Month: October 2013

Annihilating Third Parties

Following in the footsteps of Arizona, the government of Ohio is taking measure to eliminate the threat of third parties:

It’s in this environment that the Ohio State Senate has passed this bill which would essentially eliminate all third party candidates from ballots. In the bill, only candidates from parties which earned 3% or more of the vote in a presidential election would be placed on the ballot; all other candidates would be write-in options. Newly qualifying parties must also submit petitions with at least 55,809 valid signatures.

The bill would, in many ways, solidify the placement of the Democrat and Republican parties at the center of American politics. Voters must look up and remember the names – something which should be simple but many people simply vote party line, and this will create a discrepancy amongst parties – and write-in candidates must apply to be counted. Write-in votes are also counted much more slowly than others, if at all, meaning they will not be discussed in the initial analysis of election results.

Welcome to the reason third parties will never be allowed to gain prominence in American politics. The two ruling parties (which, for all intents and purposes, are one ruling party) already hold power. Because they already hold power they get to make the rules. When you get to make the rules you get to eliminate potential competition by erecting barriers to entry into your marketplace. If a third party in Ohio ever gets close to 3% of a presidential vote the required percentage will be raised to 5% or 10%. The percentage goal post will continue to be moved to ensure third parties remain in their place.

You can’t fix the political system through the political system.

The Future of Killbots

For those of you who thought I was joking about killbots I have bad news: I wasn’t joking about killbots. The state has been looking into killbots for some time and its search is starting to become serious:

A robot, equipped with an M240 machine gun, moves through the darkness until it stops under a stand of trees 100 yards from its squad of U.S. troops. The robot uses thermal imaging to detect enemy combatants hiding up ahead and aims its gun at them.

With a single command from its human controller, who is with the squad 100 yards back, the robot opens fire and takes out the enemy, saving the troops from a potentially deadly attack.

Eventually our government will decided that having humans withing 100 yards of the killbots is a liability and will attempt to move them back. Terrestrial drones require more immediate decision making than their aerial brethren so having pilots in Colorado won’t work. That means controllers will have to be near the battlefield and, eventually, the enemies of America will learn to strike those areas instead of fighting our terrestrial drones. After that happens our government will decide that having soldiers on the battlefield is dangerous regardless of proximity. When that decision has been made the terrestrial drones will be made autonomous and we’ll finally have fully automated warfare. Best of all, any innocent people who are killed by our autonomous killing machines can be written off as a software glitch.

The future is both amazing and frightening at the same time.

Without Government Who Will Trick the Mentally Disabled into Buying Drugs

Most police departments seem willing to do anything and everything to make drug busts. Granted, if I knew I was going to get a huge cut of the action via civil forfeiture laws, and I was a complete psychopath, I would do the same thing. But even if I was a complete psychopath I doubt I would stoop to this level:

Their son, who wished to remain unnamed, is noticeably handicapped and has been diagnosed with autism as well as bipolar disorder, Tourettes, and several anxiety disorders.

[…]

The ordeal began on the first day of school last fall. The family had just moved to a new neighborhood and their son began his senior year at a new school, Chaparral High, in the Temecula Valley Unified School District. Their son rarely socialized, so his mom was thrilled when he announced that he had made a new friend in art class on the first day of school.

“We were so excited. I told him he should ask his friend to come over for pizza and play video games,” says Catherine Snodgrass, “but his new friend always had an excuse.”

His new friend, who went under the name of Daniel Briggs, was known as “Deputy Dan” to many students because it was so apparent to them that he was an undercover officer. However, to their son, whose disabilities make it hard for him to gauge social cues, Dan was his only real friend.

Dan reportedly sent 60 text messages to their son begging for drugs. According to his parents, the pressure to buy drugs was too much for the autistic teen who began physically harming himself.

The Snodgrass’ son finally agreed to buy Dan the pot. Dan give him twenty dollars and it took him three weeks to buy a half joint of pot off a homeless man downtown. This happened twice. When Dan asked a third time, their son refused and Dan cut off all communication.

[…]

On December 11, 2012 armed police officers walked into their son’s classroom and arrested him in front of his peers. He was taken to the juvenile detention center, along with the 21 other arrestees, where he was kept for 48 hours. First hand reports claim that the juvenile center was caught off guard by the large number of arrests and that some youths had to sleep on the floor, using toilet paper as pillows.

Listen, if you’re working for a police department and trying to rake in cash through drug busts there are plenty of actual drug dealers and consumers out there. You don’t have to prey on children who have mental disabilities. I know they’re easy targets and practically a guaranteed bust, but there are far more honorable ways of expropriating wealth from the people. Set up speed traps, issue parking citations, or anything else that doesn’t require you to prey on children who lack, and will never have, full mental faculties.

Pure Sensationalism

One of my friends posted this story from Natural News, a site known for sensationalist stories. This story fell within my area of expertise so I found it more annoying than most sensational articles posted on that site. According to the article:

(NaturalNews) We have already established that Healthcare.gov is not a functioning database application that allows people to shop for competing health plans. It is actually a government-run Trojan Horse that suckers people into creating accounts where they hand over:

• Name and address
• Email address and password
• Social security number
• Private bank account details
• Employer details and other information

During the enrollment process, your computer also hands over your IP address which is then tied to your social security number.

This time the emphasis isn’t mine. With the exception of your Social Security number and employment history all of these things are handed over to any site you buy products from. With that information your Social Security number can be found for $0.25 through services like Tracers Information (I was Kevin Mitnik bring up a volunteer’s Social Security number using this site in the Social Engineering Village at Defcon 21). And, more to the point, this is all information that the federal government already has. In fact the federal government is the organization that gave you the damn Social Security number in the first place.

The article then goes on to claim that all of that information is transmitted to the National Security Agency (NSA). Why would the NSA have to get Healthcare.gov to send it that information? Thanks to Edward Snowden we know that the NSA is spying on people directly through direct access to Internet Service Providers (ISP) and companies that offer online services (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.). As a federal agency the NSA also has access to your driver license records (name and address), Social Security information, and bank information (financial institution regulations are glorious, aren’t they). A simple peek at your bank account will almost certainly reveal who you’re working for (and who you have worked for). The NSA doesn’t need a healthcare website to get all of this information, it has setup a pervasive surveillance apparatus to get all of this information already.

The reason these types of articles piss me off is because they drum up unnecessary fear of technology. In order to overcome tyranny fear must first be alleviated. Or, to put it another way, the only way to fight gods is to first prove that they’re not gods. So stop with the fear mongering and sensationalism. It’s annoying because I then have to explain all of this shit to my less technically minded friends.

My Adventures in Open Carrying

As you probably know whenever I go for bike rides I open carry a firearm. I don’t do this for political activism, I just have no practical method of concealing a firearm when I’m riding a bike. Through all of my rides I haven’t had a single negative encounter. Yesterday afternoon I decided to take a ride into Minneapolis. As I approached Minneapolis I saw two bike cops ahead of me. Since they were pedaling slowly I decided to pass them. What did they do? Nodded to me. Then, on my way back, I passed them again underneath the Twins Stadium. Again, they nodded and otherwise ignored me.

How have I managed to openly carry a firearm in, what is probably, hippy infested bike trails in Minneapolis? How did I managed to encounter the same two cops twice without them hassling me? The answer to both of these questions is easy: I’m not a dick. If you read Gun Nuts Media’s post about how to properly open carry you’ll notice that bullet point one and ten are both don’t be a dick. Not being a dick is probably one of the most effective methods of living a good hassle-free life.

At all times I attempt to conduct myself in a professional manner. Sometimes I fail at this, but most of the time I’m pretty calm and collected. As an anarchist I’m not a big fan of police. They’re the state’s enforcers and, in our society especially, do far more to harm people than good. But I don’t scream “Fuck you, pig!” every time I see a police officer. Why? Because there is nothing to be gained from being a dick. It harms my advocacy of anarchism as a peaceful philosophy, it harms my advocacy of gun owners being peaceful people, and it may harm me physically. If you’re a dick to somebody they’re probably going to return the favor.

As the Gun Nuts Media article systems, don’t be a dick when you’re openly carrying a gun. It makes us gun owners look bad. I will also add in that you shouldn’t be a dick even when you’re not carrying a gun. It makes everybody you associate with look bad and it makes everybody’s life miserable.

Karma is a Bitch

It seems that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) new multi-billion dollar data center is having some problems:

The NSA’s new data-storage center in Utah has suffered a series of mysterious meltdowns in the past year.

Officials told the Wall Street Journal that 10 fiery explosions, known as arc-fault failures, have ripped apart machinery, melted metal and destroyed circuits. The repeated meltdowns have delayed the opening of the one-million square foot facility by 12 months.

I love karma.

Risk Assessment

I’m beginning to think that the downfall of our society won’t be caused by economic hardship but by our society’s ever growing unwillingness to accept any risk. Consider this story:

That’s what parents are asking after hearing about a Long Island middle school’s decision to ban most balls during recess and also require supervision of tag, even cartwheels, due to safety concerns.

No longer allowed at the Weber Middle School in Port Washington, New York: footballs, baseballs, soccer balls, lacrosse balls and any other hardballs that could injure a child. Also off limits: rough games of tag and cartwheels unless an adult supervisor is on hand.

“We want to make sure our children have fun but are also protected,” Dr. Kathleen Maloney, superintendent of Port Washington Schools, said in a local television interview, noting how playground injuries can “unintentionally” become very serious.

Even at a very young age children are being taught that risk is unacceptable. While playground injuries are never favorable they are also notably rare when you consider how many students play on playgrounds versus how many students are injured on playgrounds. Combine that ratio with the fact that a vast majority of playground injuries are likely minor scrapes and cuts. How often has a kid been killed playing football. I’m sure somebody can point out one or two stories but such an occurrence is statistically rare.

But banning games involving balls and unsupervised tag reinforced a zero tolerance policy of risk. When you think about it, much of the ills our society faces may be attributed to an unwillingness to accept risk. Economic polices are an example of this. The Federal Reserve, and with it ills such as fractional reserve banking and continuous inflation, was put in place to supposedly mitigate the risk of booms and busts (it failed obviously). Whenever a single company manages to commit an act of fraud the state moves in with sweeping legislation that causes hardship for every other company. These laws are usually met with widespread support form the general public who believes our society must do something to ensure the risk of fraud is wiped from the face of the Earth. Outside of economics, the Affordable Car Act (ACA) is another example of our society being unwilling to accept risk. In the hopes of eliminating the risk of uninsured people there was a law supported by some very loud individuals for a law that mandates everybody buy insurance.

Risk can never be abolished. It is ever present in everything we do. Since it cannot be eliminated we must learn how to live with it. Risk assessment is an important skill, one that cannot be learned in a sterile world where we’re taught only to consider risk unacceptable. The harder we work to eliminate all risk the more risky our society it likely to become.

Cause and Effect of Anti-Bullying Laws

One of the current crusades of the social justice movement is to bully bullies. By passing anti-bullying policies, which tend to work by prohibiting free speech and expression, school administrators believe they can bully kids into not bullying kids. It’s a rather strange theory; one that doesn’t seem to be panning out:

It started as a simple look at bullying. University of Texas at Arlington criminologist Seokjin Jeong analyzed data collected from 7,000 students from all 50 states.

He thought the results would be predictable and would show that anti-bullying programs curb bullying. Instead — he found the opposite.

Jeong said it was, “A very disappointing and a very surprising thing. Our anti-bullying programs, either intervention or prevention does not work.”

The study concluded that students at schools with anti-bullying programs might actually be more likely to become a victim of bullying. It also found that students at schools with no bullying programs were less likely to become victims.

Once again we see the Law of Erisian Escalation coming into play. By imposing order in the form of anti-bullying policies school administrators have cause chaotic bullying to escalate. This stems from the fact that bullying is a societal matter, no a legal matter. Trying to solve societal matters through legal means is a recipe for failure. By definition the lawless don’t comply with the law. Passing laws to curtail the lawless is like dumping kerosene on a fire to put it out; you only make the lawless person more lawless and the problem persists (or gets worse).

What Anarchy Looks Like

People often mistaken anarchy with roaming gangs of Molotov cocktail throwing angst-filled teens. It’s a cute vision that statists can tell their children during bedtime stories to scare them into compliance but the reality of anarchy is quite different. Anarchy, when you boil everything down, is the opposition of hierarchy. We anarchists don’t like rulers. So what happens when people finally begin to ignore those who claim a right to rule? Acts of civil disobedience:

Park authorities have issued citations for 21 tourists and visitors who entered Grand Canyon National Park after the government shutdown started. And in response — and in the face of the furlough of other workers — the park has bolstered its security team to monitor the land around the clock.

[…]

Despite the shutdown and the closure of the park, Mr. Wright said law enforcement will patrol the site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Meanwhile, most park workers outside of the security and law enforcement section have been furloughed.

Isn’t it funny how the state has the money to pay thugs to issue citations during this “shutdown”? More to the point, these are the kinds of acts you can expect during a time when people finally begin opposing their rulers. Violence isn’t the inevitable outcome. Most people, after becoming dissatisfied with their rulers, simply go about their business as always. Usually the rulers bring armed thuggery into the equation because violence is all they know but, in general, most people act just as peaceful when they no longer acknowledge their rulers as when they do.