-obedience advanced indoctrination stage for the end (graduate school).
We need to escape from school not perfect schooling. What we do as students and teachers to fight the oppression of school (any school) is the only way to transform it into what we need. And we need to own it. This cannot be designed from the top following Montessori or any other social planner.
I find the prospect of a school system designed to produce independent thinking to be frightening.
Engender does not equal produce. Independent thought cannot be produced, only engendered and facilitated. Independent thought is not a commodity, and it's rather insulting and hypocritical for someone who advocates for it to refer to it in materialistic terms.
Like "department of justice" and "military intelligence" kind of frightening.
Those are both organs of totalitarian state bureaucratic control. I never posited any such notion, and you are mistaken if you believe that is the purpose of Montessori. Montessori is so disorganized and chaotic in embraces, albeit unwittingly, the essence of anarchy. It is to prepare an environment, much as you were doing before you got canned, where children, in their most formative years can create themselves....their intellect freely without oppression. For you to call that social engineering is beyond the pale.
It seems to me we are all better off when it is obvious that the state institutions are violently oppressive (as is the case with public schools now) rather than creating more sophisticated layers of self-deception and self-management. I prefer a system that keeps the beyond-obedience advanced indoctrination stage for the end (graduate school).
Are you insane? Seems obvious to who? Those who see it for what it is are an extremely slim minority. The reason we are a slim minority is because of the oppressive educational system. Students are trained to fashion their chains and worship their bondage. Most, if not all, will not see the light by the time graduate school rolls around. They will see those who speak out as nutters.
Your position is awfully suspicious, as though your mission is to co-opt resistance and change in order to neutralize it and maintain the status quo. I should have suspected as much. Once again, an example of too good to be true, and yet another charlatan on the intelligence services dole. You guys truly have no conscience, do you? You don't go by the name David G on another blog, by the way, do you? You seem awfully familiar to said blogger and poster.
Whereas I agree with your assessment in this post about priorities and purpose of the state justice and penal system, and its predilection to elevate property concerns above the concerns of life and quality of life, I disagree with you when you segueway into the issue of rights. It seems to me that in order to remain consistent with your firm ideological stance of conveying as little or no power to the oppressive apparatus otherwise known as the state, you would eschew such notions as rights. Inherent, at least in my opinion, in the concept of rights, is the granting thereof by an outside force or party. You may argue otherwise, but then you must answer the question, why bother stating you have a right at all, if you were merely born with said rights and you believe they are part of the fabric of your being granted by god, or the universe at large. The problem with this line of thinking is it opens the door to all manner of intangibles one may claim accompanied them at birth, i.e. a soul, and all of its attendant implications.
In practice, the concept of rights, whether articulated as inalienable, or not, are created by, granted and enforced by the state. In truly paternalistic fashion, if you obey the rules the state has laid down, sometimes, and only sometimes, the state will grant you the right to wear make-up, or play video games. In otherwords, the right, or rights, are privileges, arbitrarily administered, in return for obeisance.
Considering the above, your advocation for the notion/concept of rights is in direct conflict with your criticisms of state oppression. By doing so, you lend legitimacy to the state because the state is the purveyor of rights, regardless of protests to the contrary. When has it been any different? When would it be any different?
To follow up Morocco Bama's point, see "The Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
I have to read the exchanges between you and your commenters. But in the meantime I just wanted to say thanks for this critique of the legal system and how it intertwines with corporatization in order to criminalize those who resist and to reduce their human and civil rights down to pretty much nothing.
@Morocco Bama:
Thank you for your last post.
This in particular:
"You may argue otherwise, but then you must answer the question, why bother stating you have a right at all, if you were merely born with said rights and you believe they are part of the fabric of your being granted by god, or the universe at large. The problem with this line of thinking is it opens the door to all manner of intangibles one may claim accompanied them at birth, i.e. a soul, and all of its attendant implications."
Really, where do rights come from? Its a religious/spiritual question.
In reality its a simple answer, (in terms of commerce), this guy worked it out:
http://www.atgpress.com/inform/indexinf.htm
Ironically, 10:50, although I know of Rousseau via my philosophy courses, especially in regards to the topic of man and the state of nature, I have never read him in his entirety. What's interesting is that I share some of his observations and perceptions, and yet I've never covered any of his material in depth....at least not directly. However, indirect exposure to Rousseau's, or any philosopher's ponderings concerning this thing called Civilization, is an entirely different matter. Not to eschew Carl Jung and his theory of the collective unconscious, because I believe that has merit and is also at play, meaning it doesn't preclude what I am about to say, but if we are currently interacting within the same systematical framework as Rousseau, albeit 250 years subsequent to his demise with minor superficial aesthetic differences to the veneer of this malaise, then a person given to critical thought and inquiry can't help but arrive at similar, and sometimes identical, observations and perceptions of said framework.
That being said, I believe the process of independently arriving at this point where you share observations and perceptions with men, and let's face it they were mostly men, ordained by the authority of Civilized Establishment as being worthy of reference for all future observances and perceptions, is one that should be encouraged and engendered relentlessly, for to do so acknowledges an invaluable process and journey that transported you to this destination. Taking the short-cut, and reading Rousseau rather than taking your own route to that destination, would preclude all the character building, mind development and insight the scenery has to offer.
A cursory reading of Rousseau from this link reveals another shared observation I have arrived at independently. It also segues nicely with the comments in regards to education and free, critical thought and inquiry and free, unencumbered creativity.
http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon_01.htm#001
From the link, Rousseau states, and I concur:
Aristotle was right; but he took the effect for the cause. Nothing can be more certain than that every man born in slavery is born for slavery. Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them: they love their servitude, as the comrades of Ulysses loved their brutish condition.2 If then there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves, and their cowardice perpetuated the condition.
It's the system, stupid, and the station into which you are born and indoctrinated with few notable, but always highly vaunted, exceptions. So, to portend that a graduate student will now somehow cast off 22 years of thorough, effective and ubiquitous indoctrination is but a pipe dream...but, of course, there are always exceptions, but then, there always were exceptions, and yet here we are...still. No, we must, nay it is our responsibility to our fellow man, to intervene in this indoctrination process before the poisonous pedagogy of Civilization renders the capacity for critical thought, inquiry and unfettered creativity insufferably compromised.....before the slave learns to fashion his chains and worship her bondage. We owe it to humanity to engender free thought and inquiry at all levels of intellectual, and let's not forget psychical, development...but especially early in development when, biologically speaking, the absorbent mind is prepared to create itself.
@Morocco Bama:
"I have never read him in his entirety. What's interesting is that I share some of his observations and perceptions, and yet I've never covered any of his material in depth."
AND
"That being said, I believe the process of independently arriving at this point [...] is one that should be encouraged and engendered relentlessly,"
Call me old fashioned, but I would certainly prefer to have the doctor operating open heart surgery on me to have read at least some books... Reading is good. Reinventing the wheel is not necessary in every aspect of life. Reading books does not displace independent though. Einstein said that his genius is nothing more than standing on the shoulders of giants.
The problem is not in reading books and agreeing with what someone else wrote. The problem is when books become doctrine and the gates to discourse become closed. And that would not be the book's fault, but rather that of people who are insecure of their own abilities to logical reason.
Reading is good and provides a means to meaningful discourse. Why exactly are you reading this blog? If you don't want to read Rousseau, then read Foucault and his massive treatise "History of Madness" and also "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison".
@dark daught "But in the meantime I just wanted to say thanks for this critique of the legal system and how it intertwines with corporatization in order to criminalize those who resist and to reduce their human and civil rights down to pretty much nothing."
Which did not happen in the case that I reported. Approximately, 250,000 GBP worth of damage was done by peace activists at an arms factory in the UK. The activists were charged with criminal damage but were found not guilty.
Why don't you read the links from the 15 Aug, 11.45?
Reading is good and provides a means to meaningful discourse. Why exactly are you reading this blog? If you don't want to read Rousseau, then read Foucault and his massive treatise "History of Madness" and also "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison".
I wouldn't argue otherwise, and haven't. I'm not that strawman you've erected. However, and this is the difficulty with metaphor and analogy, if I'm to be operated on, I wish the surgeon to be accomplished in the task at hand, and no amount of reading can accomplish that, meaning she has to have the essential practice of direct participation in the event itself using her hands, senses and intellect to interact with, on a very personal and intimate level, the very real and tangible thing henceforth represented in the texts as mere abstractions.
Let me add to your list Dickens, Twain, Poe, Thoreau, Wells, Bradbury, Orwell, Kingsolver, Palahniuk and the countless other fiction writers who incorporate the miasma of human behavior and convention in their clever, artful and entertaining works. Philosophy with a titillating plot can oftentimes be a refreshing alternative to a cumbersome "treatise."
Remember, I started my earlier diatribe with the word "ironically." It predicated the substance of all that followed.
Also, I don't consider observations and articulated perceptions surrounding the behaviors and conventions of humans to be inventions likened to a wheel. It's more like intellectual fruit to be plucked after an arduous, but enlightening journey to the orchard. There are no maps and technical manuals to get to the orchard and partake of its offering, but the journey helps prepare the tastebuds for the delectable, yet poisonous, fruit.
I am just an uneducated bloke living in the poverty class in a wealthy nation like Kanata and driven to insanity by institutional abuse and rogue bureaucrats.. People are so conditioned and culture is difficult for people to break free from. There is no justice system only a legal system that benefits on the plight and misfortune of the ill-informed standing before the magistrate
Forgotten Laws of Feineachas, meaning the laws of the Feine buried by the English oppressors
Think about this…
Neither fool, idiot, nor dumb person, male or female, was distrained. If two men incited a fool to a crime, the person who roused him paid one-third eric, he who incited him two-thirds, the fool went free.
good autricles and good reading collective thought is what needs to change
Post a Comment