Nationalism as the Child of Fear and Grievance

Originally posted on RHYMES&REASONS rebeccapells.com

The temperature of nationalism has been on the rise in Europe since the beginning of this century. Last week it came roaring it’s way over the threshold of the UK parliament seating itself firmly in the chambers of power. The middle ground is being pulled to the outer edges of fear and grievance.

At best nationalism is an invitation for the unwelcome guest to return home; at worst the exorcism of an unwanted presence in our homeland. We struggle to let go of the way we have decided to tell our story, embellished by time and enmeshed with grievance it provides us with a sense of belonging. Nebulous and lacking definition it longs for incarnation and roams with intent, seeking the portal of increasing support through which it can transmute and manifest. At the same time we are not quite knowing or recognizing the form of our intention. We explore the streets of our political landscape looking for firm ground but finding only rough terrain which keeps us off balance and unsure.

Instead of choosing to let go of the foundational memory of those we were wronged by, a false sense of self enables a collective pain to thrive and breeds fresh fear of a contemporary but false enemy. We cease to be afraid of our neighbours when we cease to carry the collective fear and injustice of our past, choosing instead to make friends with those we previously challenged with a beckoning hand to our future. To let go is to enable ourselves – our nation – to see our place in the world more elementally and clearly. It is to unburden ourselves from carrying the past and lighten the load, sweeping away the black cloud of history which was passed down to us and – without such bravery – we will inevitably pass to our children.

Withdrawal from the front line of demand and grievance enables us to realign and find a fresh perspective, viewed through a contemporary wide angle lens rather than the myopic glass of selective and painful memory. It is only from here we will find solid ground from which to step forward in friendship and have our voice heard in a different, clear fresh and powerful way.

Victor White’s unbelievable ‘Houdini handcuff’ suicide

The actions of the Ferguson, Mo., police department in the shooting death of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson were curious, if not unbelievable and reprehensible. But the Louisiana State Police and the Iberia Parish coroner take things to a whole new level of with their conflicting and even more dubious claims involving a deadly encounter between police and a handcuffed black man.

According to a report on NBCNews.com, Victor White III and Isaiah Lewis were inside a gas station convenience store in New Iberia, La., in the waning hours of March 2. A fight between two other men outside the store broke out. After those two left the front of the store, White and Lewis went on their way. But they were stopped by police shortly thereafter. The police report says White complied with a “consented pat-down,” which led the officer to find “suspected marijuana in front pants pocket.” The NBC News report notes that police called for backup after running White’s and Lewis’s name through a police database. What happened next, according to the State Police press release cited by NBC, strains credulity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/09/02/victor-whites-unbelievable-houdini-handcuff-suicide/

Why YOU must VOTE: The Ferguson example, and the Killing of Michael Brown

Reblogged from The Secular Jurist:

By Robert A. Vella

The population of Ferguson, Missouri is over two-thirds Black.  In the 2010 census, Whites comprised less than 30% of the town’s residents.  So, it would be logical to assume the city government would reflect those racial demographics.

But, that assumption would be completely wrong.  The mayor of Ferguson is white, five of the six city council members are white, 50 of its 53 police officers are white, and the local school board is 100% white.

How the U.S. Judicial System withholds information from Jurors to keep enforcing Unjust Laws

Reblogged from The Secular Jurist:

By Robert A. Vella

Nullification is a term used in American political nomenclature to identify the constitutionally-invalid proposition that states can ignore federal laws they disagree with.  This notion became a popular rallying point in the Antebellum South when plantation owners fought to preserve the institution of slavery.  It was also used to justify the infamous Jim Crow laws which sprang-up in the former Confederate states after the U.S. Civil War.  Even today, the idea of nullification is being championed by the Tea Party in an effort to legitimize its radical anti-government agenda.

But, there is a perfectly legal way of nullifying federal, state, and local laws very few Americans know about because the U.S. judicial system is deliberately concealing it.  From Wikipedia:

Jury nullification occurs in a trial when a jury acquits a defendant, even though the members of the jury believe the defendant to be guilty of the charges. This may occur when members of the jury disagree with the law the defendant has been charged with breaking, or believe that the law should not be applied in that particular case. A jury can similarly convict a defendant on the ground of disagreement with an existing law, even if no law is broken (although in jurisdictions with double jeopardy rules, a conviction can be overturned on appeal, but an acquittal cannot).

A jury verdict contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it. If a pattern of acquittals develops, however, in response to repeated attempts to prosecute a statutory offence, this can have the de facto effect of invalidating the statute. A pattern of jury nullification may indicate public opposition to an unwanted legislative enactment.

In the past, it was feared that a single judge or panel of government officials may be unduly influenced to follow established legal practice, even when that practice had drifted from its origins. In most modern Western legal systems, however, juries are often instructed to serve only as “finders of facts“, whose role it is to determine the veracity of the evidence presented, and the weight accorded to the evidence,^[1] to apply that evidence to the law and reach a verdict, but not to decide what the law is. Similarly, juries are routinely cautioned by courts and some attorneys not to allow sympathy for a party or other affected persons to compromise the fair and dispassionate evaluation of evidence during the guilt phase of a trial. These instructions are criticized by advocates of jury nullification. Some commonly cited historical examples of jury nullification involve the refusal of American colonial juries to convict a defendant under English law.^[2]

Juries have also refused to convict due to the perceived injustice of a law in general,^[3] or the perceived injustice of the way the law is applied in particular cases.^[4] There have also been cases where the juries have refused to convict due to their own prejudices such as the race of one of the parties in the case.^[5]

Obviously, general application of this legal concept would open up a gigantic can-of-worms in jury trials, and that is certainly the reason why it is being kept under wraps.  Prosecutors would be forced to dismiss prospective jurors who understood and believed in its validity.  That could pose enormous logistical problems for court proceedings.

Jury nullification does, however, offer intriguing prospects for mitigating patently unjust laws such as Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground statute which enabled the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin murder trial.  How this could be employed without allowing egregious abuses, such as acquittals based solely on race, remains completely unresolved.  If a workable solution could be found, jury nullification might prove to be an effective tool in combating the gross inequality now pervading the American system of justice.

Further reading:  Nullification: Jurors’ Secret Weapon Against Harsh Sentencing