London Falling (rioters respond to police abuse)

Wisdom Quarterly

WARNING: Explicit lyrics ("Killing in the Name Of" by Rage Against the Machine)

• Wave of violent rebellion rages across London
• US Police execute Katrina victims (Reuters)
• New Orleans police convicted in Katrina killings (CNN)
  
  

The number of UK police, whose abuse brought on the rioting, is tripled to deal with the country's worst unrest since the 1980s, adding gasoline to the fire. More



Meanwhile, in the US, Orange County begins to brew.



Protect and Serve (Themselves)

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Good thing our police do not abuse us in America. Our officers may be racist, sexist, and poorly educated, but they would never harm the most vulnerable members of our affluent society. Oh wait, unless such members are mentally disabled and helpless. Police can break laws, commit felonies on a routine basis, murder, execute, assault, and rape -- all under "color of law"?



But if abuse were ever the answer, the police would be right. And rioters should join the police force. The answer to all questions is compassion.



The wrongs police do are doubly wrong because they are done under color of law. A criminal act of mayhem is more reprehensible when six "officers" beat and electrocute a homeless and disabled man than when two sports fans beat a rival fan. The police were not satisfied to beat the face, Taser, and torment their victim; they thought it would be a good idea to kill him and then lie about it on official reports (a serious crime unto itself). But all of Los Angeles was in an uproar to find the assailant in the horrible Dodger Stadium beating. Now the same sort of crime that has sparked England, which twice before set off mass rioting in Los Angeles (most recently due to the abuse of Rodney King), threatens Southern California again.



It's good to "know your enemy." Most Americans watching riot footage on TV mistakenly assume that police protect citizens. The fact is they criminally abuse some of them.



But where will peace of mind and a serene heart be found? In a war zone? On the streets? During a riot? These things are of course found within and nowhere else. Paramilitary police forces cannot take them away even if they concentrate us in FEMA camps.



Having returned from the horrors of Afghanistan and Iraq, where do most soldiers want to show off their savage training? In police agencies around the country. It's the new world order -- force fighting force until nothing but force consumes the country.

• Fires blaze in London
• PHOTOS: Images of the UK violence
• Turkey presses Syria to end crackdown on protests
• [CIA's] social media used to spread Britain's riots
• Brazil fears Lost Tribe overrun by drug traffickers
• Fresh rioting touched off northwest England
• Farmers reject Paraguayan president's proposed tax
• Kenya burdened by famine refugees; Rape attacks up
• British police face public anger as riots rage
• 4 police officers found slain in western Mexico
• Germany at center of storm as stockmarkets dive

"Bulls on Parade" (RATM)

Homosexuality in History

Wikipedia (AGM, newgayearth.blogspot.com)

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi, transsexual) individuals are often reviled, but it was not always so.

Throughout history and across cultures, the regulation of sexuality reflects broader cultural norms.

Most of the history of sexuality is unrecorded. Even recorded norms do not always shed full light on actual practices, as it is sometimes the case that historical accounts are written by foreigners with cryptic political agendas.

In the earlier centuries of ancient Rome (particularly during the Roman Republic) and prior to its Christianization, the Lex Scantinia forbade homosexual acts. In later centuries during, men of status were free to have sexual intercourse, heterosexual or homosexual, with anyone of a lower social status, provided that they remained dominant during such interaction.

Androgyny and homoeroticism seems widespread in American superhero cartoons.

During the reign of Caligula, prostitution was legalized and taxed, and homosexual prostitution was seen openly in conjunction with heterosexual prostitution. The Warren Cup is a rare example of a Roman artifact that depicts homosexuality that was not destroyed by Christian authorities, although it was suppressed.

A fresco from the public baths of the once buried city of Pompeii depicts a homosexual and bisexual sex act involving two adult men and one adult woman. The Etruscan civilization left behind the Tomb of the Diver, which depicts homosexual men in the afterlife.

In feudal Japan, homosexuality was recognized, between equals (bi-do), in terms of pederasty (wakashudo), and in terms of prostitution. The Samurai period was one in which homosexuality was seen as particularly positive.

In Japan, the younger partner in a pederastic relationship was expected to make the first move; the opposite was true in ancient Greece. Homosexuality was later briefly criminalized due to Westernization.

The berdache two-spirit class in some Native American tribes are examples of ways in which some cultures integrated homosexuals into their society by viewing them, not with the homosexual and heterosexual dichotomy of most of the modern world, but as twin beings, possessing aspects of both sexes.

The ancient Law of Moses (the Torah) forbids men lying with men (intercourse) in Leviticus 18 and gives a story of attempted homosexual rape in Genesis in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities being soon destroyed after that. The death penalty was prescribed.

Similar prohibitions are found across Indo-European cultures in Lex Scantinia in Ancient Rome and nith in protohistoric Germanic culture, or the Middle Assyrian Law Codes dating 1075 BC.

Laws prohibiting homosexuality were also passed in communist China. (The People's Republic of China neither adopted an Abrahamic religion nor was colonized, except for Hong Kong and Macau which were colonized with Victorian era social mores and maintain separate legal system from the rest of the People's Republic of China).

Homosexuality was not decriminalized there until 1997. Prior to 1997, homosexual in mainland China was found guilty included in a general definition under the vague vocabulary of hooliganism, there are no specifically anti-homosexual laws.

In modern times eight countries have no official heterosexist discrimination. More

• Is homosexuality based on a brain chemical?
• Same-sex couples common in wild (LiveScience)
• Homosexual animals out of the closet
• Why it's okay for birds to be gay
• Wikipedia Project: LGBT rights by country