"My project is a rendezvous I give myself on the other side of time, and my freedom is the fear of not finding myself there, and of not even wanting to find myself there any longer." – Jean-Paul Sartre

I posted this on my own website www.defrostingcoldcases.com but would like to have the opinion of Thinking Fluidly’s readers as well. Read on:

Grits for Breakfast has an interesting post on what role victims should play in plea bargains. When I read that I said to myself: none. The prosecution does not represent victims but the Constitutional State. 

Make no mistake about what I just said. I do not condone crime and acknowledge that victims’ rights were violated but as Grits for Breakfast states, those are different rights:  ”crime victims who say “their rights have been walked on,” but those aren’t legal rights, only theoretical ones the speakers think they should have.” He continues with the case of Former US Congressman Craig Washington. Please go to his post to read the details.

There is one part I wish to highlight and comment on: “I find fascinating this overarching desire by the victims to tell their story to 12 people they do not know. Indeed, getting to tell their story, by their own account, was more important than any punishment Washington might receive.”

This behaviour is not so strange if you compare it to some psychiatrists’ sessions. The patient has an issue, has thoughts about it, wishes to bounce them off on a receptive sounding board to receive the official acknowledgment of a stranger that indeed, harm was done. Most patients are looking for the validation of their feelings. They tell their story to friends and relatives but their words do not carry the same cache as the word of a stranger, an expert if you will. Because, if the stranger acknowledges you were harmed, the harm really did happen. Friends and family may acknowledge the harm too but may add reservations, bring up past behaviour, suggest alternative options for future reference, etc. The stranger will listen and usually acknowledge this one fact: yes, you were hurt. Therefore, their behaviour in the case mentioned, does not surprise me at all.

What does surprise me is the lack of understanding in general for these emotional needs as Grits points out but also, the notion that it must be played out in the open to be real, valid. It reminds me of the pathetic need of celebrities to hold a press conference to publicly apologize for whatever they have done wrong. Instead of making amends, and correcting their lives with dignity, they seem to have this compulsive need to play it out in the open by tying themselves to a scaffold but they stop short of allowing us to throw rotten eggs at them!

If restorative justice is truly what we seek I do not understand why this cannot be done in a closed setting. The most victims seem to be able to reveal after they spoke on the stand is that now they have closure. However, Vidocq doubts that all their psychological issues have been resolved by just venting in front of 12 jury members. The same counts for these celebrities. What it does look like is that everyone wants to claim their minutes of fame, either big or small.

Vidocq firmly supports restorative justice and agrees with Grits who says that “restorative justice models focus more on giving victims that opportunity to confront both their victimizer and and their own personal demons – to publicly have their say and “‘re-story’ what happened to them in a way that lets them regain honor.” However those approaches have proven difficult to graft onto the traditional adversarial system, where there is no real avenue for victims to “reconcile differences” with offenders.”

Maybe we should look for less “public” and for more “integrity” to be really effective! What do you think?

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One of 50 billion reasons we support militant direct action: Park rangers at Zakouma National Park, in Chad, Africa, investigating the hacked face of a 20-year-old elephant.

By Jason Miller

2/14/10

In light of my close alignment with Dr. Steve Best, the spurious and maliciously defamatory accusations leveled against Steve by Gary Francione (an ostensible ally since he labels himself a vegan abolitionist), gross misrepresentations of my own philosophical positions, and false allegations about my praxis, I decided it was necessary to clarify some of these matters.

I started forging close ties with Steve in May of 2008 when I did an extensive interview with him and published it on my radical blog, Thomas Paine’s Corner. Just as Steve was back in 2001, at the time of our interview I was an anti-capitalist thinker and activist who was just beginning to embrace the Animal Rights Movement. We hit it off well in the interview, and recognizing that we were kindred souls, we unconsciously developed a mentor-student relationship. Which makes me a living, breathing contradiction to the venomous and false allegations made first by David Martosko of the abominable Center for Consumer Freedom (an Orwellian named entity that fronts for the interests of the likes of the tobacco and alcohol industries—they’ve even attacked MADD) and now by Gary Francione. Both have falsely claimed that Best recruits for the Animal Liberation Front and encourages people to engage in militant actions.

To those who believe these ridiculous attempts to assassinate Steve Best’s character, read this very carefully: Steve Best and I are close allies; I’ve been privileged to have had Steve as my mentor for almost two years; Steve and I have co-written a trilogy of essays that were published in book format; Steve is a senior editor with my blog, Thomas Paine’s Corner; I have taken the philosophy that I have learned under his tutelage and put it into practice via above-ground, legal and aggressive activism; and, pay close attention here, STEVE BEST HAS NEVER ENCOURAGED ME TO ENGAGE IN MILITANT DIRECT ACTION OR ILLEGAL ACTIONS OF ANY KIND. How absurd it would be to swallow the notion that Steve would recruit his mainstream, speciesist philosophy students at UTEP to join the ALF but neglect to attempt to draw me, one of his most passionate pupils, who is a vegan abolitionist and who is deeply embedded in the Animal Rights Movement, into his “web of intrigue.”

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This image is pleasing to the eyes of decent human beings with the capacity to empathize….

This image is eye candy for serial killing sociopaths like you….

An open letter to the Death Park deer slaughterers by Jason Miller

Emailed on 2/13/10

Hello to my friends at JCPRD and KDWP,

Sorry to have neglected you for so long, but I’ve been pre-occupied with other animal rights issues and some personal matters.

I don’t believe I had gotten around to sending you the social statement that I included in my request to dismiss my appeal of the TRO (injunction) that I filed to stop your sadistic bow hunt of the Death Park deer, so here is a segment and a link to my condemnation of your malevolence in its entirety:

The Defendants have literally gotten away with murder…

Editor’s Note: Bite Club of KC is publishing a copy of the Notice of Voluntary Dismissal of our appeal of Judge Kevin Moriarty’s decision not to issue a TRO to stop the barbaric bow hunt in Death Park. Our founder, Jason Miller, wrote and filed this appeal with the Kansas Court of Appeals on 1/23/09, not as a signal that we’re surrendering or that the battle is over, but to demonstrate that our legal system is devoid of justice for nonhuman animals……

6. The Plaintiffs have reconciled himself to the fact that the Defendants have literally gotten away with murder, despite the immense social strife and stiff opposition they catalyzed with their gross abuse of power, extreme negligence that enabled the deer to over-populate to such an extent, unnecessary and gratuitous annihilation of sentient individuals who were under their stewardship, decimation of the aesthetic value and reputation of Shawnee Mission Park, breaking of Kansas state law by trading in wildlife (bartering deer bodies and “meat” for the services of the bow hunters), conducting an egregiously inaccurate and biased deer census to enable more killing after decimating the herd, breaking their own rules by allowing hunting and the use of broad-head arrows in Shawnee Mission Park, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution by allowing a select few members of the community to break the law, and violating the Plaintiff’s Constitutional rights on myriad occasions via police and FBI harassment, surveillance, intimidation, and false arrest……

http://gahc.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/the-defendants-have-literally-gotten-away-with-murder/

And despite recognizing the depth of your duplicity, corruption, and incestuous ties to the hunting (aka nonhuman animal murdering) community and industries (it’s “comforting” to know that hunters, who comprise about 2.1% of the population in KS, and Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shop are dictating public policy in our so-called Constitutional republic), I was astounded last night when I read Jim Sullinger’s 2/10/10 article in the Kansas City Star (http://www.kansascity.com/news/neighborhood/olathe/story/1737879.html) in which you have essentially stated that non-lethal deer management will not be an option in Death Park (fka Shawnee Mission Park) in 2010.

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