Dissident Veteran For Peace: The Last Words of Otto Zehm

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Sunday, January 08, 2012

The Last Words of Otto Zehm

"All I wanted was a Snicker's bar." According to one of the seven police officers who helped killed him, those were the last words of Otto Zehm. Zehm was a 36-year-old mentally disabled janitor who died after lingering in a coma for two days after he was beaten with a baton, tasered multiple times, and hogtied on March 20, 2006, by Spokane police for a crime that was not committed. As of this writing, only one cop was charged in the death and although he was convicted by a jury, his sentencing was recently postponed, and the verdict may get tossed out.

Labels: crime, police repression, video, violence