Maui Government Terrorism and the Commissioners who Aid and Abet It

As I announced I would in the previous post, I commenced demonstrating with two simple posters on October 10 for several hours every other day at various high-traffic sites, just like politicians and various interest groups do – except, unlike those, I was at all times in strict compliance with ordinances regulating this common activity -- ordinances that politicians and others routinely violate.

One poster announced my blog URL: SueMauiTyrants.com.

The other poster said: Police Chief Phillips is a Crack Dealer and Child Molester.

In a small box at the bottom were the words "I swear this is true under penalty of perjury."

I stood with the signs in areas where lots of people drive slowly by. This gives me a large potential eyeball count and gives them plenty time to read the signs without risking an accident.
Predictably the Maui cops used their usual unlawful tactics in attempts to bully me into leaving the scenes because they believe my words are dangerous weapons. It's not about enforcing the law; it's about controlling and censoring political speech. The following are some of the ploys they used this time and routinely use if they object to a demonstrator's signs. Each is followed by my replies and comments.

Cop -- Show me your identification and tell me your Social Security number or I will arrest you.
KB – I don't have to show you anything because there is no reason to suspect that I am committing a crime.

Cop – Show me your identification or identify yourself. What is your name?
KB – There is no law that requires pedestrians to carry ID or to identify themselves.

Cop – You're obstructing the sidewalk. You have to leave or you will be arrested.
KB – I'm standing on a tiny area about one foot wide on the far edge of the sidewalk away from the road. And there's hardly any foot traffic. Who did I obstruct? (Just then four kids zoomed by us on skateboards, obviously unobstructed. I looked at him and smiled. Attracted by the altercation the kids wandered back toward us and I asked them to stick around and witness the likely police brutality and unlawful arrest about to take place. Passers-by were also watching. I believe these witnesses prevented the abuse and arrest I was anticipating.)

Cop – It's against the law to say false things about people.
KB – No it's not. Chief Phillips can sue me if he wants to, but I am not committing any crime.

Cop – We got a complaint about your sign. It's our job to do something about it.
KB – Just like the old KGB, huh?
Cop – What?
KB – Never mind.

Cop – You can't say stuff like that on a sign.
KB – As long as it's not threatening I can say anything.

Cop – How long have you been on Maui?
KB – None of your business.
Cop – (Insisting) How long have you been on Maui? (Flustered, he repeats the question several times, louder each time.)
KB -- That has nothing to do with anything. What does it matter?
Cop – (In exasperation) That's the trouble with you guys. You come over here, you been here one month and think you just can say whatever you want. (Note: This attitude is not inspired by racism but by extreme provincialism and localism. I'm Caucasian and grew up in Hawaii, but I lost the pidgin long ago, so I'm often suspected of not being local enough. There is an element of ethnic profiling for newcomers, be they whites, blacks, browns or Asians, so if you don't look or sound local enough you are more likely to be hassled. Ironically, it's even worse, as it always has been, for those who are the poorest and the most kanaka, i.e. descended from Hawaiian commoners. )

KB – How long does a person have to be here before his constitutional rights kick in?
Cop – (Long silence, then he changes the subject) Why are you demonstrating where there's so much traffic?
KB – (To myself) Duuuuhhh!! (Then to cops) I'll be doing this all over the island in coming weeks. If you look in the law books and find the law that makes it a crime to do anything I'm doing just show me and I will cease and desist.

After a half hour of this comical inquisition they left.

We need a new federal law. It is a crime to impersonate a police officer. It should also be a crime, a federal felony, for police officers to intentionally or negligently misrepresent the law in attempts to manipulate, indimidate and threaten people into surrendering their constitutional rights.

Outrageous as these confrontations were, at least I did not get arrested these times, and the hassle and stress I endured from them is nothing compared to the pain and terror caused by unlawful arrests and brutality that many are subjected to while in custody. There is no point in complaining to the Maui Police Commission about any of it. The Commissioners know very well what goes on and have refused for years to do anything about it. Their job is to provide a pretense that there is oversight of police conduct and discipline or prosecution for misconduct and criminal behavior. They are white-washers of police misconduct and crimes, engaged in a massive cover up. Until the Commissioners do their duties, including firing Chief Phillips, they are willing participants in the ongoing Maui government terrorism. As such, they are legitimate targets of political protest.

What can political gossipers and public protesters say about these people? Anything they want to say. Nothing they say could be as harmful as the perjury decriminalization policy, the police brutality and other violations of constitutional rights that the Commissioners refuse to put a stop to and thereby, in essence, aid and abet. Therefore, any non-threatening words constitute protected speech, and most emphatically so if they are mock sworn testimony, which makes them political satire.

For example, a sign might say, in large lettering:
Police Commissioner Andrew Bayron is an Ice Addict & Kingpin

A small note is added:

I swear this is true under penalty of perjury.

I don't know whether this gossip is true, but who cares? He doesn't care about the fate of those who fall into the hands of Maui's Finest Torturers who he is supposed to watchdog. Why should I shed a tear if people spread rumors about him?

The members of the Maui Police Commission are:

Andrew P. Bayron – Chair
Doreen N. Gomes – Vice Chair
Keone Ball
Verna Boonstra
Sean M. Connolly
Leil Koch
John Ornellas
Tina Pedro
Mark Redeker

Maui's future foretold:  Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com.

Links to all my blogs: www.KurtButlerblogs.blogspot.com 

For more detailed critiques of various forms of quackery, including naturopathy, see my book A Consumer’s Guide to “Alternative Medicine”.  It was expertly edited by legendary quack buster Stephen Barrett. MD. 

The critics say:

"Superb!" -- Dr. Victor Herbert in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Excellent" -- National Council Against Health Fraud.

"Five Stars" -- Cooking Light.

"Thought provoking; a great book" -- American Journal of Health Promotion.

 When the book was published almost 30 years ago it was strongly praised by responsible health experts and the rare responsible media, but trashed by new-age critics and even vandalized in bookstores by new-age fanatics. It is as true and relevant as ever, and has been mostly vindicated by time. Yet my courageous and far-sighted publisher, the venerable Prometheus Books, is still sitting on lots of copies. Please help validate their integrity by buying a copy. Or two or more as gifts. Perhaps 10 for your local school library and health classes. See their website for assorted discounts. Make them an offer. (My royalties are insignificant; this little promo is for the benefit of one of the world's great publishers, Prometheus Books.) 

Maui's future foretold: Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com. 

They'll Kill Me If They Can

This is an open letter to all Hawaii state legislators, various print and broadcast media, human rights groups and civil rights attorneys.

My life is in danger because I insist on exercising my First Amendment right to free speech on Maui where the Bill of Rights is null and void.

The Maui Police Department (MPD) is an out-of-control rogue agency whose agents have brutalized me numerous times (on one occasion causing a concussion and several subsequent TIAs that could have become lethal strokes) without cause and unlawfully arrested me several times. I won a lawsuit in federal court (at a high financial cost) for one of these arrests, trying to make a point, but rather than deter them and other government terrorists and kidnappers it has intensified their vendetta to the point where I fear for my life. The Maui Police Commission has dismissed every one of my complaints and shown that it is nothing but the MPD's whitewashing office.

Why do the government terrorists harass, assault and arrest me so often? Because they have nothing but contempt for First Amendment rights, and I am an outspoken person who they consider uppity. Like the KGB state terrorists in the old Soviet Union, Maui cops believe they can dictate what people can and cannot say vocally, in sign displays, and in leaflets. Subsequent to the arrest that a federal judge would later determine was unlawful, one cop told me I had been arrested “because you have a big mouth, you talk back and because of your personality.” I challenge anyone to find such a crime in Hawaii Revised Statutes. This exact quote illustrates the mindset of hundreds of petty tyrants who infest Maui's injustice system like blood-sucking vermin.

Even after I won the lawsuit this same officer, when he happened to be manning the intake desk at the central station where I had gone for some information about another officer who had recently arrested me unlawfully, called me a troublemaker and both threatened and predicted that I would soon be arrested yet again. He had learned absolutely nothing from the case, and his arrogant, bullying ways had not diminished one iota. To these storm troopers anyone who says anything that displeases or annoys them is a troublemaker and deserves a beating or imprisonment.*(see below) On several occasions anywhere from five to eight officers have converged on the scene of a “crime” – me displaying a sign that they or someone else did not like. These officers would make great cops in North Korea, Burma and other totalitarian countries.

My conscience dictates that I continue to protest the evils perpetrated by government terrorists in Maui County. In particular, for starters I will soon be standing on sidewalks around the island protesting the county's unconstitutional policy of felony-perjury decriminalization, which devastates lives. Because of this madness a criminal can file a TRO petition full of fantastic lies, then, when the automatic ex parte order is granted pending the hearing, make a false complaint to the police (they have decriminalized this too) that the order has been violated and thereby have the victim incarcerated – all with complete impunity. The first time this happened to me seven years ago I was jailed for two days, faced a year in prison and large fine, was dragged through a trial (I was acquitted by a jury) then two more years of court proceedings (to fight the patently unconstitutional order itself). I won and was fully vindicated by the state Supreme Court. All this cost me a small fortune and cost the taxpayers at least a half million dollars. But these government terrorists have learned nothing from their expensive defeat. Why should they? It's not their money.

None of this would have happened but for the illegal, indefensible, incomprehensible perjury decriminalization policy that turns crime victims into suspects, and the criminals into star witnesses against them. Maui police and prosecutors brazenly violate their oaths of office and ignore the law (thus violating separation of powers) that makes perjury a crime. Over a period of six years I repeatedly wrote letters of protest to the Chief of Police, the County Prosecutor, the Mayors (Arakawa and Tavares), the state Ombudsman, some legislators and other government officials. I complained that the policy results in unlawful arrests, denial of due process and equal justice, and makes every court proceeding involving sworn testimony a farce. I was ignored by one and all.

Then in June, 2006, lightening struck me again, this time far worse than the first time. Another scam artist ripped me off for hundreds of dollars of labor, then hatched a diabolical scheme to have me arrested using the perjured-TRO petition method that criminal scam artists know so well. It was so crude and obvious that only complete morons would have failed to see through it, and Maui's Finest did just that, failed yet again to distinguish criminal from victim. I was imprisoned for a month at MCCC where I was horribly abused; subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, humiliation and degradation; denied medical care for a serious and very painful condition; denied contact with an attorney; denied psychological counseling for the extreme distress all this caused; and never provided a copy of the complaint against me – which complaint was dropped when the prosecution finally realized they and the cops had been conned.

They should have seen the mistake within a few hours, but they were blinded by their long-standing vendetta against me and their incompetence. Once again, instead of learning from their mistakes the government terrorists continued their criminal vendetta against me by denying me justice at every turn. After my release I attempted to file a complaint of felony perjury against the scam artist, but the police and prosecutors flat refused to hear me out, look at my documents or investigate, just as they had seven years earlier. For nearly a year I repeatedly attempted to cajole them into bringing charges against the grifter and again I complained to numerous state and county authorities and, as in the first case, they all ignored me. When the criminal left the state I gave up and focused on trying to find an attorney to represent me in federal court in a lawsuit that would put a stop to such atrocities and compensate me for the brutal violation of my human and civil rights so I can get out of this hellish police state and resettle in a place where the Bill of Rights is respected and enforced.

This would be a sad move for me because I grew up in Maui County and have lived most of my life in Hawaii, but I no longer know this place or feel at home or safe here. I need to find refuge elsewhere just as political refugees flee other brutal dictatorships. Unfortunately my pleas for help have been completely ignored by 50-odd attorneys I have contacted. Only four responded. Two said they are too busy to take new cases, and two said that suing the county and state is too difficult and expensive to even consider no matter how serious the abuses and rights violations.
So now the government terrorists – the police, prosecutors and thugs with the Department of Public Safety (an Orwellian misnomer) -- know they can have their way with me, commit any crime against me, subject me to any atrocity, and violate my constitutional rights at will. This scares the hell out of me, but it will not deter me from my planned demonstrations. Unlike Hawaii's cowardly pseudo-journalists I refuse to surrender my First Amendment rights in order to avoid provoking government terrorists.

One sign I will be displaying is certain to send the MPD into a tizzy and possibly a violent rage. I know this because this sign set them off once before. My simple, peaceful, legal display of a 2' by 3' poster with nine words brought nine officers rushing to the scene. A plainclothes cop in an unmarked car saw me first. Then, without identifying himself, he accosted me, threatened me and tried to intimidate me into leaving. When I held my ground he called the posse, eight more cops. That's nine cops for nine words, one cop per word. They huffed and puffed, fumed and fussed, blustered, warned and threatened, but I remained standing on the public sidewalk with the poster.

They took photos of me with my dangerous weapon – nine words. If I hadn't experienced their moronic antics many times before I would have been astounded. They were close to arresting me at one point, but I warned them to call a county attorney first or I would sue them all in federal court. So they hung around while making some calls. Finally someone told them to back off. Adding up the cost of their time and their gas to and from the scene, their time at the scene, and their write-ups and miscellaneous expenses, it must have cost the taxpayers nearly $2,000 for them to harass me just this one time out of many. My warning them not to arrest me saved the taxpayers thousands more.

For years the MPD has been urgently recruiting because of a supposed shortage of officers, yet they always have plenty officers available at a moment's notice to rush around suppressing and censoring legal, peaceful speech. Maybe what the department really needs is a serious trimming of the fat along with much better training so the nitwits understand who the bad guys are and how important it is not to confuse the bad guys with their victims, and how important it is to protect and defend the constitutional rights of all people whether they are suspects or not.
I don't deny that the poster was inflammatory to hot-headed cops, but everyone else loved it. People were laughing, yelling “Right on, Bro,” taking photos, and flashing shakas. Tourists were going around the block to pass by slowly and get good pictures, so there can be no allegation that I was threatening or alarming the public. The police were the only ones alarmed, and that was because their gang leader was being dis'ed. They wanted to arrest me using the phony “disorderly conduct” pretext to violate my First Amendment rights, but someone talked them out of it.

Here is what my poster said: “Police Chief Phillips is a Crack Dealer & Child Molester.”
I don't know whether these allegations and rumors are true, but publicizing them helps to make my point. If the MPD and the Office of the Prosecutor can decriminalize perjury and thus repeatedly aid and abet criminals in their predatory kidnapping and persecution (fraudulent, malicious prosecution) schemes, then the victims of these vicious crimes have a right to say whatever they want about the government terrorists who allow this to happen and who shred the Bill of Rights every day. What's good for the manini is good for the sharks.

The media, behaving like Pravda during the Soviet era, stubbornly refuse to investigate my allegations about police misconduct and the perjury decriminalization policy, or to print my letters about being treated like an enemy combatant. When I once asked an editor of a large local paper to witness anticipated police misconduct against me while I demonstrated peacefully and legally, protesting a health-fraud store's anti-vaccination campaign, he accused me of trying to involve him in provoking the police, even though I had suggested he hide near the scene so the police wouldn't even know he was there.

This pseudo-journalist was not alarmed that the police would be provoked by a person engaged in the legal exercise of his First Amendment rights. What will he do when the government terrorists are provoked by an article in his paper and go to his office for a little chat? I am terrified of continuing to live in a society in which the media blindly ally themselves with agents and agencies that are obviously a threat to their First Amendment rights and their very existence. These people wave flags that say “DO Tread On Me,” but then they avoid being tread on by obsequious groveling and censoring themselves to avoid provoking the beast.

Much as Soviet dissidents used to reach out to the Western media to expose the atrocities committed by the regime, I will be reaching out to the mainland and international media as well as human rights groups to expose Maui's vicious police state and perhaps thereby stay their brutal hand. The most cost-effective means is sign-displaying on the airport road and in areas with lots of visitors, but this is very dangerous for me. My only hope of not being railroaded on a bogus charge, beaten to a pulp (again) or killed by local authorities in retaliation for my coming demonstrations is for legislators and the media to put Maui's government terrorists on notice that they will be watched and will be held accountable for any illegal actions they take against me.

The Hawaii State Legislature is largely responsible for my inability (so far) to sue in federal court. It has created a government of, by and for lawyers. It has given bar members an absolute monopoly on practicing law without imposing any obligation on attorneys to defend and protect constitutional rights. Given the widespread violation of rights here and the lack of attorneys willing to do an occasional case pro bono or on contingency to protect all of our rights, is it any wonder that the ACLU has told me it is too backed up to take new cases and therefore cannot help me?

Under these circumstances I should have a right to engage legal help wherever I can find it, even out of state. Federal laws, including the Constitution, are the same in all states, so what possible excuse could there be for barring an attorney from Alaska or Florida from representing me in federal court? Among the many attorneys who ignored me when I asked for help are a past- and a present President of the HSBA. One of them has the gall to market herself as a civil rights attorney, a specialty that is largely restricted to lucrative litigation involving alleged violations in the workplace and has nothing to do with helping victims of government terrorism. These attorneys are utterly lacking in a conscience and a sense of professional and social responsibility. Can you imagine someone contacting 50 physicians and asking for help for a serious condition, proper treatment of which might avert an epidemic, and being completely ignored? It would not happen, but with attorneys this ethic is the norm.

*Alternatively they condone and encourage criminal assaults by others who do not like a demonstrator's sign or leaflets. In March of 2007 I was demonstrating legally on a public sidewalk. Thugs who disapproved assaulted me viciously and caused four rib fractures and shredded my left shoulder rotator cuff, which will require surgery. The identity of the assailants is known, but seven months later they still have not been arrested or indicted. In this case I was protesting a health fraud store's crusade (in their weekly hour-long radio infomercial) against vaccinations, mammographies, and colonoscopies, and their fraudulent promotion of a wide variety of snake oils for serious diseases including cancer, which is a felony in Hawaii. The county and state value the tax revenues from the store above consumer protection in health care and First Amendment rights, and chose to aid and abet the criminals and allow them to attack me with impunity.

Links to all my blogs: www.KurtButlerblogs.blogspot.com 

For more detailed critiques of various forms of quackery, including naturopathy, see my book A Consumer’s Guide to “Alternative Medicine”.  It was expertly edited by legendary quack buster Stephen Barrett. MD. 

The critics say:

"Superb!" -- Dr. Victor Herbert in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Excellent" -- National Council Against Health Fraud.

"Five Stars" -- Cooking Light.

"Thought provoking; a great book" -- American Journal of Health Promotion.

 When the book was published almost 30 years ago it was strongly praised by responsible health experts and the rare responsible media, but trashed by new-age critics and even vandalized in bookstores by new-age fanatics. It is as true and relevant as ever, and has been mostly vindicated by time. Yet my courageous and far-sighted publisher, the venerable Prometheus Books, is still sitting on lots of copies. Please help validate their integrity by buying a copy. Or two or more as gifts. Perhaps 10 for your local school library and health classes. See their website for assorted discounts. Make them an offer. (My royalties are insignificant; this little promo is for the benefit of one of the world's great publishers, Prometheus Books.) 

Maui's future foretold: Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com. 

Sue Maui Tyrants

Sue Maui Tyrants

Maui (and probably all of Hawaii) has a dirty little secret: the Bill of Rights is null and void here. 
  
For example, in 2006 I was a 61-year-old crime victim seeking justice and violating no law, but I quickly found myself in state prison where I was assaulted, tortured, denied care for a medical emergency, told was a criminal and have no rights, denied contact with an attorney, told I would be there for at least several months and generally treated like an enemy combatant. I was:

Deprived of liberty without due process;
Deprived of liberty without equal protection of the law;
Deprived of liberty without benefit of counsel;
Deprived of liberty without being provided a copy of the complaint against me;
Subjected to cruel and unusual punishment during this unjustified and unlawful deprivation of liberty;
Subjected to unnecessary and wanton infliction of injury and extreme pain and suffering;
Subjected to use of force maliciously, sadistically and far out of proportion to any need;
Denied medical care for a medical emergency during this deprivation of liberty;
Denied access to a mental health professional though repeatedly requested;
Punished severely for exhibiting symptoms of emotional distress caused by the stressful illegal imprisonment, abuse, humiliation and degradation.

In short, I was subjected to punishing conditions that have been judged toxic to the mental health of death row inmates, even though I had not been tried (and never would be). Because of prevailing de facto policies, which violate official policy and therefore violate the law, all these horrors could happen again tomorrow, then again and again. To me or anyone else.  

On Maui behind the facade of aloha spirit, colorful leis and lovely hula hands lurks Maui's Injustice System. Also known as the Maui Railroad, it is an overgrown, repressive and violent bureaucracy. This so-called justice system -- comprised of the police department, the prosecutor's office, the Maui state courts and the state department of public safety (home of the prison guards, euphemistically known as ACOs or Adult Correctional Officers) – is a sewer of ignorance, arrogance, incompetence, abuse of power, brutality and widespread criminal behavior. There is no "aloha spirit" for locals -- the term is nothing but a marketing slogan and the spirit is only for visitors who can pay for the fraud.

Maui has sacrificed the long-time residents' quality of life and the aina itself (the land and environment) for the fool's gold of development and economic growth based entirely on the medium-high to high-end visitor industry. In the process it has shredded the Bill of Rights apparently in the belief that “justice” must be swift, even at the cost of often being wrong and cruel, so that uppity residents are never allowed to give the world the notion that all is not hunky-dory in “Paradise.”

The perverted dynamics of the prison-industrial complex ensure that all the agents of Maui's Injustice System have a vested interest in a large number of arrests and prosecutions. There is a built-in bias toward jailing people and keeping all prison beds full, including the third "bed", the one on the floors of all the "two-man" cells. Once you are arrested you feel the power of that bias and come to understand the word “railroad” as both noun and verb. When the Railroad targets you it is relentless like the Terminator or Yul Brenner's character in the Sci-Fi film Western World in which gunslinger robots go haywire and turn on humans.

Maui cops have a strong sense of gang identification and loyalty, and they retaliate brutally for any utterance taken as an insult to their gang. If a thrashing in broad daylight is too risky, they have lots of other methods of inflicting pain. They can lock you in a stifling hot squad car with all the windows rolled up, cuff you extra tight, twist the cuffs until your wrists bleed and their bones groan in agony, flex your wrist nearly to the breaking point or jam a thumb hard into the palm of your cuffed hand. Though I always listened, complied, and never resisted arrest, I have endured all these assaults – some more than once -- after I calmly made true statements critical of Maui cops.

If you protest or cry out in pain they will Taser you and charge you with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. They use Tasers to threaten and terrorize nonviolent suspects and persons of interest. They use false crack (surprise blindside) take-downs without warning or a declaration of arrest, often not because a person is dangerous but because an officer trainee is along and needs to be shown how it's done or the sergeant wants to show off to his new boy. Officers who are subjects of complaints are accustomed to complete exoneration by the Maui Police Commission, which routinely whitewashes nearly all police crimes and abuses. If you dare to file complaints with the commission you run the risk of being the target of a vendetta.

Maui cops often show hostility toward people exercising their First Amendment rights in perfectly legal ways. This may be a vestige of authoritarian old Hawaii or the luna system in the pre-ILWU days of plantation justice. Local commoners are long accustomed to repression, which suits the current economic lords well. Maui cops often lie illegally to intimidate people by pretending they have powers they don't really have. For example, they will demand, under threat of arrest, to see identification of a person sign waving if they or others don't like his sign, though there is no law requiring pedestrians or demonstrators to carry identification. They fraudulently claim such authority under the Patriot Act and hassle and detain people under this false pretense.

During one of these confrontations I told the cop who had threatened to arrest me that I'm on a public sidewalk and not violating any law. He replied that since I'm on county property and he is a county police officer and therefore owns the sidewalk, he can order me to leave. Now, can anyone seriously maintain that these are not among the most ignorant, arrogant, poorly trained cops in the nation?

Maui prosecutors are like prosecutors everywhere -- ambitious and egotistical. Some are also dishonest, ruthless, unprincipled and venal. They are uninterested in such minor matters as facts, truth, justice, fairness and constitutional rights. Nor are they concerned about the human wreckage they leave in their wake. They mostly want to fatten their resumes and have high win percentages. To succeed they do not hesitate to suborn perjury by cops and other witnesses. They slander people in court (they have complete immunity) and destroy the lives of innocent people and even crime victims without any qualms. They are the first in the line of rubber stampers on a railroad to a kangaroo court, then to prison. They also routinely violate the law requiring that crime victims be informed about the status of their cases.

Maui Judges are.... well, what can we say about judges who are not familiar with the landmark “Pentagon Papers” case (US Government vs. New York Times)? Even good high school journalism students know about it, as do most first-year law students. In that case the US Supreme Court ruled that prior restraint of speech or publication is unconstitutional. 

Yet a Maui District Court judge granted a TRO forbidding me to publish an account of crimes that had been committed against me, and two other Maui judges concurred. I cited the precedent-setting case, but they were unfamiliar with it and ignored my argument. I violated the order and was jailed. 

This is apparently the first time in American history that a person has been jailed for writing and distributing a book, a dark distinction that is emblematic of the repressive Maui Injustice System. I  appealed the order itself to the state Intermediate Court of Appeals and won on First Amendment grounds in 2004. The cost to the taxpayers of this prolonged travesty was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And what can we say about judges who make no bones about believing cops implicitly, naively and stupidly, and who routinely and openly value police testimony more than that of others. There is not even a pretense of separation of powers – is this not the very definition of a police state?

In 2005 I was viciously assaulted by five cops for insulting the department. As they confronted me, harassed me and one of them threatened me with a stun gun for no good reason I said, “You guys are turning this island into a fascist police state.” 

To the Maui cops' way of thinking this comment fully justified a thrashing. The beating caused a fractured vertebra, a concussion, at least one broken rib and, in subsequent week, because of injuries to the carotid artery, several transient ischemic attacks (TIAs or mini-strokes) that could have been lethal. The incident was whitewashed by the Police Commission.

In 2003-2004 I was repeatedly hauled into court on TRO petitions by the owners of the Alive and Well Health Fraud Store, who didn't like my signs and leaflets. They filed one TRO petition asking a judge to prohibit me from distributing the leaflets. It is denied. They filed another with a different judge and it is also denied, so the sore losers sue me for alleged defamation in yet another attempt at censorship. It too failed. A few months later, rather than reply to my interrogatories demanding evidence for their lying claims, they dropped the lawsuit with prejudice “in the interest of justice,” thus admitting that it was an abuse of legal process designed to do what the perjured TRO petitions could not – shut me up.

At one point in this long affair, while demonstrating and distributing leaflets quietly, respectfully and legally on a public sidewalk one of these same people harassed, threatened and assaulted me and stole my leaflets while his friends, a menacing little mob, encouraged him. When I attempted to defend myself from the threats, theft and assault the goon called the cops, lied about the incident and swore out a citizens arrest. 

Police prejudged the case by flat refusing to listen to me or file and investigate my complaint. The responding officer later lied under oath to cover up his misconduct and failure to investigate. I was convicted in 2004 of harassment and fourth degree criminal property damage for breaking the thug's gold chain in response to the attack. By their actions the police, prosecutors and judge aided and abetted the violent violation of my First Amendment rights.

The judge's reasoning was like something out of Alice in Wonderland: by attempting to defend himself, I might have made the unruly mob angrier and precipitated a brawl in which someone might have been seriously injured. Never mind that I did successfully defend myself and no one was seriously hurt. In this twisted way the judge aided and abetted the thugs in violating my constitutional rights.

In 2003 these same people had me arrested by an ignorant cop who demanded to see my “permit to protest.” There is no such thing. The Maui Machine doesn't get this yet, but in America people do not have to ask the police for permission to express their opinions. Another cop told me I'd been arrested “because you have a big mouth, you talk back and because of your personality,” illustrating that police contempt for constitutional rights is unabashed and unlimited. 

Links to all my blogs: www.KurtButlerblogs.blogspot.com 

For more detailed critiques of various forms of quackery, including naturopathy, see my book A Consumer’s Guide to “Alternative Medicine”.  It was expertly edited by legendary quack buster Stephen Barrett. MD. 

The critics say:

"Superb!" -- Dr. Victor Herbert in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Excellent" -- National Council Against Health Fraud.

"Five Stars" -- Cooking Light.

"Thought provoking; a great book" -- American Journal of Health Promotion.

 When the book was published almost 30 years ago it was strongly praised by responsible health experts and the rare responsible media, but trashed by new-age critics and even vandalized in bookstores by new-age fanatics. It is as true and relevant as ever, and has been mostly vindicated by time. Yet my courageous and far-sighted publisher, the venerable Prometheus Books, is still sitting on lots of copies. Please help validate their integrity by buying a copy. Or two or more as gifts. Perhaps 10 for your local school library and health classes. See their website for assorted discounts. Make them an offer. (My royalties are insignificant; this little promo is for the benefit of one of the world's great publishers, Prometheus Books.) 

Maui's future foretold: Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com.