THE PRICE OF INJUSTICE IS ALWAYS HIGH… THE COST? HIGHER!
Almost everyone is familiar with the Star Wars movies. They’ve become a part of not only our national but the international culture as well. “May the force be with you…” “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” “The dark side.” These are phrases we use – sometimes daily – and they’re so much a part of our culture everyone understands the meaning conveyed often without stopping to think about from whence the phrase comes.
When they launched the prequel trilogy beginning with “The Phantom Menace,” we packed the theaters because we were invested in the tale. We wanted to know how things came to be. I remember watching the first Star Wars movie “A New Hope – Episode IV” and wondering where the hell were episodes 1-3. Thus, like most of you I found myself also sitting in a darkened theater, fully engaged to see the events that led up to the first 3 movies I had seen.
We were introduced for the first time to young Anakin Skywalker. I remember thinking, like many of you, “how in the world does this adorable child grow up to become Darth Vader?” We were told that he and his mother were Slaves. They were owned by “Watto” a Toydarian junk dealer/human trafficker in Mos Espa on Tatooine.
The reality of their Slavery was made comfortable to the audience. They seemed to have a home, own property and were able to host a meal for Qui-Gon Jinn and his party. Slavery was made to seem like just another job. You didn’t really begin to understand until Qui-Gon Jinn purchased Anakin from Watto. But hey! It was for the better wasn’t it? His mother Shimi Skywalker seemed to understand. Surely Qui-Gon Jinn would have purchased her too if he’d had enough money. The first episode left you with the feeling that they’d be back to get her. It was almost as though her gifted son was going away to college. Yes there were tears, but most mothers cry on their child’s first day of school. Were you *really* paying attention though?
It turns out, they never did go back to get Anakin’s mother. Clearly this weighed heavily on him as he grew into a young man. There remains an unbreakable bond between mother and child and the full impact of this is realized in the second episode – “Attack Of The Clones.” Anakin senses his mother’s distress galaxies away and drops what he is doing to rush to her aid. He neglects his duties something anyone of us would do if our mother were in distress.
It turns out that Watto needed some money so he sold Shimi Skywalker to a group of “Sand People” who mistreat her sorely. It is the mistreatment she is suffering at their hands that Anakin feels. He arrives just in time for her to die in his arms. It is this hurt and rage that sets his feet firmly on the path to “The Dark Side.” He uses his Jedi training to murder them all. His rage makes him powerful. Were you paying attention?
Yes, Chancellor Palpatine – a Sith Lord – was certainly contributing by egging him on. However, the real message – almost subliminal – was the injustice of slavery, the need for retribution is what actually made him vulnerable to the suggestions of Palpatine. The Chancellor only acted as a catalyst for the explosive brew that was already present.
Yes, we see and understand the highly sanitized concept when it is surrounding by special effects and a well written musical score. However, we forget that everyday in our society we are allowing the creation of millions of people who are raised on the heady toxin of injustice to be loosed upon our society. No, they will never pick up a light saber, but they may pick up a gun. They cannot move objects with their minds but the seeds of pathology planted in the fertile soil of poverty, lack of opportunity and injustice are growing like weeds all around us.
The transformation from a young adorable Anakin Skywalker to the murderous Darth Vader whom without remorse slaughtered the “younglings” – children training to become Jedi – was jarring. Were you paying attention? Yet, it was a metaphor for what occurs on a daily basis within our society. We’ve got children murdering children. Mothers burying their young instead of the natural course of nature. Instead of paying attention, we look for the simple solution. Must be the guns! If we could just get rid of those, everything would be better. No it wouldn’t. We’re creating monsters wholesale in the test tubes of ignorance and lack. The price of injustice is high, the cost is even higher. Pay attention!
There are a number of things I find profoundly disturbing regarding the Christopher Dorner case. They simply do not add up. On the one hand, in the lead up to Chris Dorner’s death by a self-inflicted gunshot and subsequent cremation, which strangely enough, seems to follow a pattern repeated time and again, two mutually exclusive pictures of Christopher Dorner have emerged.
A Tale Of Two Dorners
Ex-LAPD Chief William J. Bratton
On the one hand, we have a man whom passed the psych evaluations of both the United States Military and the LAPD. According to William J. Bratton, previous chief of the LAPD, the LAPD psych evaluation is one of the most stringent in the nation. Thus, to characterize Christopher Dorner as psychologically impaired seems a bit suspicious.
If he “snapped,” when did he snap? What was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” so to speak? Since we never got to actually hear from Christopher Dorner – his supposed “manifesto” notwithstanding – we have been forced to rely upon the characterizations by the LAPD, their spokespeople and the “talking head” shills, touting their credentials as having been FBI profilers. The stories they’ve told describe a large, dangerous, motivated man, who had been trained by the US military in survival, marksmanship, demolitions and a host of other rather nasty anti-social skills. On top of this training, he also received the best training the LAPD had to offer as well. This supposedly gave him knowledge above and beyond any ordinary fugitive. He knew LAPD tactics and procedures.
Talking Head Shill, Clint Van Zandt
To make things worse, to believe these media accounts, Chris Dorner had been planning this since 2008. Take a man with these skills, resources, the time to plan and prepare, you have an extremely dangerous foe indeed. This wasn’t a wasp stinging a buffalo, this was a Ninja striking from the shadows at night causing all of us to remember why we fear the dark. LAPD with the help of the United States military had created a “Frankenstein Monster” who was now stalking them. One might imagine that every Law Enforcement Officer in the area, was hearing the theme music from “Jaws” every time they stepped out of their door. The shark was out there. They were like swimmers praying they would make it back to the boat with all their limbs intact.
If one was attempting to orchestrate the media coverage to strike fear into the hearts of anyone in the area wearing a Law Enforcement uniform, they couldn’t have done it any better. However, the reality of the events as they unfolded, not only did not fit the trailer for the movie, they didn’t even follow the script.
The Manifesto
First of all, anyone trained in tactics and certainly anyone who knows the methods of the LAPD, would know better than to post on Facebook, a “be advised, I’m coming to kill you” heads up, complete with a list of targets. The first problem is, once people start dying it identifies you as the number 1 suspect. The 2nd problem is, all your targets become harder to hit. They go into lock down. They get a security detail, much like exactly what happened.
If 3 or 4 officers get shot, for no apparent reason, the panic you would cause would be multiplied because they would have no context to place the murders in, no suspect and no apparent motive for the crimes. If you’re going to wait from 2008 until now – 5 years – you’re not impulsive. You’re not even likely to be considered a suspect. LAPD would have been like a dog chasing it’s tail.
This brings us to the next problem. Christopher Dorner was accused of going to war with LAPD. Wars require planning, logistics, staging areas, tactics and strategy. Christopher Dorner would have learned this and practiced this during his time in the military. Yet, we saw no evidence of any of this as events unfolded. Give me 5 years to plan a campaign, and I’m going to have several “safe houses,” some hideouts, various caches of arms, ammunition and supplies, several vehicles, and an escape route all planned out. I am not going to be running, gunning and shooting it out with Law Enforcement. No high speed chases. No having to car jack civilians, no breaking into homes. I would be staying in one of my safe houses watching the news reports. Yet we are asked to believe that Christopher Dorner, with all his LAPD and military training, posted a manifesto with a list of targets, went on a shooting rampage, began with the lowest hanging fruit, the daughter of the attorney that defended him and then went on the run with no apparent backup plan? Does any of this seem suspicious to you?
Curiouser and Curiouser
One of the oft repeated explanations by Law Enforcement to explain the extreme difference in response when one of their own is shot as opposed to an ordinary citizen is, a person who will shoot a Cop poses and extreme threat to society. When a police officer is shot, they will throw every resource at their disposal into catching – and usually killing – the person accused of having done the shooting. When an ordinary citizen is the victim of a violent crime, their response is much more pedestrian.
The truck was shot up AFTER it had passed. Clearly not a threat.
The LAPD and its media shills, spared no expense in painting Christopher Dorner as a crazed madman. They told us ahead of time that he probably would not surrender and that he would probably go out in a “BLAZE of glory.” Their reasons for these predictions became clear early on if you were paying attention. They shot up two civilian vehicles shooting two women delivering papers and the truck of another man who happened to be White. Witnesses say that at no time did the Police give the people in these vehicles the opportunity to surrender. No attempt was made to arrest the occupants of these suspected vehicles. Let alone any efforts to determine whether or not Christopher Dorner was actually in the vehicles.
If you were Christopher Dorner and you were aware of these incidents, what would your response be upon being approached by Cops? The message was clear. Arrest, surrender is not an option! Under these circumstances, what would you do?
Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence
Yes, Christopher Dorner was depicted as a crazed madman, but was he? Remember, there were no witnesses and no physical evidence of Christopher Dorner having shot anyone. All we have is the alleged “manifesto” he is supposed to have posted. If we are to believe that he murdered the daughter of the attorney who defended him, as well as her fiancé who was unrelated and not involved, then why did he not murder the two women he held hostage? Tying someone up is much more problematic than simply shooting them. In point of fact, they managed to release themselves and call the police.
Same question with the fellow he “car jacked.” Leaving witnesses behind who could reveal your demeanour, details of any conversations, what equipment you had with you and of course, describe the vehicle you took, would not be a sound strategy. Wouldn’t a “crazed madman,” a person on a rampage simply shoot these people?
They’re awfully close to that cabin aren’t they?
Then of course there is the conclusion. Christopher Dorner holed up in a mountain cabin. Helicopters circling. A gun battle raging ending up with the cabin being destroyed by fire. The official police version was that Christopher Dorner took his own life in the end and they stress that they did not intentionally set the fire. Unfortunately, there is a YouTube video where you can hear the police plainly state, “get the gas and burn it down.”
Why burn it down? Fire does an exceptional job of destroying evidence. If he had any documents on him, if he had a USB thumb drive with evidence, fire would have destroyed them. Of course, saying that he committed suicide also absolves the police in the minds of the public for his murder. Isn’t it funny that all these types of cases seem to end with the person saving the police the trouble of shooting them?
But the driver’s license survived… Yeah right!
Then there’s the curious nature of the fire. We watched that fire burn that cabin all the way to the ground. The fire burned so hot the police couldn’t go in and search the rubble until the next day after the fire department hosed it down. The body was so charred that it could not be positively identified… however, they did find his wallet with his driver’s license which miracle of miracles did not burn up in the fire. Does this seem suspicious to you?
When you add it all up, according to the police accounts, Christopher Dorner could not steal a boat even though he was in the Navy. He drops his LAPD badge on the dock and next turns up almost 200 miles away. His truck breaks an axle and he sets it on fire which is guaranteed to draw attention to it. Takes two women hostage and holds up for a few days before one of them escapes and calls the police. He then steals their vehicle, dumps that and car jacks another vehicle, gets into a gun fight with a couple of fish and game officers and then flees into the woods and holds up in a vacant cabin where he ends it all in flames. It is possible all these things happened just as reported. The problem is, none of this fits the original description of the highly competent trained killer depicted by the media.
How About An Alternative Possibility?
Man Hunt Map
Everything hinges on this “manifesto” supposedly published by Christopher Dorner. But what if he had nothing to do with it? I’m sure the first question that may occur to you, if you’ve taken the time to read it might be, how could he not have published it since it contains so much personal information? Information about his childhood. School experiences. Time in the military etc? Where would anyone get that information? Simple. Remember his psychological evaluation performed by the LAPD? The personal information contained within the “manifesto” could well have been covered, disclosed and in his files.
Suppose tomorrow you went to log into your Facebook page and discovered something on your wall, presumably from you, that you had not posted. Suppose it contained threats and a “hit list?” What would you do? We know that Christopher Dorner was a “whistle-blower.” He had broken the “Code of Silence” and been fired for doing so. Would he have sat quietly for 5 years? Or perhaps he would have continued to collect information. What if he had come across some extremely damaging information on some people in power in the LAPD hierarchy?
What would someone in power do? They would have to discredit him and silence him. Notice that the only person remotely attached to his hit list that was murdered, was the daughter of an attorney who made a career of defending Cops against the LAPD. Not a high ranking LAPD officer. The other Cops that were “ambushed” were low ranking patrol officers. Again, not high value targets on his “hit list.” It seems peculiar to me that one would put a paramilitary organization – that’s what the LAPD is – on notice and then for your opening bid, not go for a high value target, but pick off some relative peons on the force and the daughter of an attorney whom the LAPD probably doesn’t care for to begin with.
This is a tale of two Dorners that simply doesn’t fit. When things do not fit, we should pay attention and bring to bear the most critical examination possible. We owe it to ourselves to not only ask hard questions but demand the answers to those questions. If Christopher Dorner was the threat he was built up to be, why then did the officers who encountered him open fire immediately rather than call for backup? It’s a job not an adventure. The objective is to go home to your family at the end of your shift. The only thing you would have to do is maintain visual contact at a safe distance until reinforcements arrived. Initiating a gun battle was unnecessary and cost one officer his life. I am convinced there is much more to this story than we have as yet been told.
If he is crazy, clearly psych screenings are a waste of time…
Justifying Murder – LAPD And The Christopher Dorner Case
At the time I’m writing this, ex-LAPD officer Christopher Jordan Dorner is still at large. Officer Dorner is the primary suspect in several murders. At least one of them being a fellow LAPD officer.
If he has done as accused, there is no excuse for his behavior. His actions are reprehensible and would meet almost anyone’s definition of a serious mental pathology. It is not the purpose of this piece to either defend or justify his actions.
What concerns me is the reactions and the actions of the LAPD which presumably is not claiming “diminished capacity” as an explanation or justification for their behavior. If anything, their reaction is going a long way to prove the allegations levelled against the LAPD in Officer Dorner’s so called “manifesto.” The main accusations Officer Dorner levelled were those of racism and police brutality.
A little while later, another vehicle was shot up. Fortunately the man inside was not hit. No commands were given. No opportunity to surrender. No attempts to effectuate an arrest. I was under the impression that the job of Law Enforcement Officers was not to act as judge, jury and executioner, but if possible deliver a suspect to a court of law. What we’re dealing with here is “street justice.”
Warrant-less Searches???
What is the difference between the actions of LAPD and your common street gang? They have been ordering citizens out of their vehicles, searching their homes at gun point without obtaining search warrants as demanded by due process. Does the law not apply to the police? Are they above the law?
I have personally tended to scoff at the likes of Alex Jones when they beat the drums of societal collapse and martial law. However, they suddenly don’t seem so crazy. We are either a nation of laws or we are not! If the LAPD can throw “due process” and the United States Constitution out the window, then anybody can. All they need do is claim to be concerned for their own safety.
A Campaign Of Demonization
The Black Rambo?
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that the Public Relations department of the LAPD has shifted their tactics. The shift has been subtle, but evident nonetheless. At the beginning the focus of the LAPD was to paint Officer Dorner as mentally unstable, irrational, possibly suffering from PTSD, perhaps because of his service to this country in the Navy. In short, “Crazy Black Man” on the loose! Be afraid, be very afraid! Now, they’re portraying him as some sort of “Black Rambo.”
In an unprecedented move, the LAPD has released video tapes of Officer Dorner going through the common training course allLAPD Officers go through. They showed him on the shooting range – alongside other Officer candidates – remarking on how well he controlled the recoil of the pistol he was shooting. Evidently, according to the anonymous Public Relations representative, being able to control the relatively light recoil of a pistol, makes one an extremely deadly and accurate pistol shot. In point of fact, controlling recoil is not necessarily indicative of accuracy.
Practising disarming techniques with his fellow LAPD officers
They released a clip of him practicing disarming techniques with fellow Officers. Evidently you’re supposed to either forget or ignore the fact that the training he was receiving was the exact same training that allLAPD Officers receive. Thus, how does this make Officer Dorner any more or less dangerous than your average LAPD Officer? It does not.
Clearly what LAPD is doing is laying the ground work to justify murdering Christopher Dorner rather than bring him to justice. The question I have is why? This is a question that you and everyone else ought to be asking as loudly and as often as possible. What does he know? What might he say in open court that the LAPD would prefer him never to reveal in open Court? Are they justifying murder ahead of time? It seems to me that they are.
by Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.
We were introduced for the first time to young Anakin Skywalker. I remember thinking, like many of you, “how in the world does this adorable child grow up to become Darth Vader?” We were told that he and his mother were Slaves. They were owned by “Watto” a Toydarian junk dealer/human trafficker in Mos Espa on Tatooine.
Slavery was made to seem like just another job. You didn’t really begin to understand until Qui-Gon Jinn purchased Anakin from Watto. But hey! It was for the better wasn’t it? His mother Shimi Skywalker seemed to understand. Surely Qui-Gon Jinn would have purchased her too if he’d had enough money. The first episode left you with the feeling that they’d be back to get her. It was almost as though her gifted son was going away to college. Yes there were tears, but most mothers cry on their child’s first day of school. Were you *really* paying attention though?
It turns out, they never did go back to get Anakin’s mother. Clearly this weighed heavily on him as he grew into a young man. There remains an unbreakable bond between mother and child and the full impact of this is realized in the second episode – “Attack Of The Clones.” Anakin senses his mother’s distress galaxies away and drops what he is doing to rush to her aid. He neglects his duties something anyone of us would do if our mother were in distress.
It turns out that Watto needed some money so he sold Shimi Skywalker to a group of “Sand People” who mistreat her sorely. It is the mistreatment she is suffering at their hands that Anakin feels. He arrives just in time for her to die in his arms. It is this hurt and rage that sets his feet firmly on the path to “The Dark Side.” He uses his Jedi training to murder them all. His rage makes him powerful. Were you paying attention?
Yes, we see and understand the highly sanitized concept when it is surrounding by special effects and a well written musical score. However, we forget that everyday in our society we are allowing the creation of millions of people who are raised on the heady toxin of injustice to be loosed upon our society. No, they will never pick up a light saber, but they may pick up a gun. They cannot move objects with their minds but the seeds of pathology planted in the fertile soil of poverty, lack of opportunity and injustice are growing like weeds all around us.
The transformation from a young adorable Anakin Skywalker to the murderous Darth Vader whom without remorse slaughtered the “younglings” – children training to become Jedi – was jarring. Were you paying attention? Yet, it was a metaphor for what occurs on a daily basis within our society. We’ve got children murdering children. Mothers burying their young instead of the natural course of nature. Instead of paying attention, we look for the simple solution. Must be the guns! If we could just get rid of those, everything would be better. No it wouldn’t. We’re creating monsters wholesale in the test tubes of ignorance and lack. The price of injustice is high, the cost is even higher. Pay attention!
