The Most Evil of Symbols

The most reliable of sources for unmitigated nonsense is at it once again. The New York Times has published an article concerning the appearance of "hangman's nooses" at the site of the construction of a new Amazon facility in Connecticut.

A police investigation hasn't determined that all of the supposed nooses were indeed that form of knot but nevertheless black people in the area are outraged that someone has tied these knots and left them as some sort of message. This isn't a new thing. Pulverized Concepts has commented on it before.

Recently the knot was supposedly found in the garage of a NASCAR team whose driver was an African-American. A similar element of outrage exploded with attendant publicity.

What does this all mean? Evidently the response is anguish that a knot that may have been used at some time in the unjust murder of African-Americans in the post-bellum South can still be seen as some kind of threat. While hanging has been used as an instrument of justice by the state since soon after ropes were devised, this use has hardly been used exclusively on blacks. It can be the form of capital punishment even now in Delaware and Washington. And if representations of knots can cause unease in some persons, what about that of firearms, which have been used far more often to dispatch people of all hues? 

An interesting and undiscussed aspect of the symbolic knot concerns another even more prevalent symbol, the cross. For Christians, the cross is the ultimate symbol of Christianity itself. It represents the structure on which Christ died to redeem all who believed in him. In spite of the genuine pain and torture that Christ endured in his time on the cross, Christians have used it as a symbol of their faith for centuries in all denominations. Of course, crucifixion wasn't used only on Christ but on many criminals during that era and later, including the two thieves crucified along with Christ.

Images of Christ's crucifixion have been among the most frequently produced by artists for over 2000 years. The cross itself stands above the steeples and towers of churches over much of the world, in stained glass windows and behind altars. It hangs on chains about the necks of millions. Why should this be? Shouldn't Christians be outraged by seeing a cross? Or will the descendants of slaves eventually come to see the hangman's noose as evidence of some relationship between themselves and their creator?

    

National Sports Center Velodrome 2021

 Well, there it is. For those of you who made the weekly Thursday Night Lights races and you who crossed the fruited plain for the Fixed Gear Classic each summer this is what the NSC Velodrome looks like today. There's been a drought so the lush grass that once surrounded the facility has turned brown, something of a final touch to what was the pride of the local track cycling community. 

Killing of 8 at FedEx Site Not Hate Crime

From the Wall Street Journal, Thursday, 7/29/2021

 

  The gunman who killed eight people at a FedEx Corp. facility in Indianapolis in April was likely not motivated by bias or racism, investigators said.

  Investigators interviewed more than a hundred people, executed more than 20 search warrants and combed through 175,00 computer files belonging to the shooter for months before determining the shooting wasn't a hate crime. "The shooter did not appear to have been motivated by bias or a desire to advance and ideology," said Paul Keenan, the Indianapolis FBI's special agent in charge at a Wednesday press conference.

  Nineteen-year-old Brandon Scott Hole, who was white, killed eight people, including at least four members of the Sikh community.

  The Indianapolis shooter sought to prove his masculinity to himself by experiencing what it was like to kill other people and then die by suicide, investigators determined. He targeted the FedEx facility because he had been employed there and knew the location and work patterns.

                                               --------Ben Kesling

Is this for real? The nation's most high profile law enforcement agency spent months interviewing over a hundred people, using search warrants and peering through thousands of computer files to see if a wacko was under the influence of hatred or racism when he "went postal" at his former place of employment and committed suicide? But hatred and racism hadn't been a part of the mass murder, they say. We can rest easy.

But what if it had? Would Hole have been dug up and buried deeper? Or re-cremated at a higher temperature?

Historically, in fact and in fiction, determining a motive for a serious crime, especially murder, has been a part of the investigative process, to find the murderer. It's a major part of practically all crime novels. But that's the case when the perpetrator is unknown. When he's dead at the scene, what's the point, if there can even be one?

Well, O.K., one of the deceased may have refused to repay a loan or made a serious pass at Hole's girlfriend. Maybe that drove him to multiple murder and suicide. Or is this an instance of the usual legal quest for "closure" that allows the survivors to move on with their lives. 

Even more likely is that a long, drawn-out investigation of a dead murderer is a good way to occupy under-worked FBI personnel with zero chance of failure. Their conclusions about the motive for the crime are actually only opinions, after all, and won't be refuted in a courtroom. It's a win-win for the G-Men.

 

Brandon Scott Hole                        nydailynews.com

 

  

Be On The Lookout

 

© AP Photo / John Minchillo

In this Thursday, July 2, 2020, file photo, Audrey Strauss, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, gestures as she speaks during a news conference to announce charges against Ghislaine Maxwell for her alleged role in the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein, in New York

Cyclist Dies Weeks After Being Struck By Driver

 

Shawn Michael Chock

From the Flagstaff Daily Sun, Flagstaff, AZ

 
By FELICIA FONSECA and TERRY TANG Associated Press

 

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A cyclist has died after he was struck last month by an Arizona man who plowed his pickup truck into a group of people participating in a bike race, authorities said Monday.

Jeremy Barrett, 58, died of his injuries Saturday, said Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves.

Barrett, who spent parts of his life in Zimbabwe and Australia, was well-known in the cycling community for welcoming new riders and hosting bicyclists who were training in southern Arizona, friends said.

“He was very selfless,” said Joey Iuliano, president of the Arizona Bicycle Racing Association. “I was told that while the paramedics were working on him, he was asking how his friends were and if they were OK.”

The accused driver, Shawn Michael Chock, 36, was indicted last week on nine counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count each of fleeing an accident and unlawful flight. He pleaded not guilty to the charges Monday in Navajo County Superior Court.

Navajo County Attorney Brad Carlyon said he is expecting more charges to be filed in the wake of Barrett’s death.

“Once we have received all the law enforcement reports, we will review to determine if any new charges are appropriate to bring,” Carlyon said.

 

Several cyclists were injured June 19 when Chock sped into a crowd gathered for the annual 58-mile (93-kilometer) Bike the Buff race in Show Low, a mountain city about three hours northeast of Phoenix, authorities said.

Chock then hit a telephone pole, and backed out of the crowd as cyclists pounded on the truck’s windows, screaming for him to get out, witnesses said. He then drove down the road, turned around and headed back toward the cyclists before driving away, witnesses said.

Police shot Chock at a nearby hardware store. He was charged after being released from the hospital earlier this month and remains jailed on a $500,000 bond.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety is overseeing the investigation. Graves, the agency's spokesman, said other injured cyclists have a long road to recovery.

Barrett's condition had been improving with surgery, and doctors in Flagstaff planned to transport him to Tucson. But he suffered another setback as he was fighting to survive, said fellow cyclist and friend Kathryn Bertine.

She said Barrett was loved and respected in the tight-knit cycling community in the U.S. and beyond. Outside of cycling, he worked for a company that manufactured ammonium nitrate-based products used in mining and agriculture.

 

“It's so important that people know it wasn't (only) a cyclist who died,” Bertine said.

“It was a human being, it was a friend, a father, a boyfriend, somebody who was a real-life living soul, an asset to our community,” she said. “And, sometimes, we don't remember that.”

 

The Police Retirement Problem

A significant portion of the public response to the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, MN while under arrest by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin has been highly critical of that police force and others across the country. This criticism has been blamed for much higher than normal retirements and leaves of absence in many police departments, leaving them critically understaffed and unable to maintain public order, as explained here. 

Oddly, no one has advanced a solution to this problem that currently exists in another context.

According to Title 10. Subtitle A. Part II. Chapter 39. Section 688 of U.S. Code,  Under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense, a member described in subsection (b) may be ordered to active duty by the Secretary of the military department concerned at any time.

This means that retired officers are subject to return to active duty status if the Defense Department so requires. The US Air Force has been considering the recall of retired pilots to fill their own requirements. 

Most public employee contracts allow retirement after 20 years service. A college graduate working as a police officer could theoretically retire at age 44 or younger. Since these retirees are already trained and experienced in law enforcement, it only makes sense that the union contracts they work under include stipulations that they can be recalled to service in the event of an emergency, just as the law applies to military officers and Navy enlisted men.   

Rally Cycling's Heidi Franz Bullied At the Giro Donne

Women's pro peloton member Heidi Franz of the Rally Cycling team posted on Twitter that she was "mocked and bullied" during the latter portion of stage 9 of the Giro Donne on July 10. Cycling News linked to Franz's Twitter post.

 

What exactly, in this case at least, is being "mocked and bullied"? At all levels of every sport trash talk and verbal humiliation are everyday occurrences. If some sort of physical abuse took place it's another matter but she doesn't mention if any fellow competitors spit on her or pushed her off the road. 

Lately we've been hearing a lot about "bullying" and sports. A world-class Korean girl was banished from the country's national volleyball team for past "bullying". She then managed to secure a position on a foreign team and people are outraged about that. She must be made to suffer.

It looks like an Ohio hockey player will be denied the opportunity to play in the NHL because he bullied a classmate with developmental disabilities when he was in the eighth grade. The details, if true, are disgusting but anyone that's ever gone to public school knows that there's nothing especially unusual about bullying in that environment. It does, after all, have its resemblances to a prison situation. The major difference in this situation is that it took place outside the parameters of the sport itself.

Rather than commiserate with Franz's complaint we should encourage her to respond in kind. Her competitors will show her more respect.

 

Truth and Politics

Politics, after all, is the art of persuasion; the political is that dimension of social life in which things really do become true if enough people believe in them. The problem is that in order to play the game effectively, one can never acknowledge this: it may be true that, if I could convince everyone in the world that I was the King of France, I would in fact become the King of France; but it would never work if I were to admit that this was the only basis of my claim. In this sense, politics is very similar to magic--one reason both politics and magic tend, just about everywhere, to be surrounded by a certain halo of fraud.

 

Graeber, David, Debt, The First Five Thousand Years, Melville House Publishing, Brooklyn, London, 2014, pg. 342