Category: Wall of Fame Assholes

Congressman Wants To Shutdown Twitter, Facebook, and Every Other Social Media Site

You’re being ruled by idiots. They attempt to dictate policy on things they know nothing about. This is especially true when it comes to technology, which most of the rulers know next to nothing about. Ranking up there with Ted Stevens calling the Internet “a series of tubes,” we have a gem from Joe Barton:

Barton today asked Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler if the commission can shut down websites used by ISIS and other terrorist groups. Barton didn’t name any specific sites but said that “we need to do something” because of the terrorist attack in Paris.

“ISIS and the terrorist networks can’t beat us militarily, but they are really trying to use the Internet and all of the social media to try to intimidate and beat us psychologically,” Barton said. Addressing Wheeler during an FCC oversight hearing held by the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Barton continued:

Isn’t there something we can do under existing law to shut those Internet sites down, and I know they pop up like weeds, but once they do pop up, shut them down and then turn those Internet addresses over to the appropriate law enforcement agencies to try to track them down? I would think that even in an open society, when there is a clear threat, they’ve declared war against us, our way of life, they’ve threatened to attack this very city our capital is in, that we could do something about the Internet and social media side of the equation.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) isn’t creating a bunch of random self-hosted websites. It’s using popular social media sites such as Twitter. What Barton is asking for is the shutdown of major social media sites. And while sites like Twitter are trying to shutdown accounts used by ISIS it’s not easy because, at the article I just linked to points out, ISIS is gaming the system.

If you want to recruit new members you go to where the people are. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites are where the people are so it’s what ISIS uses. The only way you can shutdown its Internet presence is to shutdown the Internet itself, which isn’t something the United States government can do because the Internet is a collection of interconnected servers spread throughout the world.

Jumping To Conclusions

Before any facts about the perpetrators of the Paris attacks could be discovered many politicians here were already jumping to conclusions. The governors of 17 states jumped to the conclusion that the perpetrators were Syrian refugees and used that to declare their states closed to any refugees from Syria. But an investigation into the attackers turned up evidence that they were European nationals:

“Let me underline, the profile of the terrorists so far identified tells us this is an internal threat,” Federica Mogherini, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, said after a meeting with EU foreign ministers. “It is all EU citizens so far. This can change with the hours, but so far it is quite clear it is an issue of internal domestic security.”

My point isn’t that the attackers were carried out by European nationals. The investigation has just begun so other evidence could indicate the attackers were indeed Syrian refugees or trained members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) who snuck into France or shapeshifting lizard people from another dimension.

My point is that jumping to conclusions before an investigation has come to a conclusion supported by solid evidence is foolish. Be smart. Wait for evidence to be discovered before telling everybody what you think happened.

Baseless Finger Pointing

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. — Rahm Emanuel

Emanuel laid bare for us the way in which people descend like vultures on tragedies in order to push their personal agendas. Soon after the attacks in Paris hit the headlines people were descending on the crisis. Most were using it call for the dead of Muslims, even before any details of who perpetrated the attacker were known. But some used the crisis to call for the head of Edward Snowden:

In the years since Snowden revealed the vast surveillance and spying done by Western governments, strong encryption has become an increasingly popular way for people to shield their Internet activity from prying eyes. Encryption is used by everyone from e-commerce websites and human rights activists to American soldiers and Islamist terrorists.

It’s the latter group’s adoption of strong encryption in particular that has attracted so much fiery rhetoric.

Fox News hosts Greg Gutfeld and Dana Perino, George W. Bush’s former press secretary, took to Twitter to directly blame and even curse at Snowden.

How did Snowden’s act of leaking slides from National Security Agency (NSA) presentations allow the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to thwart surveillance to successfully pull off the attacks in Paris? It didn’t. Those who think it did are making to incorrect assumptions.

First, they are assuming a massive surveillance apparatus would have thwarted these attacks. Even before the Snowden leaks the NSA’s surveillance programs failed to thwart a single terrorist attack. How could this be? Easy. Massive untargeted surveillance isn’t an effective means of discovering planned future events. When you collect everything you end up with far more noise than signal. In fact the amount of noise is so large it drowns out the signal. The only thing pervasive surveillance is useful for is gathering evidence post facto when you have a target.

Second, they are assuming ISIS is the Middle Eastern version of the three percenters, which is to say they are assuming ISIS is an uncoordinated ragtag group. This is a notion everybody needs to get over. ISIS didn’t rise to prominence through luck. It rose to prominence by waging a successful war against rival nations. Waging that war required military tactics, equipment, and coordination that is only possible with a lot of very capable people working together. People need to stop looking at ISIS as a loose terrorist group and acknowledge it as a fully fledged nation state. And it didn’t become a nation state by letting its enemies read its communications. It became a nation state by utilize effective means of concealing communications. That requires experts, which isn’t something somebody can become by reading the slides Snowden leaked.

Mass surveillance was useless before Snowden leaked the NSA’s dirty laundry so there are no grounds to claim it would have thwarted these attacks had Snowden not blown the whistle.

Men In Magic Robes Ruining Lives

I’ve heard people claim that the courts act as a check and balance against law makers. Who, pray tell, acts as a check and balance against courts:

Last year, Utah couple Beckie Peirce and April Hoagland decided to get married. Last summer, in a decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, the Supreme Court confirmed that this was okay. Then, Peirce and Hoagland wanted to take in a foster child. So, because the Supreme Court had signed off on gay marriage, Utah child services officials licensed the couple earlier this year. And, in August, Peirce and Hoagland welcomed a 1-year-old girl into their home, where she joined the couple’s two biological children. Plans for adoption, approved by the baby’s biological mother, were in place — soon, this would be a family of five.

But on Wednesday, a Utah judge decided to end this plan, ordering the girl removed from her foster home because he said she would be better off with heterosexual parents.

[…]

A copy of the court order by Judge Scott Johansen, a juvenile court judge in Utah’s Seventh District, was not immediately available, but the Salt Lake Tribune confirmed its contents. Hoagland told KUTV that Johansen said that “through his research he had found out that kids in homosexual homes don’t do as well as they do in heterosexual homes.”

Some may argue that the law makers can act as a check and balance here by writing and passing a law allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. But such a process could take years if it would pass at all. Others may argue that higher courts can act as a check and balance but there’s no guarantee a higher court would overturn this ruling. In other words a man in a magic robe ruined a family and they have no recourse.

This is the problem with handing people power over others. Even though the couple, who are already raising children, and the biological mother (the child, being only one year-old, is unable to voice her opinion) agreed to the adoption it hasn’t been allowed to take place because it offends the delicate sensibilities of a single man who wouldn’t have a say in the matter if it wasn’t for his position of power.

Statist Logic

Secession continues to be popularly supported in Catalonia much to the chagrin of Spain. The Spanish government, desperate to maintain its dominion, is trying to find a way to justify using force when the Catalonians decide to strike out on their own. Justification for the State usually takes form of very formalized rituals that are somehow supposed to absolve it of sin. One such formalized ritual is the court decision:

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he would not allow the secessionists to achieve their aim. “They want an end to democracy,” he said.

He said Monday’s Catalan vote was a “clear violation” of the constitution.

The motion called on the regional parliament to aim for independence within 18 months.

It gives the assembly 30 days to start legislation on a Catalan constitution, treasury and social security system.
Catalan nationalist parties secured a majority of seats in September elections but fell short of winning half the vote. They had said before the vote that they considered it a de facto referendum on independence from Spain.

Spain’s state prosecutor had called on the Constitutional Court on Wednesday to suspend the Catalan resolution immediately, the prime minister said after an emergency cabinet meeting.

This is logic only a statist could accept. First the Prime Minister is claiming that Catalonia wants to end democracy but the Catalonians voted the secessionist into the assembly and the motion to establish a Catalan constitution, treasury, and social security system. How is it democratic if the Spanish government votes on a matter but not democratic when the Catalan government votes on a matter? Rajoy’s claim makes no sense.

The second thing that makes no sense is Spain’s state prosecutor asking the Constitutional Court for a ruling. Since the Catalonians want to secede why does the Spain government think they give two shits about what its Constitutional Court thinks? Its decision also makes no difference. If it rules to suspend the Catalan resolution what happens next? Spain marches troops into Catalonia to terrorize and kill anybody who resists. No sane person would claim the Constitutional Court ruling would absolve those troops of murder. Only a statist could argue that a formalized ritual performed by robed members of a government court can make the act of murder not murder.

I truly hope Catalonia secedes and I hope its secession kicks off a trend of sescession that continues until each individual has seceded from every manner of government in that region.

What To Be Treated Like A Criminal? Work For The Government!

Are you working for an employer who doesn’t require you to submit to loyalty tests, lie detector tests, drug tests, and any number of other tests that are performed under the assumption you are a criminal? Is that constant lack of being treated like a criminal making you miserable? If so I have some good news. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will soon begin treating its employees even more like criminals:

The House passed legislation on Monday to mandate the Department of Homeland Security to establish a program to identify and mitigate insider threats from rogue employees.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the bill’s author, gave examples of Edward Snowden releasing classified information about national surveillance programs, U.S. Army P.F.C. Bradley Manning providing classified documents to WikiLeaks, and contractor Aaron Alexis killing 12 people during a shooting at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013 while holding a security clearance. He suggested each case could have ended differently had they been under more scrutiny.

You know what this means, right? Loyalty tests for everybody!

The DHS is facing the same problem every criminal organization faces: members ratting them out for their illegal activities. Snowden and Manning, despite the State’s already numerous controls, ratted out their employer’s criminal activities. As with most criminal organizations the State is focusing on how to ensure more members don’t rat it out instead of focusing on not committing criminal acts.

As an anarchist I take great joy in seeing actions like this from the State. The more miserable it makes the working environment of its employees the more difficulty it will have with recruiting talented employees.

Child Terrorized For Being Intelligent And Having Drive

What happens when a child with a Middle Eastern name and appearance builds an electronic clock and brings it to school? If you said, “He’s awarded for his efforts and drive to learn,” you’d be incorrect. The correct answer is he’s terrorized by the State:

Ahmed’s clock was hardly his most elaborate creation. He said he threw it together in about 20 minutes before bedtime on Sunday: a circuit board and power supply wired to a digital display, all strapped inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front.

He showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning and didn’t get quite the reaction he’d hoped for.

“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Ahmed said. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”

He kept the clock inside his school bag in English class, but the teacher complained when the alarm beeped in the middle of a lesson. Ahmed brought his invention up to show her afterward.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said.

“I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”

The teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn’t get it back.

They led Ahmed into a room where four other police officers waited. He said an officer he’d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”

[…]

Police led Ahmed out of MacArthur about 3 p.m., his hands cuffed behind him and an officer on each arm. A few students gaped in the halls. He remembers the shocked expression of his student counselor — the one “who knows I’m a good boy.”

Ahmed was spared the inside of a cell. The police sent him out of the juvenile detention center to meet his parents shortly after taking his fingerprints.

After interrogating, cuffing, and parading him around like some kind of captured beast the police magnanimously decided that they had terrorized the poor child enough and announced they would not pursue charges. Of course they never went so far as to apologize for their absurd overreaction:

Irving’s police chief announced Wednesday that charges won’t be filed against Ahmed Mohamed, the MacArthur High School freshman arrested Monday after he brought what school officials and police described as a “hoax bomb” on campus.

[…]

Asked if the teen’s religious beliefs factored into his arrest, Boyd said the reaction “would have been the same” under any circumstances.

“We live in an age where you can’t take things like that to school,” he said. “Of course we’ve seen across our country horrific things happen, so we have to err on the side of caution.”

Every officer involved with this travesty should be arrested and charged with kidnapping. There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of bullshit. Circuit boards along do not make a bomb. Unless there was some clay or other such material that at least kind of resembled an explosive attached to one of those boards there were no grounds whatsoever for anything more than a cursory glance.

The levels of idiocy that has to take place for these events to spiral so far out of control is almost awe inspiring. You need a teacher to not bother with looking at the clock and using a bit of critical thinking to contact the police. Then you need the police to against not bother taking a look at the clock and applying a bit of critical thinking. On top of all of that you have to have a society full of people who are so fucking compliant with anybody holding a badge to not storm the jail, arrest the police, and hold a trail to determine their possible guilt and punishment.

That school doesn’t deserve a student like Ahmed. Hell, this society doesn’t deserve a student like Ahmed. Students that demonstrate intelligence and drive should be somewhere where their knowledge and skills will be appreciated and advanced. My only hope is that this fiasco doesn’t stomp down his drive and he’s eventually able to start an underground company and make billions of dollars without paying one cent in taxes.

Apologies

Last weekend Black Lives Matter marched on the Minnesota State Fair and held a protest. A lot of people are very worked up about this but I wasn’t there so the event didn’t impact me in the slightest. In addition to the protest itself some people are upset that some of the protesters were chanting “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.” Was that phrase a call to kill cops or a clever play on words in context of an event well known for having every food you could imagine in fried form? I don’t know and I don’t care. But representative Tony Cornish cares very much:

Representative Tony Cornish is calling for an apology from the protest group Black Lives Matter for a chant made at the State Fair.

Well since we’re on the topic of apologies, I want an apology from Tony Cornish for his active support in expanding the already pervasive police surveillance apparatus. I’m guessing we’re both going to end up disappointed.

I haven’t written much about the activities of Black Lives Matter. From my point of view the organization is an inevitable reaction to decades of abuse perpetuated by those in authority. If you keep punching somebody you can’t cry foul when they finally retaliate. Since at least (but likely well before) the war on drugs law enforcement agents have been focusing more on generating revenue than protecting and serving the people. Revenue generation, in this case, means stealing wealth in the form of both assets (fines and civil forfeiture) and labor (prison labor). Black people have been far more frequent targets of this quest for revenue. This backlash shouldn’t surprise anybody. The only thing that should surprise anybody is that it has taken so long.

If anybody is owed an apology it’s the people who have been aggressed against by the police. Every nonviolent person who has been confined, extorted, beaten, or killed by agents of the State are the real victims. They’re the ones who have been wronged by the State and left without recourse because of the State’s monopolization of justice. Cornish is a retired police officer. He was one of those responsible for victimizing nonviolent individuals. Instead of demanding an apology he should be the one apologizing.

Stop Playing With That Thing

If you use amateurs as your front line defense don’t be surprised when you get amateur results. An Oklahoma gun range has followed in the tradition of another asshole range owner by declaring their facility off limits to Muslims (How can they tell if somebody is Muslim by looking at them? Here’s the secret, “Muslim” is usually a code word for “brown person.”). Needless to say this has resulted in the range owner receiving various threats because issuing threats on the Internet is pretty much a risk-free method of demonstrating your disapproval. Hoping to share in the infamy spotlight a group of self-proclaimed patriots heeded the call, gunned up, and rushed to protect the gun range. One of the patriots demonstrated why you don’t want amateurs providing your security:

The gun fell out of the holster and discharged, with a bullet hitting the man in the wrist, Muskogee County Sheriff Charles Pearson said, according to KOTV and the Tulsa World newspaper. The man was expected to survive.

First of all let us set aside the silliness of the gun falling out of its holster and discharging on impact. Although I’m sure there are exceptionally shitty holsters out there I feel safe in saying a vast majority of them will retain a firearm enough to prevent it from falling out. In addition to that most firearms are now equipped with a drop safety to prevent exactly this kind of scenario.

What’s more likely is this patriot pulled out his gun to either play with it or shot it off, dropped it, and inadvertently pulled the trigger when he attempted to catch it.

Not let’s address the issue of security. The range owner claims that he’s been receiving death threats, which wouldn’t surprise me as making such threats is almost risk-free these days. When you receive death threats you have to decide whether you feel they are credible or not. If you don’t believe they’re credible you ignore the. If you do believe they are credible you take measures to protect yourself. Hiring guards is one such measure a person could take. But there’s a difference between one of these patriots, which are almost always mouthy but otherwise mostly harmless, and professionals. If the range owner felt the threats were legitimate he should have hired professional guards to protect his business. Professional guards aren’t as apt to make amateur mistakes like play with their firearm. And if an incident does occur they’re more likely to have the training necessary to deal with it.

I Can’t Imagine Why You Get Accused Of Racism

Like almost everything that involves itself with the Republican Party the Tea Party movement very quickly went to shit. Now the Tea Party is synonymous with neoconservative Christianity, which differs greatly from regular Christianity in that it focuses primarily on hatred. Two groups facing the brunt of the Tea Party’s wrath are immigrants and Muslims (the latter often being a member of the former). Quite often when a self-proclaimed Tea Partier goes on an anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim tirade they are accused of racism and act totally dumbfounded, shocked even, that such an accusation would be made against them! They quickly accuse the accuser of playing the race card because they can’t imagine how anybody could legitimately claim their words were being racist!

I’m a fan of helping out when I can so I’m going to take a moment to explain why so many people who make up the Tea Party movement are accused of racism. To illustrate my explanation I’m going to reference a brand new post on the Central Minnesota Tea Party’s page:

Morrison County to be the recipient of 1000 Islamic refugees from Somalia! All American communities like Willmar and St. Cloud have been inundated, now they have their sights set on this community. Please read and consider the following;

Notice how the article didn’t cite the 1,000 Islamic refugees number? That’s going to be a common theme here. Another common theme is going to be the almost exclusive focus on the refugee’s religion and place of origin, which happens to be the thing racists almost exclusively focus on. You might be able to see where the accusations of racism stem from.

Did you know that the health system in St. Cloud reported having over 18,000 Somalis in their data base and that St. Cloud Apollo High School with a Somali population of 50% has had hundreds of visits by the police? Not surprising, American students and teachers alike are leaving for other schools. With the threat of a law suit, Apollo High has had to install foot baths for its growing Somali students. Also, Counties south of St Cloud, where the STEM Program buses many of these refugees, the main bus company involved, quit their contracts because of chaos on the buses which involved Somali students.

What does it matter how many Somalis are in the St. Cloud health system database? Assuming the number is accurate, which isn’t a safe assumption since the number isn’t cited, it doesn’t tell us anything. Is this statistically significant for some reason? How does the number compare to the overall population of St. Cloud? Do we know most of these database entries aren’t due to new immigrants getting up to speed on vaccinations they likely didn’t receive in Somalia? It’s a vapid statement. The same goes for the uncited percent of Somalis in the St. Cloud Apollo High School and number of police visits. In fact every statement in this paragraph is made without any kind of backing. Making baseless, sinister accusations against a population of people based on where they’re from is the basic definition of racism. I think it’s pretty easy to see why Tea Party opponents make accusations of racism.

I was going go do a play by play of this entire article to illustrate why people accuse Tea Partiers of racism but I realized I’d be repeating myself. If you’re interested in the claims made go ahead and click on the link and read the post by “Admin” (hiding behind a default user name is probably wise when writing such drivel). A lot of accusations are made but none of them are backed up with citations. It’s basically paragraph after paragraph of “Admin” badmouthing Muslims and Somalis. So I’ll save a lot of typing and skip to the final part of interest:

Concerned citizens in St. Cloud were successful in preventing the building of a huge Mosque with a 50 foot high minaret which could have called Muslims to prayer starting at 5AM, and could have continued blasting away five times a day. Prevent this from happening to your community by; 1) NOT contributing to the following groups: Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, World Relief Minnesota, Minnesota council of churches or UNICEF. 2) Make copies of this and pass it on.

Answer me this, why does a political organization care at all about whether or not a mosque was constructed? The only reason I could see one caring is if property rights were violated to prevent the mosque from being built (of course the Tea Partiers tend to oppose property rights so I could see them being OK if property rights were violated in this case). Otherwise there’s no political issue here at all. And while I admit that I’m not fully versed on the finer points of Islam I’m fairly certain minarets don’t make sound and therefore don’t “blast away five times a day.” Yes, I’m poking fun at the phrasing there. But the solution to somebody standing on a minaret and yelling prayers at 05:00 is to hold them to the same noise ordinances as everybody else. Done. It’s not that damn difficult.

Since there is no political reason for anybody in the Tea Party to comment on this mosque in any official capacity (generally posting on the website of an organization is considered “official capacity”) one can only assume a personal vendetta against Muslims, which is certainly a form of bigotry. Since the Muslims in question are apparently all Somalis, based on the tirade above this paragraph, it also comes off as racist.

The purpose of this post isn’t to accuse every Tea Partier of being racist so feel free to save me the, “Not all Tea Partiers are racist,” comments. I know that. My point is to illustrate why Tea Partiers are accused of racism. When posts such as this appear on a website for a local Tea Party group it’s very easy to accuse the group of racism.

Now I’m going to throw in a bonus. What can be done about this? If you are a Tea Partier and you believe the label is worth saving (although I can’t fathom why) then you need to speak out against this shit just like all those Muslims who are ignored by neoconservative Christians speak out against radical Islam. Boot these people from your meetings and official gathers (you can do that but utilizing that principle I mentioned earlier called “property right”). As long as you remain silent and let these people join your reindeer games you’re going to get accused of, at the very least, associating with racists.