Month: May 2013

Harry Reid is Confused

Harry Reid appears to be confused. In his world, likely created by the onset of dementia, he believes that the Tea Party and anarchists are equivalent:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says the Tea Party is the main reason why things are not getting done in Congress and views it as a party of modern-day anarchists.

Reid on Wednesday afternoon stood by comments he made on the Senate floor last week comparing Tea Party-affiliated Republicans to 19th century American anarchists.

“I believe that, my experience with the Tea Party, is that they are against government in any form. They throw monkey wrenches into the government,” Reid said during an interview on the “Rusty Humphries Show.”

The Tea Party isn’t ready to rock with us anarchists. They’re like the metalcore fans at the death metal show. While they know some of the lingo and can name a some well-known bands they still complain about their inability to understand the lyrics and won’t venture forth into the mosh pit. Given a few years to mature they may be ready to rock with the big boys but they’re not at that point yet.

Through my mistaken adventure in libertarian politics I attended several Tea Party rallies. Most of the people attending those rallies would qualify, in my book, as being quite patriotic. They love the United States of America, the Constitution, an believe the government has been hijacked by socialists but is still legitimate. What most Tea Party members seem to want want to kick the socialists out of the government and replacement with good all-American conservatives. Tea Party members generally seem to be OK with the concept of taxation and believe we’re simply being taxed “too much.” The neoconservatives in the Tea Party movement (of which there are many) support having a large standing army and even believe that defense is one of the few rightful duties of the federal government. To understand the Tea Party one need only use a layman’s interpretation of the Constitution (as opposed to the convoluted lawyerly interpretation used by the state).

Us anarchists differ by opposing the state in its entirety. We don’t believe in any taxation, oppose standing armies, and don’t believe there are any rightful duties of a state. Those of us who identify ourselves as anarchist don’t believe that the government has been hijacked, we believe the government is running as intended. Whether socialists or conservatives are in charge is of no consequence to us because politicians on both sides of the political spectrum want to expropriate from the general population.

It’s true that many members of the Tea Party may eventually give up their small government desires and transition to no government desires. Tea Party members who transition in such a way will likely become anarcho-capitalists. This isn’t unique to members of the Tea Party though, many socialists and communists may eventually transition to anarchism, specifically anarcho-communism. With that said members of the Tea Party, socialists, and communists haven’t made that transition and many never make that transition. They’re toes may be in the water but they haven’t decided if it’s too cold to jump in yet. To say any of them are equivalent to anarchists are is completely wrong.

Encrypt Your Data

Do you want another reason to encrypt your data? According to a former Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) counter-terrorism agent everything electronic communication is being intercepted:

On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

Is Mr. Clemente telling the truth? Are all electronic communications being intercepted or is he putting out misinformation to make people believe the state is omnipotent? I’m not sure but encrypting your communications is the best defense against pervasive snooping and would render the state’s surveillance powers irrelevant.

At Least He Doesn’t Lie Exclusively to Us

Although I expect every politician to lie I have admit that Obama has a knack for it. Read the following excerpt from a story about Obama’s recent trip to Mexico City:

President Obama vowed Thursday during a press conference in Mexico City that the White House would continue pushing for an expansion of background checks to cover firearms purchases online and at gun shows.

“Things happen somewhat slowly in Washington. But this was just the first round,” Obama said. “I believe we’ll eventually get that done. We’ll keep on trying.”

[…]

“Frankly, what I’m most moved by are the victims of gun violence not just in Mexico but back home,” Obama said.

Then read this post from last week. Now explain to me how Obama is moved by the victims of gun violence in Mexico when he is obstructing an investigation into an operation taken by his administration that involved giving guns to Mexican drug cartels. If Obama actually cared about the victims of gun violence I would think he would want the investigation to conclude successfully.

It’s pretty dickish to tell people you feel for their plight when you’re part of the problem they’re suffering under.

I Love Living in the Era Gun Control Died

Gun rights activists are going to look back at this time period as the beginning of the end of gun control. Defense Distributed has announced the one thing that gun control advocates have feared, a handgun that can be printed on a 3D printer:

All sixteen pieces of the Liberator prototype were printed in ABS plastic with a Dimension SST printer from 3D printing company Stratasys, with the exception of a single nail that’s used as a firing pin. The gun is designed to fire standard handgun rounds, using interchangeable barrels for different calibers of ammunition.

Although the state can spend billions of dollars trying to combat printed firearms it, like the billions spent on stopping people from growing cannabis in their homes, will fail to accomplish the intended goal. Once something can be produced by anybody with minimal knowledge controlling that thing becomes impossible.

I doubt this handgun will be very robust or accurate but considering Defense Distributed indicated its intention to build an entirely printed gun last month and we have a working model this month it’s pretty easy to see how quickly this technology is going to mature.

Obama’s Empty Gitmo Promise

After reneging on his original promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison (Gitmo) Mr. Obama promised that he would really close Gitmo this time. Of course he has no intention of closing Gitmo because if he did then the facility would be closed:

The relevant law is the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA). This statute confirms the president’s power to wage war against al-Qaida and its associates, which was initially given to him in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed shortly after 9/11. The NDAA also authorizes the president to detain enemy combatants, and bans him from transferring Guantanamo detainees to American soil.

The NDAA does not, however, ban the president from releasing detainees. Section 1028 authorizes him to release them to foreign countries that will accept them—the problem is that most countries won’t, and others, like Yemen, where about 90 of the 166 detainees are from, can’t guarantee that they will maintain control over detainees, as required by the law.

There is another section of the NDAA, however, which has been overlooked. In section 1021(a), Congress “affirms” the authority of the U.S. armed forces under the AUMF to detain members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups “pending disposition under the law of war.” Section 1021(c)(1) further provides that “disposition under the law of war” includes “Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by” the AUMF. Thus, when hostilities end, the detainees may be released.

The president has the power to end the hostilities with al-Qaida—simply by declaring their end. This is not a controversial sort of power. Numerous presidents have ended hostilities without any legislative action from Congress—this happened with the Vietnam War, the Korean War, World War II, and World War I. The Supreme Court has confirmed that the president has this authority.

Since nothing is preventing Mr. Obama from closing Gitmo he must want it open, which means his promise to close the facility is empty. Somehow Obama’s supporters still believe he is against war. In reality Obama is just like Bush, a warmonger who gets off on the fact that he can personally order the assassination of anybody he wants. In fact Obama so enjoys order assassinations that he actually had to redefine “enemy combatant” and create new classes of enemies because he was running out of people to have butchered.

More Gun Control Hypocrisy

According to gun control advocates the state must use its capacity for force to prevent violent people form getting guns. After the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut Mr. Obama was one of the loudest proponents of gun control so it’s pretty ironic to see that he’s now considering arming rebels in Syria:

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has acknowledged his government is no longer ruling out arming Syrian rebels.

It is the first time a senior US official has said openly that the US is reconsidering its opposition to supplying weapons to rebel forces.

President Barack Obama – who rejected such a proposal last year – said the US was now looking at “all options”.

Something tells me that the rebels receiving arms won’t have to pass a background check. If, or should I say when, the United States starts arming Syrian rebels I don’t want to hear Mr. Obama ever talk about the need to prevent violent people from getting guns ever again. You can’t be against something you’re openly endorsing.

In addition to Mr. Obama’s hypocrisy this story also demonstrates the biggest flaw in the reasoning used by gun control advocates. They demand that the state prevent violent people from acquiring guns but the state is the biggest perpetrator of gun violence and has no issue arming violent individuals so long as those individuals server a political purpose. Demanding the state implement gun control is like putting a fox in charge of hen house security.

Magpul is a Company of Its Word

When the gun control debate was raging in Colorado Magpul said they would leave the state if the bills passed. After the Colorado legislature passed the bills in question Magpul said they had begun moving their operations out of Colorado. As it turns out Magpul is a company of its word:

On Tuesday morning, the company provided a little more detail about what it was doing in a second reply to Wooldridge’s query. It specifically referenced the manufacture of its sights and PMAG ammunition magazines, which, according to its website, can hold 10 to 30 rounds.

“We have started making PMAGs outside CO for the first time ever,” the posting reads. “The sights are made outside CO. We are actively moving forward with moving other items out.”

I like companies that actually keep their word. When I can actually find Magpul magazines on the shelves again I’m going to make it a point to buy a few.

A Moment of Metal

I write this post with a heavy heart because the metal community has lost a truly great man. Yesterday it was announced that Jeff Hanneman, one of the founding members and the guitarists of Slayer, died of liver failure. Traditionally such news is met with a moment of silence but that’s not how we do things in the metal community. We like noise! So please bow your heads for a moment of metal:

Back Online

Good news, if you’re seeing this it means my server is back online, running OpenBSD 5.3, and using the Nginx web server instead of Apache.

The only difference you may notice is Server Name Indication (SNI) is now working. What does this mean? It means you can use a secured (SSL) connection for https://blog.christopherburg.com/ and https://www.christopherburg.com/ (unless you’re still running Windows XP or an even older version of Windows, then SNI won’t work for you and you’ll have to keep using https://blog.christopherburg.com/ instead). Basically SNI allows me to have different virtual hosts use different certificates. Since I can get valid certificates for a single subdomain for free it’s cheaper for me to use a different certificate for each subdomain than to acquire a single certificate that is valid for every domain (if I made money off of this site I would have just purchased a certificate but I do this for free so you get what you pay for). I’m not sure if anybody will use it but it’s there for those who want to.

I’ll be tweaking things for a while so the site may be up and down throughout the evening.