wondered idly if male nurse was a sexist term, like woman doctor or female police officer. No one ever said female nurse or male doctor.
How can we escape from the trap that the terrorists have set us? Only by recognizing that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. We must, of course, protect our security; but we must also correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds. Crime requires police work, not military action.
Reason is, so to speak, the police of the kingdom of art, seeking only to preserve order. In life itself a cold arithmetician who adds up our follies. Sometimes, alas! only the accountant in bankruptcy of a broken heart.--_Heinrich Heine._
More impressive than the size of the silently protesting crowd was the orderliness and simplicity with which it was dispersed. Assured that Hinton had received the proper care, Malcolm approached the crowd, raised his arm, and gave a signal. One bystander described it as “eerie, because these people just faded into the night. It was the most orderly movement of four thousand to five thousand people I’ve ever seen in my life—they just simply disappeared—right before our eyes.” Malcolm’s silent command also left a strong impression on the New York City police. The chief inspector at the scene turned to Amsterdam News reporter James Hicks and said, “No one man should have that much power.”2
We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.
All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.
People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools.
"Poor man... he was like an employee to me."
Get up in one of our industrial centres today and say that two and two make four, and if there is any financial interest concerned in maintaining that two and two make five, the police will bash your head in.
The corruption in reporting starts very early. It's like the police reporting on the police.
Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.
Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to presume to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control. I could find no label that would suit me, so, in my desire to range myself and be respectable, I invented one; and, as the chief thing I was sure of was that I did not know a great many things that the -ists and the -ites about me professed to be familiar with, I called myself an Agnostic. Surely no denomination could be more modest or more appropriate; and I cannot imagine why I should be every now and then haled out of my refuge and declared sometimes to be a Materialist, sometimes an Atheist, sometimes a Positivist, and sometimes, alas and alack, a cowardly or reactionary Obscurantist.
Gens d'armes=--Armed police.
The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
Anyone stupid enough to be caught by the police is probably guilty.
Shirley MacLaine died today in a freak psychic collision today. Two freaks
in a van [Oh no!! It's the Copyright Police!!] Her aura-charred body was
laid to rest after a eulogy by Jackie Collins, fellow member of SAFE [Society
of Asinine Flake Entertainers]. Excerpted from some of his more quotable
comments:
"Truly a woman of the times. These times, those times..."
"A Renaissance woman. Why in 1432..."
"A man for all seasons. Really..."
After the ceremony, Shirley thanked her mourners and explained how delightful
it was to "get it together" again, presumably referring to having her now dead
body join her long dead brain.
"Poor man... he was like an employee to me."
-- The police commissioner on "Sledge Hammer" laments the death of his bodyguard
Woke up this morning, don't believe what I saw.
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore.
Seems I'm not alone in being alone.
Hundred billion castaways looking for a call.
-- The Police, "Message in a Bottle"
Another greeting card category consists of those persons who send out
photographs of their families every year. In the same mail that brought the
greetings from Marcia and Philip, my friend found such a conversation piece.
"My God, Lida is enormous!" she exclaimed. I don't know why women want to
record each year, for two or three hundred people to see, the ravages wrought
upon them, their mates, and their progeny by the artillery of time, but
between five and seven per cent of Christmas cards, at a rough estimate, are
family groups, and even the most charitable recipient studies them for little
signs of dissolution or derangement. Nothing cheers a woman more, I am afraid,
than the proof that another woman is letting herself go, or has lost control
of her figure, or is clearly driving her husband crazy, or is obviously
drinking more than is good for her, or still doesn't know what to wear.
Middle-aged husbands in such photographs are often described as looking
"young enough to be her son," but they don't always escape so easily, and a
couple opening envelopes in the season of mercy and good will sometimes handle
a male friend or acquaintance rather sharply. "Good Lord!" the wife will say.
"Frank looks like a sex-crazed shotgun slayer, doesn't he?" "Not to me," the
husband may reply. "to me he looks more like a Wilkes-Barre dentist who is
being sought by the police in connection with the disappearance of a choir
singer."
-- James Thurber, "Merry Christmas"
Q: Why do the police always travel in threes?
A: One to do the reading, one to do the writing, and the other keeps
an eye on the two intellectuals.
The Least Successful Police Dogs
America has a very strong candidate in "La Dur", a fearsome looking
schnauzer hound, who was retired from the Orlando police force in Florida
in 1978. He consistently refused to do anything which might ruffle or
offend the criminal classes.
His handling officer, Rick Grim, had to admit: "He just won't go up
and bite them. I got sick and tired of doing that dog's work for him."
The British contenders in this category, however, took things a
stage further. "Laddie" and "Boy" were trained as detector dogs for drug
raids. Their employment was terminated following a raid in the Midlands in
1967.
While the investigating officer questioned two suspects, they
patted and stroked the dogs who eventually fell asleep in front of the
fire. When the officer moved to arrest the suspects, one dog growled at
him while the other leapt up and bit his thigh.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
Fay: The British police force used to be run by men of integrity.
Truscott: That is a mistake which has been rectified.
-- Joe Orton, "Loot"
Did you hear that Captain Crunch, Sugar Bear, Tony the Tiger, and
Snap, Crackle and Pop were all murdered recently...
If you are a police dog, where's your badge?
-- Question James Thurber used to drive his German Shepherd
crazy.
"Are you police officers?"
"No, ma'am. We're musicians."
-- The Blues Brothers
"Fantasies are free."
"NO!! NO!! It's the thought police!!!!"
We may not like doctors, but at least they doctor. Bankers are not ever
popular but at least they bank. Policeman police and undertakers take
under. But lawyers do not give us law. We receive not the gladsome light
of jurisprudence, but rather precedents, objections, appeals, stays,
filings and forms, motions and counter-motions, all at $250 an hour.
-- Nolo News, summer 1989
"Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret
thousands of underground publications, a legal independent
Church, private agriculture, and the East bloc's first and only
independent trade union federation, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which is
an affiliate of both the International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labor. There is
literally a world of difference between Poland - even in its
present state of collapse - and Soviet society at the peak of
its "glasnost." This difference has been maintained at great
cost by the Poles since 1944.
-- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
to Poland
Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job
is to enforce the law and fight crime.
-- P. B. A. President E. J. Kiernan
Encyclopedia Salesmen:
Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police</p>
and tell them your house is being burgled.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
Break into jail and claim police brutality.
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
probably parked.
Nobody shot me.
-- Frank Gusenberg, his last words, when asked by police</p>
who had shot him 14 times with a machine gun in the Saint
Valentine's Day Massacre.
Only Capone kills like that.
-- George "Bugs" Moran, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran.
-- Al Capone, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
Host: No.
Host: About the drugs?
Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
The neighbors?
complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
ask the host to quiet things down?
Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
down.
Since aerosols are forbidden, the police are using roll-on Mace!
"And kids... learn something from Susie and Eddie.
If you think there's a maniacal psycho-geek in the
basement:
1) Don't give him a chance to hit you on the
head with an axe!
2) Flee the premises... even if you're in your
underwear.
3) Warn the neighbors and call the police.
But whatever else you do... DON'T GO DOWN IN THE DAMN BASEMENT!"
-- Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th
The Thought Police are here. They've come
To put you under cardiac arrest.
And as they drag you through the door
They tell you that you've failed the test.
-- Buggles, "Living in the Plastic Age"
"Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex."
(Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
-- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
FORTUNE'S RULES TO LIVE BY: #23
Don't cut off a police car when making an illegal U-turn.
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get
the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in
college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural
method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall
learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should
be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the
young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.
I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not
by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise
instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the
attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools,
not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to
put on a professor.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Unknown person(s) stole the American flag from its pole in Etra Park sometime
between 3pm Jan 17 and 11:30 am Jan 20. The flag is described as red, white
and blue, having 50 stars and was valued at $40.
-- Windsor-Heights Herald "Police Blotter", Jan 28, 1987
Only two kinds of witnesses exist. The first live in a neighborhood where
a crime has been committed and in no circumstances have ever seen anything
or even heard a shot. The second category are the neighbors of anyone who
happens to be accused of the crime. These have always looked out of their
windows when the shot was fired, and have noticed the accused person standing
peacefully on his balcony a few yards away.
-- Sicilian police officer
A man pleaded innocent of any wrong doing when caught by the police</p>
during a raid at the home of a mobster, excusing himself by claiming that he
was making a bolt for the door.
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be
to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to
say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party
next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake
up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been
indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a
recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their
own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ...
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door,
unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that
they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone,
your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
-- Dave Barry
Nobody takes a bribe. Of course at Christmas if you happen to hold out
your hat and somebody happens to put a little something in it, well, that's
different.
-- New York City Police Commissioner (Ret.) William P.
O'Brien, instructions to the force.
We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an official
name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu". You
may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another
setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that said "ELECTROCUTION".
Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a)
your teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing
process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple
of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your
mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that
would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is how the
You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #15
A: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Q: What was the greatest achievement in taxidermy?
Support your local police force -- steal!!
We are governed not by armies and police but by ideas.
-- Mona Caird, 1892
"Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you still have to
argue it point by point. Especially since most minimalists want to
keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them
privileged. That's libertarians for you -- anarchists who want police</p>
protection from their slaves!"
-- Coyote, in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Green Mars"
<Davide> how bout a policy policing policy with a policy for changing the
police policing policy
Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and
tries to hide behind a beard. No good. There are still too many people
and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking. He moves to the
outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap,
caretaker included. He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants,
day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored.
Nobody's cut the grass in months. What's happened to that caretaker?
What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are
start to get curious. A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper.
Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared. The senior
class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a
movie one night and stays out. The town's up in arms, but just before the
home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going
now. They're in a band.
-- Ira Kaplan
-- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even Dial-A-Footballer.
But the south-east Victorian town of Sale has produced one to top them all.
Dial-A-Wombat.
It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a telephone
call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a wombat in the
phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said.
Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety, members of
the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a drunk.
But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone booth.
The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again, threw its
bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a nearby scrub.
Then the officers received another message ... another wombat in
another phone booth.
There it was: *Another* angry wombat trapped in a telephone booth.
The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary custody and
released it, too, in the scrub.
But on their way back to the station they happened to pass another
telephone booth, and -- you guessed it -- another imprisoned wombat.
After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a suspect,
and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons.
Their problem ... they cannot find a law against placing wombats in
telephone booths.
-- "Newcastle Morning Herald", NSW Australia, Aug 1980.
"I would remind the district-attorney," said the President, "that Police-Inspector Javert, recalled by his duties to the capital of a neighboring arrondissement, left the court-room and the town as soon as he had made his deposition; we have accorded him permission, with the consent of the district-attorney and of the counsel for the prisoner."