Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Law Enforcement Page 1 of 2

The Cruelty Is the Point: American Execution Edition

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On June 16, 2026

2 Comments

I recently stumbled across a story about the Supreme Court (not exactly bleeding heart liberals) refusing to let Alabama use nitrogen suffocation:

An Alabama man facing the death penalty by nitrogen gas was spared Thursday as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to set aside a lower-court ruling that found the method is unconstitutionally cruel, issuing a brief order that came well after the hour originally planned to initiate Jeffery Lee’s execution…

…During the previous Alabama nitrogen executions, the inmates shook, pulled at the restraints and exhibited labored breathing. During the state’s last execution by nitrogen gas, 30 minutes elapsed between Anthony Boyd exhibiting signs of being impacted by the gas and state officials closing the curtain to the viewing room to signal the execution was complete.

The idea is that you breathe, but the gas you’re breathing is nitrogen, so eventually you die.

Of course this is going to suck, anyone who’s ever suffocated or had serious breathing issues knows that one of the worst feelings in the world is not being able to breathe.

There’s been a lot of this sort of thing going on: the company that used to sell drugs for execution stopped doing so, and various US states have been looking for alternatives. The prisoner in this case wants a firing squad, figuring it’s quicker and less painful.

Meanwhile up here in Canada we have legal assisted suicide. It’s a controversial program, because it seems like the government or various relatives are a little too eager about it. (After all, dead people don’t take up hospital beds and dead relatives don’t cause problems.) I think assisted suicide is often a good thing, but easily abused, however we’ll leave a moral deep dive for another article.

The thing is there’s never any criticism that it is a painful death. I looked into it. They give the patient:

  1. An anxiolytic and sedative drug: Midazoloam.
  2. They give them a drug to put them into a coma-like state with a rapid acting drug: Profofol. Then,
  3. They give them a drug which causes paralysis, including of the lungs. Rocuronium. The patient dies of suffocation, same as with helium (or Hemlock, which Socrates was executed with.)

But the patient doesn’t suffer, because they’re deeply unconscious.

This protocol works, it’s well known, so why not use it?

Because Alabama and other US states want the prisoner to suffer. Moaning about expense is ridiculous, however expensive it is it’s cheaper than keeping a prisoner on death row, same as it’s cheaper than keeping a patient in hospital.

Executing prisoners without causing undue suffering is a solved problem. Alabama and other states like it just want the prisoner to suffer, so they keep searching for a method that will be painful and courts will allow.

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Extraordinary Rendition Comes Home To America

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On March 18, 2025

26 Comments

Oh hey:

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

“But they’re bad people, Ian” you squeal. “They’re gang members. Bad things should happen to them because they’re bad!”

Well, maybe.

Thing is, we don’t know. The government claimed they were all gang members, but the reason countries have checks and balances, something the US once claimed to be proud of, was to be certain there aren’t miscarriages of justice. People accused of a crime are taken to court, where the truth of said allegations are determined so that somebody with power can’t just make assertions and punish people.

Due process. It’s not a panacea, bad shit still happens to innocent people, but it’s one of the safeguards.

Here’s the issue: if the government had proof that all of these people were gang members and that they could be deported illegally, why not go in front of a judge?

There are only two possible reasons:

  1. They don’t have proof for all of the people, and still want to deport them; or,
  2. They want to set the precedent that they can deport whoever they want just based on an accusation, without the judiciary having any say.

If you’re OK with either of these things, you are an evil piece of human garbage and stupid on top of that. Such people remind me of Red Staters who voted Trump, knowing about DOGE, then were surprised when Musk and Trump took their jobs and Trump decided to destroy American farmers with tariffs and by taking away their immigrant labor base.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

H.L. Mencken

Every right taken from other people will eventually be taken from you. Extraordinary renditions were against non-Americans outside of America, right, so they didn’t matter. When Obama drone killed an American citizen, well  he was a terrorist and he wasn’t in America, so that was OK, right? The people being extradited now are gang members, and not Americans, so it doesn’t matter to you, does it? I mean, we don’t actually know that none of them are Americans are that all are gang members, but you’re a good person, so just like those Trump voters fired by Musk, you’ll be OK.

Right?

Oh, and the Gaza genocide has started up, with confirmation that Trump OK’d it. And that’s just Arabs, right, so it has nothing to do with you and they have it coming or something because they dared fight back, and that’s terrorism when weak people do it.

Right?

Elites who have learned they can get away with genocide would never genocide you.

Right?

As an aside, there is no possible half decent world where America does not lose all its power. Ideally a break up, so that it can never again be even a great power.

May it happen soon.

As for Europe, I’ve written about how they could fix things and reindustrialize, but on a moral basis, it’s hard to think that would be a good thing for the rest of the world, with a few exceptions like Ireland. (Ireland, of course, was the first victim of English colonialism. White niggers.)

My guess is that Europe’s leaders don’t have what it takes to turn Europe around though.

Oh well. *Sound of massive cheers from every country they colonized and enslaved and now lecture on human rights.*

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ICC Goes Off The Reservation & Issues Refferal For Arrest Warrants For Netanyahu & Hamas’s Leader

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On May 21, 2024

16 Comments

Karim Khan was endorsed by the US, UK and Israel. No one thought he’d be for war crimes prosecutions of Israeli officials. But he went for it and in an interview he said:

“I had some elected leader speak to me and be very blunt, this court [ICC] was built for Africa and thugs like Putin”

It’s hard to overstate how massive this is. Netanyahu can’t travel to Europe unless Europe gets rid of the Rome statute, in which case that’s pretty much the end of international law. Or they can hope these two prosecutions are all there will be, but if you’ve already gone after Netanyahu, why stop?

Of course the US can sanction the Criminal Court, but talk about a huge propaganda and legitimacy loss.

Turns out that open genocide is enough to even make some technocrats, almost certainly chosen for loyalty, rebel.

Don’t underestimate this. This is going to move the locus of legitimacy away from the US, hard.

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The Labor Shortage And the New Criminalization

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On August 12, 2021

51 Comments

The level of stupid in what passes for “discourse” in the Western world never ceases to amaze. Employers are shocked that they are having trouble filling low wage jobs and blame enhanced unemployment benefits, but even when half the states stop the unemployment benefits, still have trouble filling those jobs.

Supposedly a little over 600K people have died in the US from Covid (the actual toll is higher). The largest group is old people, driven by psychopaths like Cuomo killing them either deliberately or through vast criminal negligence.

But Covid has also hit the poor disproportionately, and it hit kitchen workers hard. If you’ve ever even seen a restaurant kitchen, let alone worked in one, you know why: they’re cramped, generally hotter than hell, and people have to be in each other’s faces.

While modern economics in its macro form is essentially astrology (but let’s not insult astrology), the core insight of marginal economics, that it’s the next customer, or widget, or worker that matter: the marginal cost, is important. If you go from having 2 people apply for every job to one person for every 2 jobs, the price point changes massively.

So there less people willing to work shit jobs at minimum wage (or below, for waiters, etc…)

It has been so long since the bottom end of the economy was hot in most places that few employers even remember it. The Massachussets Miracle of the 90s, for example. Local resource booms, etc… But for the majority of people there haven’t been tight markets for low-end workers since the 70s. In such markets you have to compete for workers; they set the prices,  you don’t.

Probably should have cared about poor people dying, if  you wanted to keep your wages down. Hard to have much sympathy for employers, who seem to have mostly not given a damn.

But most employers don’t realize that excess labor is something that was very carefully engineered, over two generations now, so that they would have low wages. It isn’t “natural” (or unnatural, to be fair) it’s a social choice. Cheap labor isn’t God-given, and it varies by place and time.

Meanwhile we have two other interesting events.

1) The decriminalization of marijuana, which is going to lead to a lot less people in prison.

2) The criminalization of homelessness, which is going to lead to a lot more people in prison.

The prison industry is a good gig for a lot of firms and people and even still provides a lot of jobs to towns that would otherwise have very few. You charge people huge rates to make calls, for anything in the commissary, even for books these days. Meanwhile you pay them a couple bucks a day to work, and on the back end, if you’re a private prison, you charge the government.

Any slowdown in the flow of prisoners is a slowdown in profits (and prisoners died in large numbers to Covid, too.)

America, fuck’yeah!

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Protect Yourself from Political Violence in the Age of Facial Recognition and Doxxing

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On August 31, 2020

85 Comments

We’re seeing a rise in right-wing militia violence, condoned by police. Police themselves are already using facial recognition to identify protesters.

American authoritarianism is likely to follow the Latin American model, which Americans taught in the School of the Americas, and which they have backed for over a century in many countries. It will be combined with elements of how Israelis treat Palestinians, because Israelis train American police departments.

In this model, most of the beatings, “punishment” rapes, torture, and murder are done by militias. The police never catch them (and some are members, as they are already), and, of course, co-operate with them.

This is similar to what’s already going on; various law enforcement seizing people off the street without showing ID, into unmarked vans and cars, except that it’ll be private citizens doing it.

Then, they’ll do to you as they please, and no one will help.

Don’t think that if you’re a squishy liberal rather than a left-winger that’ll stop them. They hate feminists and so on just as much as the left, and all my life I’ve read their screeds about how they want to rape them or hang them from lamp-posts.

They’re increasingly being given the nod, and at some point, this is likely to start happening in earnest.

Don’t think Biden will save you. He might slow this down slightly, but he and Harris are extremely harsh on public disorder, and their administration will only make economic and political conditions worse, creating the grounds for the next authoritarian right-winger, who will learn from Trump but be far more disciplined.

The US’s only real chance of avoiding this future is a “Hail, Mary” — something like AOC winning the presidency in ’24 or ’28.

Might happen, but don’t bet on it.

So, some simple guidelines:

  • Wear a mask when protesting, always.
  • Don’t bring your phone with you.
  • Don’t take pictures of protesters without masks, so they can’t be identified and doxxed. The ability to do both doesn’t just belong to cops — private individuals can do it just fine, and in any case, cops will pass on information to their buddies in the militias.
  • Use a pseudonym online if you’re seriously left-wing or liberal. This is especially important for women.
  • Make some efforts to manage your digital footprint, so you’re harder to dox.
  • Take some precautions in your physical life to secure yourself, possibly including living with people who will fight for you (and you for them).
  • Prepare to leave where you are and go somewhere else. Somewhere else in the US, perhaps, or somewhere outside the US. Remember that what is actually mostly untraceable is cash.

Perhaps I’m overly concerned or even alarmist. I hope so. But I’d rather give this warning, have some people take extra precautions and not need them, than not give the warning, and see people hurt or killed who might have avoided the fate.

I don’t like what I’m seeing. The right has been itching to really punish the left and liberals for a long time, and all it really requires is that authorities give them the nod and step aside.

That process has begun. It may be walked back, it may not.

Beware.

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Manufacturing Violent People

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On January 11, 2018

131 Comments

One of the largely unacknowledged problems of prison is that it manufactures bad people.

When someone is arrested, it is often a traumatic event. It’s backed up by the promise of violence, and even death if someone resists.

Police are often brutal, and, once in prison, one is surrounded by dangerous people. The least sign of weakness will make one into a victim, so one must pretend to be tough, no matter what. Months to years of living like that, plus the real possibility of new trauma from rape, assault, or battery, along with the certainty of living in near constant fear will likely give the person trauma and rage issues, and teach them that the best way not to be a victim is to be a victimizer.

When they get out…

This is made worse by the fact that once you’ve got a record, good jobs are largely closed off from you. Even a lot of bad jobs are, as so many employers do criminal records checks now that it is easy.

Poor, traumatized, and used to violence as a solution to problems; having been taught that admitting any weakness will just get you victimized, you’re very likely to turn to crime and even violent crime.

Prison in all Anglo countries created worse, harder criminals. By making a lot of poverty illegal, by locking up junkies (who should be in for treatment), and by disproportionately locking up minorities for crimes for which whites tend to skate (most drug use crimes), we tend to create the very monsters we think we are protecting ourselves from. And when we don’t create them, we make them worse.

There is another possibility: Norway has half the recidivism rate of the US because they treat their prisoners well. They don’t throw them into a situation with a great threat of violence, including rape, instead they genuinely try for rehabilitation.

Hurting people who have already been hurt makes them worse, not better, in most cases. It teaches them that violence is the way of the world, and that the strong do what they will to the weak. Victims become victimizers.

This is a choice. A lot of the people we lock up don’t need to be locked up: They have committed no crime of violence. There are other ways to deal with them, from medical help to removing their ability to do harm (like forbidding bankers to ever be involved with the financial industry ever again, seizing their ill-gotten wealth, and garnishing their income until they have paid back the billions they destroyed through their fraudulent actions. No money, no position = no power. But they can have good jobs which don’t pay more than median wages.)

And once they are in the system, we could choose not to treat them horribly, and not put them in a position where the other inmates will brutalize them further. This can be done, because other societies do it.

If we choose to perpetuate the violence, it is because, like Justice Clarence Thomas of the US Supreme Court, we think rape is part of the punishment.

Which, to be clear, makes us rapists. If you support criminals being raped, you’re little different from some asshole cheering a rapist on, screaming, “He has it coming!”

Perhaps, having tried cruelty for most of our history, we might consider trying a bit of kindness and a lot of “no harm”?

At the least, even if it doesn’t work (and the evidence is that it does), we wouldn’t be complicit in generating more violence.

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Police Now Steal More than Burglars

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On January 30, 2016

7 Comments

According to Harpers, in 2014 police seized more assets than burglars stole.

From Harpers Police Seizures

This is trickle-down kleptocracy in action. America is ruled by thieves, con artists, and corrupt officials (even if much of what they do is legal).

Police can generally seize any asset they say they think might have been used in a crime. They do not need a warrant, approval from a judge, or anything else. To get that property back, you must take them to court. In most cases, it isn’t worth it. This is one reason a lot of people in corrupt areas (or who have darker skin) don’t carry large amounts of cash.  It’s not the criminals one needs to worry about, it’s the cops.

But they can take anything, including your car, boat, and even home.

This is punishment without trial, and it is dead routine.

Welcome to your dystopia.

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The Vast Injustice of Linking Gun Purchases to the No-Fly List

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On December 7, 2015

15 Comments

So, Obama wants Congress to make it so that people on the No-Fly List can’t buy guns.

This is a terrible idea, and if you are for it, you are a terrible person.

The No-Fly List itself is a terrible idea. The basis of justice is that you cannot be punished without being found guilty of the  charges against you. You wind up on the No-Fly list without ever having a trial where you can see the evidence against you and face your accusers.

The details are shady as hell, with any number of government apparatchniks able to put you on the list with no review…but I don’t want to get into them, or into how many people are on it, or any of the rest of that.

Why?

Because it doesn’t matter. It’s a punishment enforced without conviction in a trial where you can face your accusers and see the evidence against you. Ideally, in Common Law countries, this should the option to be tried by a jury of your peers.

I am willing to make an “imminent harm” exception, which lasts for a few days, at which point a person must be charged or released–and, if charged, a trial date must be set in a timely manner.

The No-Fly list is only one part of the American justice system that is corrupt if held to this standard. Another example is Civil Forfeiture, in which police can seize your property without ever proving you committed a crime. This practice is now responsible for more property loss than actual theft. The fact that the Treasury Department is able to freeze assets due to RICO statutes before a trial is unjust. The same goes for anti-terrorism statutes that freeze assets.

All of this stuff is evil as hell. Want to punish someone by taking away their rights, whether it’s to own a gun, fly on a plane, or have money? Prove it in a court, with a sufficient preponderance of legal evidence, the ability to see that evidence, to face those who accuse you, and so on.

Obama is wrong on this, but then Obama arrogates the right to kill both foreigners and Americans without trial, so this should hardly be surprising.

This is fundamentally evil; it is one of the main things that America was founded to oppose and it is vastly unjust.

The entire American “justice” system needs to be overhauled. Plea bargaining needs to be removed entirely (yes, the system can run without plea bargaining), trials must occur in a timely manner, and everyone must have competent counsel (which would mean barring rich defendants from paying any more for private counsel than public defenders receive).

These are the requirements for JUSTICE.  It is something America, and a depressing amount of Americans, don’t even understand any longer.

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