Set Bad Phoenix Cops on Fire*

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn wrote in 1967 that "You can have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power."

Solzhenitsyn, of course is the Russian born, Nobel prize winning author who was arrested in 1945 for comments he made, critical of Stalin, in a letter to a friend, and was sent to the Gulags. He claimed the comments originally were "only jokes" but Solzhenitsyn, after his ten year experience of incarceration, was rarely joking in his writing as he became the worlds foremost critic of communist totalitarianism in the world, a feared and greatly respected man who's very words effected soviet policy for decades. A fire was lit in a young Aleksandr when he was arrested on unjust censorship charges, and in the end, that fire burned Aleksandr far less than his conviction burned the state which sought to punish him, and which he eventually outlived.

This is the principle of blowback, which has gained prominence in recent years after a book of the same name was published. The basic idea, both from a personal and intelligence perspective, is that meddling unjustly in other people's affairs, to help your own interests, is gonna come back to bite you on the ass. Not only is it usually quasi-illegal, it is so, because, quite frankly, its a bad idea.

But still, some people haven't learned yet, so id like to ask you to help teach them a very important lesson.

As JD Tuccille writes in his Examiner column here:

Perhaps the best publicity a critic of the powers-that-be can ever get
for his cause is to be the target of over-the-top official retaliation. That
automatically validates what the critic is saying while at the same time
massively expanding the audience for his message. So, in an odd way, Jeff Pataky
owes a "thank you" to the Phoenix Police Department for raiding his home and
hauling away computers and other material related to a Website and blog he maintains that focus attention on misdeeds involving the Phoenix PD.

Read the first link for the full story, and when you are done, especially if you live in the Valley of the Sun (as I do) spread the word about both the web page and the blog, and why you dont think that criticisms of public officials (especially crooked ones) is justification for deprivation of property, liberty, or any other sort of harassment. The more traffic that can be sent to both the website, and the blog, the more apparent that retaliatory violation of the constitutional rights of those critical of a public official is not just illegal, immoral, reprehensible, and generally wrong, but that its going to directly result in a complete backfire of the intended suppression, and a large updraft of public awareness.

Again, the links to the blog, and the webpage.

badphoenixcops.com
badphoenixcops.blogspot.com

I expect to see your posts linking to them shortly.



*I am in no way advocating the the torching of police officers, but rather, supporting the publics interest in promoting and visiting a site that explains why others sometimes do.