The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

Can't get videos on my 'phone
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[M.I.K.]

Here's the relevant bit of the script...

[The governor's office, day. An aide peeks in]

Aide:   Governor, the Free Eric Cartman Now Committee is here to see you?

Governor:   Naw, not another committee. Send them in. [Stan, Kyle, and Token enter. Kyle carries a boombox and Token an easel with their presentation on it. They set up] This is the Free Eric Cartman Now Committee?

Token:   Yeah.

Governor:   Well, boys, what can I do for you?

Stan:   [to Kyle] Okay, go ahead and start.

Kyle:   I don't start, you start.

Stan:   Oh, uhyeah. [walks to the easel and clears his thoat] Hello, Mr. Governor, and thank you for taking the time to hear our presentation on hate-crime laws, entitled, "Hate Crime Laws: A Savage Hypocracy." [shows the title page. Kyle presses the play button for some ambience] Yes, over the past few years our great country has been developing new hate crime laws.

Token:   [flips a page to depict a stabbing in progress] If somebody kills somebody, it's a crime. But if someone kills somebody of a different color, it's a hate crime.

Kyle:   And we think that that is [flips the page to reveal a copy of the title page] a savage hypocracy, because all crimes are hate crimes. If a man beats another man because that man was sleeping with his wife, is that not a hate crime?

Stan:   [flips the page to reveal a person tagging City Hall] If a person vandalizes a government building, is it not because of his hate for the government?

Token:   [flips the page to reveal a man being hit deliberately by a car] And motivation for a crime shouldn't affect the sentencing.

Stan:   [flips the page to reveal warring groups of people around a question mark] Mayor, it is time to stop splitting people into groups. All hate crimes do is support the idea that blacks are different from whites, that homosexuals need to be treated differently from non-homos, that we aren't the same.

Kyle:   [shows a rainbow of people holding hands] But instead, we should all be treated the same, with the same laws and the same punishments for the same crimes [Stan flips the page to reveal their hate crime proposal]. For in that way Cartman can be freed from prison, and we [flips the page to show them winning a sledding race] will have a chance to win the sledding race on Thursday.

Stan:   That is our presentation. An idea that we call...

Token:   [flips the page to reveal another copy of the title page] "Hate Crime Laws: A Savage Hypocracy." [Kyle turns the tape player off]

Governor:   Hm. That made the most sense of any presentation I've heard in the last three years.

[The Legendary Shark]

Brilliant - thank you. :-D
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[The Legendary Shark]

I've been debating with myself for a while now as to whether to post this or not as it could, from a certain perspective, be seen as legal advice, which it kind of is. It concerns my recent trial and where I think I went wrong and what I might have said to save myself.
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The trial had been going very well for me. The two police officers' testimonies didn't match, the cctv footage had gone missing and there was no evidence against me except the conflicting accounts of the two police witnesses.
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When it came my turn to take the stand against the police prosecutor, though I say so myself, I started off rather well. The prosecutor had tried to trip me up several times and failed. He asked me if my attitude during the initial arrest had been adversarial and I said "no, sir." He then asked me to describe my attitude at this time. I thought about it for a moment and then inspiration struck. "I would use the same word that Constable G___ used in his testimony; I was determined." The prosecutor let that drop and moved on with the ghost of a frown. His next question was designed to make me look mentally ill. "When you were initially brought to this court after your arrest, were you confused?" I replied that yes, I had been confused as to why I was being accused of a crime I did not commit after being unlawfully arrested but, beyond that, no I wasn't confused at all. "But," the prosecutor continued, "did you or did you not ask if that was a criminal or civil proceeding?" I replied that I didn't recall, which was true, but seeing the look on his face and knowing that this truthful answer might seem a little shifty and evasive I added that it did sound like the sort of question I would have asked and enquired as to what the answer to that particular question of mine had been. The prosecutor ignored me and pressed on with "are you on medication?" I said that yes, I daily take aspirin for my heart. "Anything else?" I replied no, sir and he moved on. There were several questions like this and I knew I was fielding them okay as the prosecutor kept dropping one line of questioning after another until he was visibly floundering to find a way forward.
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Then, seemingly as a last-ditch effort, he asked "is it possible that you struck Officer N___ accidentally through recklessness on your part?" It was my turn to pause and think as I knew this was a loaded question. I denied it. "So, that's not possible, then?" Trying to be honest I said that anything's possible. He leaped upon this very gently, so gently in fact that nobody noticed until the prosecutor's summing up, where he made a big song and dance about how I'd admitted that it was possible that I'd caused injury to Officer N___ through my own reckless actions, the result of which was me being found guilty of reckless assault.
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I have been racking my brains trying to work out how one would honestly answer an "is it possible" question and I think I may have worked out the answer.
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"That might be possible, sir, but that's not what happened" seems to work well. Ah well, live and learn, I guess.

[Banners]

I can't say I've followed everything that's been going on with you, Shark, but that sounds unbelievably harsh, and a verdict based on semantics rather than evidence. I hope you're doing alright.

[The Legendary Shark]

I'm doing fine thanks, Banners - down but not out. And yes, you're right - the focus seemed to be on getting a verdict against me, any verdict at all, presumably to 'cover up' the fact that I had been initially arrested and incarcerated without any proper charge.
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Beware the police - they are more interested in keeping their job than doing it. That's what I've learned about our disgraceful thin blue line. It would also appear to be the role of magistrates to help the police keep their jobs at the expense of truth, justice and honour.

[Proudhuff]

You can always use the answer the police use; 'I don't believe so'

[The Legendary Shark]

Good one, Huffy, but I don't like using the word 'believe' in such circumstances because it's too woolly and easy to challenge. "A child may believe in Santa Claus and Tony Blair might believe that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and the Pope may believe that condoms are against God - but mere belief doesn't make any of these things so," kind of thing.
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Perhaps "that was not my experience" or something like that - something a bit more concrete than personal belief? I don't know.

[TordelBack]

I'm not sure that there was a wording that would have changed things there.  It seems obvious that the police version of events was taken as absolutely true, and you were presented as a confused and potentially violent weirdo. Even the questions asked, regardless of how you answered them, were creating a picture of how you should be perceived, and all the prosecutor had to do was to conjure the possibility that in your bewilderment you lashed out. 

After all, who would believe that someone could have their door broken down and their home seized, wrongly in their belief, and be roughly hauled to jail without taking at least one impulsive swing?

What a system.

[Theblazeuk]

F*** the police.

And this is why.

[The Legendary Shark]

Indeed, Tordels, your words are, as usual, very wise. I'm sure there are many people who read this thread who don't believe me or, at best, believe that I'm not remembering things correctly.
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I have a digital recording of the initial arrest which proves that I was non-violent but, as the trial was not about that particular incident, the court didn't want to see it, despite me offering to play it for them at least twice. It's as if everything that lent weight to my argument, like the missing cctv footage and my own recordings, were regarded as entirely irrelevant. It really is like trying to plait fog.
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Because I cannot afford to appeal the magistrates' strange verdict, I have instead been arguing my position with the county police's complaints department. This too is hard work and for the initial several emails the person with whom I was in contact did his level best to dismiss my claims as irrelevant. Through persistence, however, I finally managed to persuade him to do a bit of investigating - and it was a bit, too.
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He interviewed just one of the two officers, the civilian custody officer who claimed that I hit her, and decided that as her story was the same as she related in court then he couldn't see any problem with it and that I should basically shut up and let it drop. My response was along the lines of, "fine - if you believe this civilian officer then, logically, you must believe that PC G____ is  lying when he says that he was holding me securely throughout and witnessed no contact - therefore I'd like to know what you are going to do about him."
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It went very quiet for a week. When I enquired eventually as to the current state of his investigation, I was informed that the investigator was in a "contemplative mood" and "unsure how to proceed." Apparently, after all this time, only now is my point beginning to be taken seriously and brought to the attention of the higher-ups.
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Truth is not enough - persistence is vital.
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It's the same with the Council, but in their case when they realised that they had no real legal argument against my assertion that all their actions were based on an ultra vires Administrative Tribunal, which is an entirely voluntary procedure for which my consent to participate in and accept the judgement of was required but not given, they simply said that they weren't going to talk to me any more. This happened just last week and my response was basically, "fine - I can't force you to reply but please note that it is one of the basic principles of English law that if you do not object to a thing then you must accept it and, as you have not objected to (nor even mentioned in passing) the fundamental illegality and unlawfulness of holding me to a Tribunal to which I did not consent, rendering all your actions after that 'fruit of the poisoned tree' and therefore intrinsically illegal and unlawful in their own right, then your silence, your refusal to respond, indicates your acceptance of my argument." I then gave them seven days to present a cogent objection or accept my accusations. They've got about four days left on that deadline, after which I will consider my next move.
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My arguments are, of course, wider ranging and more complex than I have the space (or good will) to detail here but it does seem that the cracks are beginning to appear. I am cautiously optimistic at this stage but it is a wearing and stressful process - yet strangely satisfying.
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[Professor Bear]

The first person to climb Everest was probably stressed about it, but at the end of it they'd climbed Everest.  Their climbing Everest also told other people that they could climb Everest too so there's probably day trips to the top of Everest these days as it seems like every eedjit's climbed it, even though there were probably loads of people telling the guy who did it first that it couldn't be done, or tried to dismiss him by asking him why he bothered.  They probably wished they had to balls to even try.

[TordelBack]

The first person to climb Everest was probably stressed about it, but at the end of it they'd climbed Everest.  Their climbing Everest also told other people that they could climb Everest too so there's probably day trips to the top of Everest these days as it seems like every eedjit's climbed it, even though there were probably loads of people telling the guy who did it first that it couldn't be done, or tried to dismiss him by asking him why he bothered.  They probably wished they had to balls to even try.

1 in 15 of all summit-climbers have died in the attempt.  Them's rubbish odds.

[Frank]

Former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read is not a racist, and people just simply need to lighten up...

Counter-campaign to get Mike Read's nemeses, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, to number one:

https://m.facebook.com/relaxagainstukip

[The Legendary Shark]

Thanks and, er, thanks...
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I'd never looked at it like that before, Phil, it's a good perspective, thank you. At the very least, now when anybody asks me why I'm fighting the system I can answer with conviction; "because it's there." Which is kind of perfect, don't you think?