Conscientious Objectors Replace Police in Detroit

And yield better results in the hardest neighborhoods.

The City of Detroit can no longer bother (or afford) to respond to citizen's pleas for help when they call 911.  So conscientious objectors step in and solve the problem.


If it works in Detroit, why not everywhere else, and get rid of this failed experiment of only the last 150 years or so of "police"?  (This guy reminds me very much of James DeMile. and here…)

The conscientious objectors only got their chance to outperform the police for the last 20 years because of the failure of the Hegemon's social contract.  C'est la vie.

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Conscientious Objectors Help Win the Peace

Fasting is a part of martial arts training, and so there is some irony in the fact that conscientious objectors helped win the peace after WWII.

One of the greatest killers of World War II wasn't bombs or bullets, but hunger. As the conflict raged on, destroying crops and disrupting supply lines, millions starved. During the Siege of Leningrad alone, over a thousand people a day died from lack of food. But starvation also occurred in a more unlikely place: Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was here that, in 1945, thirty-six men participated in a starvation experiment conducted by Dr. Ancel Keys.

One of the elements of "just war" is the aftermath cannot be reckoned to be worse than before the war.  Knowing how to care for victims of starvation after a war is obviously important, and oddly no one had studied it.

To find subjects willing to put themselves through such prolonged deprivation, Keys recruited volunteers from among the ranks of conscientous objectors — young men who had chosen to join the Civilian Public Service as an alternative to military service. Many of these conscientous objectors, though not all, were members of the historic peace churches (Brethren, Quakers, and Mennonites).

In WWI, conscientious objectors were imprisoned, and some worked and beaten to death.  This is better.

Keys published his full report about the experiment in 1950. It was a massive, two-volume work titled The Biology of Human Starvation. To this day, it remains the most comprehensive scientific examination of the effects of famine. And given modern restrictions on research with human subjects, it seems unlikely that an experiment on a similar scale could be repeated today.

Correct, one would think.  Especially after the Tuskegee Experiments.  But fact of the matter is, in spite of the prohibitions on human subjects trials without subject notification, any president of the USA can order secret, involuntary human subject trials the president deems necessary.  The FDA summary of the rules lists no less than 71 exceptions to the "no involuntary human subjects" regulations.

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Ting! A Pro-Peace Phone?

I have written here many times about the way things were, and resuming those practice is a path to escaping the terrors upon us.  I was thinking small business, but here comes Ting using precisely what I am arguing to take on "too big to fail" phone companies.

Why I came across Ting, I am not kidding, is because AT&T just made it too hard to pay.  Their websites are tedious junkyards of whiz-bang coding ostensibly designed to get me to upgrade.  Trying to figure out the path to pay a bill was so onerous I took to simply paying in their stores at a payment kiosk (so it seems I am not alone) while I was running errands.  Then they required a password and login to pay, even with a debit card, at the kiosk!  I complained, and a clerk advised me to contact "customer support."  I advised the clerk I had come to make a payment, not chat with customer support.  I was miffed.

So I began to search for the phone company with the easiest payment method.  It was never about the fees, which I assume you get what you pay for, VOIP being cheap but sounding like a car radio at 3am in the High Sierras.  Ting jumped out as the easiest pay method.  Their billing system is old school benecredit, they bill you at end of month for usage, what you used...

Nope. No plans here. Rather than asking you to pre-pay for a portion of your usage, we decided to keep things simple. Just use what you need and we'll settle up at the end of your billing cycle.

Well, I don't use much at all. My bill:

Hi John Spiers,
Thanks for continuing to be a part of Ting!Here are a few details for your Ting bill, which was for Apr 20 through May 19, 2016...
-------------------------------------------------------------------Activation Fee                 2069150337                     $0.00 Plan Data Usage XS->XS plus... 1 MB                           $0.00 Plan SMS Usage S               24 messages                    $3.00 Plan Minutes Usage M           426 minutes                    $9.00 Line Fee                       2069150337                     $6.00 Apr 20 - May 19 -------------------------------------------------------------------
And here were the taxes we collected for Uncle Sam...-------------------------------------------------------------------Utility Users Tax - Wireless                                  $1.54Sales Tax                                                     $1.97E911 (Wireless)                                               $0.95Fed USF Cellular                                              $1.00FCC Regulatory Fee (Wireless)                                 $0.01-------------------------------------------------------------------Total comes to:                                              $23.47

You should see a charge for 23.47 on your card ending in 4XXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX  from Tingin the next day or so (if you don't already). That's us..

I like their humor: Uncle Sam.  Note that the taxes are more then 30% of the bill.  That is wealth transfer from me to the bankers.  There were no telephone taxes before the Vietnam War.  Then Johnson laid them on to help pay for the war, and the war ended, but the taxes never went away, they just went up.

We had a pro-peace/anti-war movement back then, and most of us just refused to pay that part of the bill.  The phone company never cut anyone off, you were just not paying Uncle Sam.  The amount, a few dimes back them, a couple of bucks in today's world, was too small for Uncle Sam to come after you.   With larger amounts, and computerization, now Uncle Sam can strike an individual quite easily.

Sadly, with the poverty draft and deep-state perpetual wars, the American people have come to accept war as a given, even if the people of Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc, themselves have never abandoned their anti-war/pro-peace aspirations.

With all of this in mind, here is what I will do. If you have any of the biggy phone company services, dump them now and move to Ting. 

Sign up with Ting, I get $50 or $25 (at some point, depending on how much you spend). (Apparently, at this time, you get $25 off, too!) What I will do is bundle up any and all remittances to me and donate them to one of the land mine removal charities, with a request they get it to SE Asia.  (Not sure which charity yet, I'll have to check the various ones for legitimacy).  There is a symmetry that telephone revenue would be directed to remove UXO in SEAsia delivered in part with funds from telephone taxes.  I like it!

(If remittances are in the form of deduction from my phone bills, then the money I would have put on the phone will be what is bundled and remitted to the charity.  Whatever, we'll make it work.)

It will be delightful to report say quarterly how much we have directed to war reparations.  To sign up with Ting in which kickbacks are directed to me, click here: https://z32i345idje.ting.com/

And by the way, I've experienced zero difference in call quality.

So right now, click on the Ting link above, sign up to save money (and ease of payment!) secure your credit and mine, and let's do good while doing well.

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Hong Kong: Where the Cops Keep Cool

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The Hegemon and the Unspeakable Horrors

It's the way of the world that any given hegemon adopts bad ideas as policy, once that aggregate power to the hegemon, and people then fall in line.  As Eisenhower warned, this leads to powers sought and unsought, and inevitably horrors unspeakable.

It's when the hegemon begins to lose his mandate of heaven, and people begin to admit those unspeakable horrors maintain, that their minds turn to violent reaction.

One of the problems of being a conscientious objector, a nonviolent pacifist, is one's reaction is expressly to reject violence in response to the unspeakable horrors.  We exercise quite effective challenges to the hegemon.  There is this strange thing, then, we conscientious objectors see all the unspeakable horror all the time,  work against it nonviolently, which is the only effective means, but then comes a time when the masses begin to accept the reality of the unspeakable horrors.

Most people will overlook the unspeakable horrors when times are good, for one reason is that they believe the only rational response to unspeakable horror is violence.

Think of all of the people who tried to assassinate Hitler.  Each was a Hitler supporter at one time, but only when Hitler was losing did they make their attempts (Canaris is an exception to this, but he never tried.)

The awakening of the masses to the unspeakable horrors is most unwelcome to the conscientious objector, since the violence of the masses just sets everything back.  Also, those who want to overthrow the system never care about making things better, they only care about being in charge.

Russian literature knows this, the Russian writers all complained the put-upon masses wanted nothing to do with the change programs of the progressives.  People who actually work for a living are the ones who suffer.

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Aikido & Tai Sabaki

Tai sabaki is just the core movement skills of any martial art.  O Sensei had some role in codifying the modern versions and Tohei Sensei as aikido chief instructor emphasized it in his classes and seminars.  Indeed, for the first four or five years I was in aikido tai sabaki exercises, that is movement, silent moving, breathing, ki testing, even misogi, first aid, and I am not kidding "invisibility" along with the aikido four principles took up at least the first 1/2 hour of a ninety minute class.  I rarely see it today.

The skills are fundamental to aikido, indeed any martial art, and it may just be that people no longer know how to teach them.  Doing aikido well, especially aikido, depends on tai sabaki.

With strong tai sabaki, one can experience the something liberating in the realization you need not match punch for punch, reaction for action, as is usually taught in other arts.  Indeed, there is literally no contest, no match, you need only, more or less, avoid the damage from your opponents first move; now chaos.

At this point you are close to your opponent and you need only direct his force where he next elects to direct it, along where h wants to go anyway, and yet you at the same time have decided where he goes thereafter: down.  No match, no contest, just co-operation.

Martial arts outside of aikido wants a respectable showing, if not a decisive victory.  The ego, indeed no doubt the Id, demands at least that, in return for all that training. With aikido, your opponent fell down.  That's about it.  Not very exciting, is it?  And to get best at that, tai sabaki exercises are key.

And since I brought it up, invisibility is achieved by simply not allowing your attention to reach your target.  As your attacker approaches, you look at something else and send your energy and concentration there.  As you thrown him you are looking around, not at him. You are already dealing with what is next.  If you decide you'll take out Person B while dispatching Person A, then you are focussing on Person C or the telephone pole, not your target, Person B.  Your target never sees you coming.  This is part of tai sabaki training in ran dori.

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More on Matirossian

Much of Matirossian's credibility is his speed and power.  Striking arts depend on it.  In aikido, we use the other persons speed and power.  And old lady or little kid is met with their speed and power.  Aikido gets a bad rap from so much practice being equal to the speed and power of the attacker.

Aikido is a martial art that depends on speed and power, but only that presented by the attacker. Aikido has explosive speed and power as well, but only when warranted.  I will admit I no longer see much practice at that level, and too bad for everyone involved.

Ran dori is the opportunity for speed and matching power, and for innovation and creativity.  I rarely see ran dori, and when I do, rarely is the opportunity taken.

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