Month: December 2014

How Not to Get Killed By a Cop

So many people have been getting killed by police that I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to survive an encounter with one of those costume clad thugs with a shiny liability shield. I searched through several police department websites seeing if they had any tips or tricks but came up empty handed. It was then that I decided to consult with experts on modern policing, neocons and other petty authoritarians.

After some discussions I finally learned the trick to avoid getting killed by a cop and it’s really simple. If you encounter a cop you just need to be a good little slave, kowtow to the costume clad master, and beg the courts for freedom after you’ve had the shit kicked out of you because the cop didn’t want you to beat the ride even if you could beat the charge.

By simply allowing the petty man with a badge to scream at you, rough you up, and kill your family pets you can survive! At least some of the times. Really it’s up to the office and their decision will likely depend on whether or not they had the opportunity to beat somebody up recently or not.

Everybody is In On the Surveillance Game

This has been a bad week for my laptop. Last week my battery gave up the ghost. On Sunday the hard drive died. Finally on Monday the spare hard drive I swapped into the laptop committed seppuku. Since the hard drive I dropped in on Sunday night was my last spare drive I had to make a trip to the local computer parts emporium to acquire another one. While searching through the hard drives I came across something rather funny:

western-digital-surveillance

That must be Western Digital’s National Security Agency (NSA) edition hard drive.

Also, as a side note, when it comes time to choose a name for your laptop don’t choose Loki. Just throwing that out there.

Bathroom Wars in Minneapolis End Well

What bathroom should we use? That seemingly irrelevant question has drummed up a lot of political drama as of late. Arizona was looking to pass a law that would make it a criminal offense to use the “wrong” bathroom. A bigoted dipshit attempted to scare everybody into opposing a policy that wouldn’t criminalize “improper” bathroom and locker room use. In Minneapolis the question came up and, thankfully, ended in a relatively sane manner:

BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. — Minnesota’s high school sports league passed a set of guidelines for transgender student-athletes on Thursday, bringing months of fevered debate to a close.

Dozens of supporters and proponents packed the Minnesota Sports High School League’s boardroom, hoping for one last chance to sway members with signs, buttons and speeches about how the rules would give students a sense of acceptance or could cost them a spot on their high school volleyball team.

The policy, which will take effect next school year, allows transgender athletes to pick the team that fits with their gender identity and provides an appeal process for students whose schools turn down their request.

The new process for establishing eligibility will include written statements from a student’s parents or guardians and health care professionals regarding the student’s “consistent or sincerely held gender-related identity.”

I’m not a fan of begging for permission but at least this is a damn side saner than sending out costume clad men with guns and a liability shield to arrest individuals who fail to use bathrooms in a manner prescribed by a bunch of suit wearing bigots in a marble building. And this decision sticks it to the fucksticks that posted a full page ad full of fear mongering, which is awesome.

My Definition of Journalist

Politicians are again throwing hissy fits because they have so far been unsuccessful at definition what a journalist is. The definition of a journalist is a big deal for the freedom of speech because if the politicians are able to define journalist narrow enough they can squash all sort of the legal protections. This time around, just like all of the time prior, the politicians are trying to justify their attempts at stripping people of the coveted journalist title through fear:

Freedom of the press is essential. Freedom of the press is important to me. Freedom of the press is not going anywhere in Alabama.

With the national explosion of partisan political blogs and shady, fly-by-night websites offering purposely skewed and inaccurate interpretations of hard news events, I recently asked the Secretary of the Senate to put together a definition of what qualifies as a legitimate journalist.

My concern focused on the confusion that could result if a number of partisan bloggers requested official credentials to cover legislative happenings from the press rooms located in the rear of each chamber at the State House.

If they don’t define what a journalist is then anybody could potentially go into marble building in which our overlords dictate degrees and report on what’s going on. The need to squash such a possibility is obvious.

As I enjoy being helpful I have decided to put forth a definition of journalist that I believe will work for everybody. So here it is, a journalist is anybody or anything (because someday artificial intelligences may do journalism) that reports on events. Simple enough?

I’m sure my definition isn’t what the politicians are looking for as their interest is restricting who can cover their actions by ensuring reporters are sympathetic to the state. But journalism is only effective if the reporters are cynical assholes who are willing to dig deep to find dirt. In other words to be a good journalist you have to be a bastard:

jounralism

And that’s exactly what the politicians are trying to censor.

Irony at It’s Finest

Anonymity is very important, which is why I hold Tor’s developers in high regard. Tor has helped political dissidents in especially tyrannical regimes speak out, made the drug trade safer by raising a barrier of anonymity between buyers and sellers, and gives people with jealous significant others a way to keep their communications secret. So when I see somebody harass any of the Tor developers my initial reaction is “Fuck that guy!”

Well an unsavory dude decided to harass Andrea Shepard, one of Tor’s developers, and learned a lesson about how valuable online anonymity is:

What happens when you troll Tor developers hard? You get unmasked.

Towards the end of last week, a troll who had sent various aggressive tweets to a host of security experts and privacy advocates associated with the Tor project and browser, which enables online anonymity, had his identity exposed. To some, that may seem hypocritical. To others, it seems like justice.

Andrea Shepard, the Tor developer who uncovered the real identity of her troll, says she was being harassed on and off for a year by a range of tweeters, all believed to be the sockpuppets of one man. The main source of abuse came from a Twitter account @JbJabroni10, but others included @JbGelasius, @SnowdenNoffect, @LimitYoHangout, @HaileSelassieYo, @thxsnowman and @PsyOpSnowden.

[…]

Things came to a head when some lighter mockery was aimed at Shepard last week, using information the troll had gleaned from her LinkedIn profile and personal website.

Unfortunately for the troll, this gave Shepard an IP address belonging to an iPhone that used a work network at atlantichealth.org to access her site. She also had some job information through LinkedIn’s “profiles that viewed yours” feature.

After searching LinkedIn for anyone with the role at Atlantic Health, she came across two profiles: one which didn’t have a name connected to it, another for a man named Jeremy Becker. She then used the Spokeo service to search for Jeremy Beckers in New Jersey, and a search for pharmacist licensees, and found only one, which gave her the middle initial ‘T’ and a hometown of Princeton, New Jersey.

She also had his father’s name, Edward Becker, and was able to find a Twitter account @ebecker which followed @JbJabroni10 and an inactive one for @JoyBecker52, apparently matching his mother Joyce Becker. Shepard had her man.

And then on 28 November, seven of the Twitter accounts linked to Becker seemed to go dark. He’d been scared off the face of the internet, to the cheers of the pro-Tor and anti-troll crowds.

Now that’s justice porn. And it should prove to be a valuable lesson to others who feel it necessary to harass security professionals. If somebody’s job is developing one of the most successful online anonymity tools chances are pretty good that they know how to uncover personally identifiable information. After all, you need to know how an attack works in order to defend against it.

Why I Hate Neocons Part Seven Billion

It’s no secret that I hold special disdain for neocons. They’re especially vile creatures that seem to only achieve full erection in the presence of violence. That’s probably why they’re always touting the “tough on crime” bullshit. Tough on crime is just a euphemism for police brutality, which we’re seeing plenty of this day and age.

The killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have really shown the extent neocons will go to get their rocks off. In both situations, while most people were asking why the killings occurred, neocons were digging as deep as they could into the dead men’s pasts to uncover something, anything that would justify the cops’ actions. They didn’t give a damn that two people were dead, they only wanted an excuse to label those men thugs so they could jump onto their social media accounts and spew their joyous blood lust all over for everybody to see.

While I also hold special disdain for neoliberals I at least give them some credit for not being so public with their violence fetish. Yes, like neocons, neoliberals love bombing Middle Easterners and they love having a militarized police force to keep dissidents in line. But at least they aren’t hopping on social media sites just so they can exclaim how happy they are that people were killed.

The Law of Eristic Escalation in Action

Yesterday, around 14:00, a bunch of people went and got themselves in a tizzy over something that wasn’t directly impacting them. That thing was a protest of the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Why were people complaining about the protests? Because it shutdown 35W, which is something that hasn’t happened since the Vietnam War:

With her 10-month-old daughter wrapped snugly at her chest, Mari Fitch marched three miles through Minneapolis on Thursday, most of it up the center of an empty Interstate 35W shut down by protest for the first time since the Vietnam War.

Along with about 150 other demonstrators, some carrying signs that read “Black lives matter,” she chanted the names of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two men killed in fatal confrontations with police officers. The protesters pumped their fists and shouted messages about justice, referencing two grand juries’ decisions not to indict the officers involved in Brown’s and Garner’s deaths.

The high-profile rally had echoes of protests that have sprouted up in other cities around the country, often fueled by crowds enraged by what they say is unfair and often lethal treatment of minorities.

Apparently having a major highway shutdown while you’re sitting at work is very rage inducing for some people. But this protest was an event made inevitable by the pathetic attempts of authority figures trying to impose order on us. Us Discordians know the Law of Eristic Escalation, which states the imposition of order equals the escalation of chaos. And it was that law that we saw in action yesterday.

For ages now the media has been doing its part to help those assholes in marble buildings impose their order. Besides lying for their benefit the media has also done a great job of avoiding covering protests of things that may be politically inconvenient. Protests against police brutality and war may get coverage on the back pages of the newspaper or a quick quip on the nightly news but rarely do they receive more. This has rendered convenient protests, those protests that fail to negatively impact our lives, worthless. Those who make convenient protest impossible will make inconvenient protest inevitable.

Sick of not having their voices heard yesterday’s protests decided to do something the media couldn’t ignore: block a major highway. And it worked. Not only was the news covering it but people were talking about it. In the end chaos sprang forth and got everybody attention, which was the entire point of the protest.

mission-accomplished

Posted with the greatest sense of irony.

And if you didn’t like this protest you’re probably not going to enjoy almost certain protests that will be springing up as police militarization continues to spiral out of control.

Nothing Says “Love Thy Neighbor” Like Advocating Genocide

A lot of people, because of the things I’ve written (and probably because of my taste in music), assume that I am against religion. I’m not. In fact I believe most religions offer a lot of great things. Christianity, the religion I was raise under, preaches that we should love one another, help each other out, and generally avoid being dicks. Those are all great ideas. But there’s always some asshole who can take something good and turn it into something horrible. Unfortunately these assholes are usually very loud. Take Steven Anderson, a pastor in Arizona, who has decided to build a reputation on being a complete cunt. While claiming to being a Christian he advocates genocide:

In the sermon, which was uploaded to YouTube on Monday from Faithful Word Baptist Church, Pastor Steven Anderson said that God has ordered in the scriptures that gays should be killed, and that if humanity wants to have an “AIDS-free world by Christmas,” he said, that’s what should be done.

[…]

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them,” Anderson read aloud.

“And that, my friend, is the cure for AIDS,” he said. “It was right there in the Bible all along — and they’re out spending billions of dollars in research and testing. It’s curable — right there. Because if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running rampant.”

I’m a pretty peaceful guy so I won’t go so far as to say Mr. Anderson should be killed but I will say that the world would be a far better place if he wasn’t in it (or was at least stranded on a desert island from which no escape were possible).

I don’t understand the rampant hatred some Christians seem to have for homosexuals. If you look at Jesus, who Christians are supposed to do their damnedest to mimic, he hung out with a bunch of unsavory people. He didn’t spend his time hanging out with saints (since saints didn’t exist at that point) but spent his time hanging out with sinners (who, in general, are way cooler people to hang out with). Furthermore he made it a point that people shouldn’t judge others. So I’m always confused when self-proclaimed Christians advocate for violence.

Police Considering Charging Michael Brown’s Father for Inciting a Riot

What happens when a police officer kills you son and you react emotionally? The police may decided to charge you with inciting a riot:

(CNN) — Michael Brown’s stepfather was hurt and angry when he urged a crowd in Ferguson, Missouri, last week to “Burn this bitch down,” his wife and attorney say, but that hasn’t stopped authorities from launching an investigation into whether he incited a riot.

Following the announcement that the grand jury would not indict Officer Darren Wilson in his stepson’s death, Louis Head stepped onto a platform above the crowd and embraced his wife, Brown’s mother. He then turned to the demonstrators — some of them shouting “F— the police!” — and yelled, “Burn this motherf—er down!” and “Burn this bitch down!”

[…]

The police chief told TV and radio host Sean Hannity something similar Monday, but he didn’t classify the probe as formal.

“We are pursuing those comments, and there’s a lot of discussion going on about that right now, but I really can’t get into that at this time,” he said.

But police aren’t singling out Head, Jackson told Hannity.

“We can’t let all that happened in Ferguson and Dellwood and the community die. Everyone who is responsible for taking away people’s property, their livelihoods, their jobs, their businesses — every single one of them needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.

I have a few problems with this.

First, the idea that one can be charged with inciting a riot. That charge, in my opinion, is bullshit. When people decided to riot who is to blame? The rioters as they were the people who rioted. Nobody else is responsible for their behavior. Claiming that inciting a riot is a criminal offense absolves, at least in part, rioters of responsibility by insinuating they were only acting because somebody else made them act.

Second, insinuating that a grieving individual should express their anger in a logical manner. I’m not a fan of calls for violence but when a kid is killed and the parent(s) feels as though the justice system failed to deliver justice I can understand them being a bit upset. In fact I can understand them being so upset that they would say angry things aimed at the person(s) they felt wronged them. If Michael Brown’s father had actually done something wrong, like tossed a Molotov cocktail at a house, there would be grounds for seeking redress for his misdeed. But all he did was say some unsurprising words considering the situation.

Third, charging Michael Brown’s father with inciting a riot is likely to start more riots. Right now the riots have calmed down. I’ve been told that the police are supposed to be keepers of the peace. If that is the case shouldn’t they leave things alone at this point in the hopes of avoiding more civil unrest? Especially when the person they’re looking at charging didn’t do anything wrong?

The only reason Ferguson police are even considering charging Michael Brown’s father, as far as I can tell, is pure spite. They want somebody’s head, besides their own, over these riots. Since Michael Brown is very dead and they won’t dare blame themselves for instigating the matter in the first place that leaves a family member of Brown’s (sins of the father, sins of the son). I hope they don’t charge him simply because I would like to see some semblance of tranquility in Ferguson but the police in that city have already proven themselves to be less than concerned with maintaining the peace.