Month: July 2014

If You Don’t Like it Move to Somalia

If you’re an anarchist, or even if you’re a statist libertarian, you’ve probably been at the receiving end of reductio ad somalium numerous times. According to statists Somalia is the prime example of anarchy (and they ignore the fact that Somalia today is better off than it was under its former federal government [PDF]). Of course such claims are bullshit. Somalia now has a federal government, which was merely an evolution of its United Nations backed transitional government. If there weren’t enough to prove Somalia is far from anarchy there are also United States troops in the country causing unknown amounts of havoc:

(Reuters) – U.S. military advisors have secretly operated in Somalia since around 2007 and Washington plans to deepen its security assistance to help the country fend off threats by Islamist militant group al Shabaab, U.S. officials said.

The comments are the first detailed public acknowledgement of a U.S. military presence in Somalia dating back since the U.S. administration of George W. Bush and add to other signs of a deepening U.S. commitment to Somalia’s government, which the Obama administration recognized last year.

The deployments, consisting of up to 120 troops on the ground, go beyond the Pentagon’s January announcement that it had sent a handful of advisors in October. That was seen at the time as the first assignment of U.S. troops to Somalia since 1993 when two U.S. helicopters were shot down and 18 American troops killed in the “Black Hawk Down” disaster.

Somalia isn’t an example of what happens in the absence of government. It’s an example of what happens when multiple governments intertwine themselves in a single geographic region. If anything Somalia is an example of too much government. Between the United States mucking about and the United Nations mucking about it’s easy to see why Somalia is still in a state of chaos after the collapse of its former federal government.

TSA Develops New Scam to Steal Your Stuff

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will soon have to change its name to the Thieves’ Guild. While it has been stealing trinkets from airline passengers for ages now but it has had to steal more valuable items behind closed doors. That will no longer be the case! The TSA has developed a new scam to separate you from your stuff:

The TSA now requires that you power on your gadgets when flying to the US from “certain overseas airports.” If you have a dead battery, you’re out of luck. You’ll likely have to leave that hardware behind, and you might go through “additional screening” at the same time.

Did you run your laptop’s battery down at the meeting before flying back home? That’s too bad because it will now become the property of the TSA. Did your cellphone battery run out while you were taking pictures on your last day of vacation? The TSA thanks you for donating your cellphone to its agents.

There are so many things that are wrong with this new policy that I don’t know where to begin. First of all the fancy baggage x-ray machines can already see the contents of your electronic devices. If the screener misses a fucking bomb hidden inside of the case then he shouldn’t be screening. Anything. Ever. Because that’s a major mishap. Second of all there have been no cases of an attacker smuggling a bomb onto a plane inside of an electronic device. This is probably because the baggage x-ray machines would see it. Third of all having every passenger power on every electronic device they’re carrying is going to slow down security lines a lot. After all many passengers fly with a laptop and a cell phone at a minimum. Others also fly with an e-book reader, handheld game system, portable music player, smartwatch, camera, and so on. This policy would actually bring the entire Las Vegas airport to a grinding halt if TSA implemented it during Defcon.

This is another case of the TSA playing security theater and whenever it does that it almost always involves taking passenger’s stuff. And the best part about this theater is the ticket prices will soon be increasing. There’s nothing like having to pay somebody more money so they can steal more of your shit.

I’m Not the Only One Who Sees Hillary Clinton as the Ideal Republican Candidate

I’ve been saying that Hillary Clinton is the perfect Republican presidential candidate and have been telling people that she may be the first candidate in history to receive the endorsement from both the Republican and Democratic parties. As it turns out I’m not the only one who thinks this:

Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It’s easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton’s making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.

One thing is certain, the Republican Party has had fallen on hard times during the last couple of election. It can’t seem to find the magic formula of war monger, social conservative, fiscal irresponsibility, and electability. McCain was fielded because he was the war mongers war monger but he lacked the charisma (which is probably 90 percent of electability) of his opponent. Then the Republican Party fielded Romney who didn’t stand a chance of appealing to the war mongers after Obama completed his extremely bloody first term.

Now we have Hillary Clinton. Her war mongering credentials are fantastic. While she’s not a social conservative in the traditional sense her hatred of Middle Easterners more than makes up for it. She has no problem being fiscally irresponsible as her recent claims of being broke demonstrate. And she is certainly electable considering how well she appeals to people in both parties. There is no way the Republican Party will find anybody better within its own ranks so it might as well endorse her and call it a day.

Minnesota Gun Rights Continues to Look Like a Scam

Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) is a local affiliate organization of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR). If you’re never heard of NAGR, and I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t, it’s an organization that labels itself as a “no compromise” gun rights advocacy group. In reality it is an organization that appears to exist solely to separate gullible gun owners from their money. Likewise, I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve never heard of MGR. It’s a fairly new organization in Minnesota that mirrors its national affiliate organization in providing gun owners no tangible benefit whatsoever but constantly begging them for money.

One may wonder how I came to my conclusion regarding MGR. It’s simple really, I hang out with a lot of the people it targets. By calling itself a “no compromise” gun rights organization it targets people who believe the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA) has compromised too often in the battle for gun rights. Many of these people are members of the local liberty-lite (my name for people who call themselves liberty advocates but continue believing that there should be a government) and liberty (anarchists) movements. Whenever one of these people posts about their dissatisfaction with GOCRA somebody jumps in to promote MGR. On July 4th one of my friends posted about his dissatisfaction with GOCRA. Within hours a person who I know to be one of the kingpins in MGR swooped in (please note that I have anonymized all comments except my own because it may be possible to determine the identity of my friend by using me and the commenters as connections):

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This is always the tag line they use. If I didn’t know otherwise I would believe this commenter to be an automated bot written by some stooge at MGR. Either way I don’t take scammers targeting my friends lightly so I decided to jump into the fray:

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My attempt at both trolling MGR and preventing a friend from giving money to a, as far as I know, scam organization elicited a response from a second MGR shill:

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In all honesty this is the most information I’ve ever gotten out of an MGR shill. Apparently the only way you can find out what the organization does is by attending its super secret (since they’re not posted anywhere on MGR’s website) weekend classes (which MGR probably charges for). The last time I heard about an organization that required people to attend super secret meetings just to find out what it does there were tests for thetan levels involved.

Since antagonization seemed to be working (at least better than any other tactic I’ve used to get information out of MGR shills) I decided to try some more:

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I guess he must have been in contact with the mothership because after divulging information about MGR’s super secret weekend meetings (which, I’m now convinced, may actually involve thetan level testing) he resorted to the usual MGR shill tactic when pressed for information: deflection:

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And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I decided to go for the jugular. Now that I know MGR hosts biannual super secret weekend meetings that supposedly explain what the organization does I decided to ask why that information wasn’t posted on its website. After all, you would think any organization that held regular events would have a schedule posted on its website letting people know when and where they are:

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I even performed a courtesy check of MGR’s website just in case some evidence of its super secret weekend meetings was posted since the start of the conversation (after all, it’s possible that nobody from MGR had thought to post information about its meetings to its website). Nothing was. Instead the shill simply said he would keep me in mind the next time one of these super secret weekend meetings occurred:

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How he planned to inform me of the next meeting when he doesn’t know me and we’re not friends on Facebook is beyond me. He didn’t send a friend request or anything. But I digress. If MGR has actually held any of these super secret weekend meetings in the past I would think some information about them would have been posted on its website (you know, so its shills could point to said information when somebody like me accuses it of not doing anything):

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What followed was a misunderstanding on my behalf:

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I believe my misunderstanding was honest. After all, if somebody said evidence that your organization has done something is entirely absent from your website and you said “Actually there is.” you should assume that that person will assume that you are referring to evidence existing on your website. But that wasn’t the case here:

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MGR must have been founded by the most operator of operators that has ever operated in areas of operations because it practices some extraordinary operational security. Its super secret weekend classes are, in fact, super secret. If you want to learn what the organization does you will have to wait for it to contact you, probably through a ninja courier, so you can get a personal invitation with the time and location of the next meeting. And you will probably have to memorize the information on your invitation because it will almost certain self-destruct five seconds after you receive it.

This, above everything else I have learned about the organization, reinforces my belief that the organization is a scam. It will gladly swoop in on vulnerable gun owners and ask them to give it money by whispering “no compromise” into their ears. But if its targets actually want to know what the organization does before giving it money that’s just tough shit. And, yes, I did let the shill know this:

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It was obvious that I wasn’t going to get further information out of him so I gave up. However I do want to take a moment to point something out here. Political and business tactics are often kept secret. But if I want to know what a politician is claiming to fight for or what a business is selling I need only ask. Both are more than happy to provide me with such information. Likewise if I want to know what a politician or business has done I need only ask. Again both are more than happy to provide me with such information. They both know that you need to entice people. If you’re a politician you get people’s attention by telling them what you’re fighting for. If you’re a business you get people’s attention by telling them what you’re selling. Providing a track record of past successes helps assure people that you’re not just trying to scam them.

No politician or business, upon being asked what it has done, is going to tell you to attend a super secret weekend meeting at an undisclosed location and time.

My recommendation is to avoid MGR. I can’t find any evidence that indicates it is anything other than a sad attempt to separate Minnesota gun owners from their money. Red flags should go up when nobody involved with an organization is willing to tell you what, exactly, the organization has done. Even if you have misgivings about GOCRA its members are more than happy to provide you with a list of things it has done, and proof that verifies that list, so you can make an informed decision. MGR’s members are unwilling to even do that.

Do as We Say! Don’t Do as We Say! We Don’t Know We Want!

You know how the government is always going on about clean, renewable energy? It seems to have a hard-on for wind turbines and solar collectors. So you would think it would be happy when its subjects install either wind turbines or solar panels. But that’s not the case:

An Orono man and his wife could end up in the Hennepin County jail if they do not remove a 29-foot wind turbine in their yard by Wednesday morning.

The city of Orono told Jay Nygard his wind turbine was illegal and was a public safety threat. Nygard sued and lost at the lower court and then won on appeal, but it was sent back to the lower court for further consideration where he ultimately lost again.

Now, the final court order says Nygard and his wife must appear in court Wednesday to start a six-month jail sentence, unless the turbine is removed by then.

Isn’t the government great? It has been harping on everybody to adopt renewable energy and when somebody does it threatens to kidnap them and hold them for six months. Since violence is the only tactic known to the state if Jay refuses to go along with his kidnappers he will be shot dead.

This Blog Blocked in the UK

I’m proud to announce that this very blog has been blocked by two United Kingdom (UK) Internet Service Providers (ISP)! Thanks to Blocked I was able to check this blog to see if it was being filtered in the UK. I found out that both BT and TalkTalk consider my content adult content!

As there is a lack of pornography on this site (I’m sorry, I just don’t have the time to share all of the good stuff) I’m left to assume that “adult content” is a euphemism for scary gun stuff. Either way I feel accomplished.

Everything We Do is Legal

It must be nice being the government. You get to make the laws, enforce the laws, and decided whether or not the laws are legal. So it should come as no surprise that after a very lengthy and deliberate investigation into the actions of its own surveillance apparatus the government has decided that everything it did was nice and legal:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency programs that collect huge volumes of Internet data within the United States pass constitutional muster and employ “reasonable” safeguards designed to protect the rights of Americans, an independent privacy and civil liberties board has found.

In a report released Tuesday night, the bipartisan, five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, appointed by President Barack Obama, largely endorsed a set of NSA surveillance programs that have provoked worldwide controversy since they were disclosed last year by former NSA systems administrator Edward Snowden. However, they urged new internal intelligence agency safeguards designed to further guard against misuse.

First of all I’m glad that we now know that everything the NSA did was legal. Talk about a huge elephant in the room that was in need of being addressed! Second of all, I’m glad the government is finally getting more efficient. Why have a massive investigation involving multiple departments and every member of Congress when you can just grab five random dudes and tell them to take care of everything? Hopefully we’re witnessing the beginning of a new age of government efficiency because it would be nice to just appoint a few guys to fuck us over instead of paying thousands of people to do the same.

Target to Customers: Hey Guys Can You Leave Us Out of This

So after being dragged kicking and screaming into the firearm debate, first by Open Carry Texas and then by Moms Demand Something or Other, Target has released an official statement regarding customers carrying guns at its stores:

As you’ve likely seen in the media, there has been a debate about whether guests in communities that permit “open carry” should be allowed to bring firearms into Target stores. Our approach has always been to follow local laws, and of course, we will continue to do so. But starting today we will also respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target – even in communities where it is permitted by law.

Emphasis mine. While the boys and girls over in Bloomberg’s camp are busy jerking themselves off because they believe that they achieved their goal of getting Target to ban guns (reading comprehension has never been their strong suit) the truth is nothing has changed. Target basically said “Listen, both of you, we don’t want to get dragged into this shit. We just want to sell you stuff so you give us money. How about it? Can we just do business?”

I know a lot of gun rights activists are concerned that Moms Demand Something or Other will one day get a business to actually ban guns but I’m becoming less and less concerned. Each time Shannon Watts and her very small posse gets riled up and starts targeting a business they always get the same response: a statement from the business saying that nothing has changed and they really don’t want to be dragged into this debate. And that’s likely the only response they’ll ever receive because it gets Shannon and her friends to shut up and issuing an actual ban would be bad for business.

As a person whose only interest in Target is doing business I appreciate its desire to also only do business.