Wall of Fame Assholes – Page 24

We Really Hate Iraq

Reason has what would be comedy gold if it didn’t involve so many people dying. As we wind up for yet another war in Iraq it’s a good time to stop and reflect on our history with that little chunk of land. Let’s take a look at what our previous presidents have said about Iraq, going all the way back to the first Bush. You’ll notice a common theme:

Did last night’s primetime presidential speech announcing expanding authorization for airstrikes in Iraq and Syria feel kind of familiar? Like you’ve heard it before?

That’s probably because you have. You’ve been hearing for more than two decades, from presidents on both sides of political aisle. At this point, bombing Iraq is practically a American presidential tradition.

And, via the magic of YouTube and The Huffington Post‘s Sam Stein, you can watch every president back to the first George Bush announce a new plan to launch military strikes in Iraq.

I’m not sure what our fascination with bombing people in that very specific region is but ordering it has basically become a right of passage for presidents. If only the people living there would stop hating us for bombing them!

Hawaii is Working to Solve Its Homeless Problem

Without government who would harass the homeless? In the state’s never ending war against those who don’t have homes the areas of the United States that remain warm all year around are at a major disadvantage. First there is no harsh winter to cause the homeless enough discomfort to convince them to go elsewhere. Second they’re usually tourist hotbeds and having homeless people in tourist hotbed just makes your city look tacky. Hawaii is especially hard hit because it’s war all year, a tourist hotbed, and there’s really nowhere for the homeless to go. But that hasn’t stopped the Honolulu City Council from trying to chase the homeless off:

HONOLULU (AP) — The Honolulu City Council approved several measures Wednesday aimed at moving homeless people out of tourist hotspots in Hawaii, including one that bans sitting and lying down on sidewalks in the popular Waikiki area.

But a separate push to prevent homeless people from resting on sidewalks throughout the rest of the island failed.

The council has been under pressure from the tourism industry to act, with hotel representatives saying visitors complain often about safety and human waste.

You have to hand it to government, when the politically connected talk the government listens! It also goes to show how government solve problems. With all of the money being stolen by the Honolulu City Council you would think it would try building homeless shelters or operating programs to help homeless people get back on their feet. But that’s not the case. Instead the government passes laws that make being homeless a crime, effectively telling all homeless people to “Get a home!”

Off With His Head

Without the police who would decapitate the illegal chickens and leave the heads behind to traumatize children:

Ashley Turnbull said she knows she violated the city’s ordinance that prohibits fowl and acknowledges she was told Aug. 7 by police to remove the three chickens and two ducks.

But she said Police Chief Trevor Berger went too far when he came onto her property about a week later, when nobody was home, and clubbed, killed and decapitated a small, red hen with a shovel.

The fact that the officer snuck onto the property, clubbed the chicken to death, and beheaded it already raised the creepy factor to 10. But the officer took it to 11 when he justified his actions:

Berger said killing the chicken was justified.

“It’s against city ordinance for a chicken to be in the city and running around in people’s yards,” he said.

Because clubbing and beheading the chicken was the only conceivable solution to the problem of illegal chicken ownership. The officer couldn’t have called animal control to capture the bird or arranged for a nearby farmer to take it in. Nope. It had to be decapitated!

This is the problem with modern policing. Violence is its tool and we’re all nails. Modern policing has become almost entirely about law enforcement instead of protecting people and property. When you consider that all laws, and there are a lot of fucking laws, are enforced at the point of a gun this prioritization isn’t ideal for anybody but the state and its cronies.

If You Don’t Like It, You Can Leave! But You Have to Pay.

The go to retort for many self-proclaimed patriots who find themselves unable to argue against a criticism against their beloved mother land is “If you don’t like, you can leave!” This seems like the ultimate way to shutdown an argument because anybody who doesn’t like the United States is free to leave whenever they want. OK, that’s not entirely true. Anybody who can afford to pay the government off is free to leave and its price just went way the fuck up:

To leave America, you generally must prove 5 years of U.S. tax compliance. If you have a net worth greater than $2 million or average annual net income tax for the 5 previous years of $157,000 or more for 2014 (that’s tax, not income), you pay an exit tax. It is a capital gain tax as if you sold your property when you left. At least there’s an exemption of $680,000 for 2014. Long-term residents giving up a Green Card can be required to pay the tax too.

Now, the State Department interim rule just raised the fee for renunciation of U.S. citizenship to $2,350 from $450. Critics note that it’s more than twenty times the average level in other high-income countries. The State Department says it’s about demand on their services and all the extra workload they have to process people who are on their way out.

Leaving the land of the free isn’t free, which really refutes the claim that the United States is the land of the free. In the government’s eyes every citizen is property. If you pay it enough money is may be so kind as to grace you with the privilege of leaving but your taxes had damn well better be in order first.

This is why I usually refute “If you don’t like it, you can leave!” with “I can’t afford to leave so you’re stuck with me.”

How to be a Hypocrite Staring Stefan Molyneux

If you’ve been involved in libertarian circles for a while you’ve probably heard the name Stefan Molyneux. He is a self-proclaimed philosopher who considers himself an anarcho-capitalist. In addition to that he’s also a narcissistic ass who mirrors a cult leader more than an individual who supposedly opposed rulers. As with most narcissists Molyneux doesn’t handle criticism well. Any form of criticism, in his opinion, must be ruthlessly crushed even if it requires him to be a hypocrite to do it. A group calling themselves Tru Shibes have been putting together videos on YouTube that point out instances where Molyneux has been inconsistent. Since Molyneux does hour and a half monologues Tru Shibes have had a lot of material to work with. But Molyneux decided he had to prove that his inconsistencies know no bounds. The man claims that he opposes intellectual property but decided to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to silence Tru Shibes:

Either way, Molyneux, who writes and speaks frequently about being against “state” violence and has spoken out about how he doesn’t support intellectual property law, apparently chose to make use of the DMCA to take down a bunch of videos from “TruShibes” an account that apparently has mocked Molyneux and apparently hypocritical actions/statements he’s made.

I think Tru Shibes should consider this their single greatest victory. This story also brings up a point that I feel needs emphasizing from time to time. Us anarchists subscribe to a philosophy that opposes the state. For me that means avoiding interaction with the state as much as possible. I don’t want to use the state to solve my problems, which means I have little interest in calling the cops on somebody, taking somebody to court, or filing a DMCA take down notice to silence my critics (don’t worry, all of my shit is public domain so I don’t even have claimed copyrights I could use for a DMCA take down). But from time to time I see self-proclaimed anarchists use the state they supposedly oppose to silence their critics either by filing a lawsuit or utilizing some stupid law like the DMCA.

If anarchism is to thrive it must be able to provide alternatives to the state. One of the state’s longest claimed monopolies is dispute resolution. When two individuals have a disagreement they take it to the state’s courts. Dispute resolution is one of the markets where anarchists could provide some truly creative alternatives. It’s also a market that acts as a litmus test for statists. As far as they’re concerned the only way to resolve disputes is to have a third party with a lot of guns command people who disagree to behave. If anarchists can come up with a functional alternative for dispute resolution it would do a lot to demonstrate its effectiveness.

So if you consider yourself an anarchist take Molyneux’s recent act of cowering behind the state and its DMCA as an example of what not to do. Instead when you find yourself involved in a disagreement work to find a solution that doesn’t involve the state and its coercive violence.

If You Don’t Like It, You Can Leave

If I had an ounce of silver for every time some statist told me “If you don’t like it, you can leave!” I’d be a very wealthy anarchist. It’s the go-to response for any statist that can’t justify their position but don’t want to admit it. But even when you follow their advice and attempt to leave their jimmies get rustled:

NEW YORK (CBS Cleveland/AP) — Burger King says it struck a deal to buy Tim Hortons Inc. for about $11 billion, a move that creates the world’s third-largest fast-food company and could accelerate the international expansion of the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain.

[…]

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is calling for a boycott of Burger King.

“Burger King’s decision to abandon the United States means consumers should turn to Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers or White Castle sliders. Burger King has always said ‘Have it Your Way’; well my way is to support two Ohio companies that haven’t abandoned their country or customers,” Brown said in a statement. “To help business grow in America, taxpayers have funded public infrastructure, workforce training, and incentives to encourage R&D and capital investment. Runaway corporations benefited from those policies but want U.S. companies to pay their share of the tab.”

Burger King didn’t like the taxes here so it’s follow every statist’s advice and leaving. In response some statist jackass from Ohio who spends most of his time sitting in a marble building is demanding people boycott the franchise. Shouldn’t the senator be cheering Burger King’s decision? After all it’s doing exactly what the statists keep telling everybody who criticizes any aspect of the United States. Hell, this guy should be visiting Burger King’s drive thru three times a day reward the franchise for doing exactly what it was told to do.

The last company to follow the statist’s advice, Medtronic, received an equally chill response. Some statists proposed a law, that would have been retroactive to before Metronic’s planned merger, that would prohibit companies from shifting their headquarters to anywhere outside of the United States.

Considering the response received by individuals and organizations that choose to leave when they dislike the conditions here I never want to hear “If you don’t like it, you can leave!” from any statists ever again. They obvious don’t honestly mean that. What they really mean is “If you don’t like, you can shut the fuck up! If you try to leave we’ll stop you!”

Boom, Headshot

More and more modern policing is becoming indistinguishable with common thuggery. Less effort has been put into protecting and serving and more effort has been put into beating and subjugating. Scenes like this, at one time a rare occurrence, are becoming expected behavior when interacting with a police officer:

Greenville officers approached a man at a Walmart parking lot on Saturday. The man appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and didn’t respond to police questions or instructions. Eventually, the officers followed the man inside the store, where they attempted to detain him. The deputies claim the man resisted, though video footage of the incident certainly makes said resistance look passive, rather than violent. But once the two cops had the man on the ground, one of them immediately began punching him in the head. I count at least 20 blows.

Hitting somebody in the head 20 times isn’t an appropriate way to apprehend them. There are far more effective and less dangerous methods of physical restraint. What really gets me though are the reactions of the witnesses. They did plead with the officer to stop but none of them intervened. I understand not intervening when a violent thug is beating on somebody, it is dangerous for your person, but there are times when it’s necessary and this is one of those times. The man being beating by the officer was in immediate danger of death or great bodily harm and that officer should be in a cage on charges of aggravated assault.

Keep Digging that Hole Officers

The law enforcers in Ferguson, Missouri seem determined to prove that under their rule the First Amendment has been entirely suspended. After the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought this point up you would think the law enforcers would back down a little bit just to create the illusion that they would respect the freedom of speech and press. Nope! Instead they decided to verbally threaten a reporter for Al Jazeera America. From the transcript of what the reporters filmed:

Officer 1: [To me] You need to take a hike.

Me: We need to shoot the sign first.

Officer 1: No, you don’t.

Me: Yeah, we do.

Officer 1: No, you don’t. You come back when it’s daylight.

Me: Sir, could you —

Officer 1: Did you hear what I said? … You want to go, we’ll go.

At this point, the officer approached me and grabbed my wrist.

Officer 1: [Holding my arm] Don’t resist. I’ll bust your ass. I’ll bust your head right here.

Me: [To JP] Are you filming this?

Officer 1: Film it! I don’t give a s—. Because you’ll go, and I’ll sure confiscate your film for evidence.

Classy. But that’s not all! As an added bonus the law enforcers all arrested a reporter for the Intercept:

Intercept reporter Ryan Devereaux was arrested this morning while on the ground covering the protests in Ferguson, Mo. According to St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer David Carson, who witnessed the apprehension, Ryan and a German reporter he was with were both taken into custody by members of a police tactical team. They were handcuffed and placed in a wagon, and Carson was told they were being taken to St. Louis County jail.

We haven’t been able to reach officials with the St. Louis County Police Department or Ferguson Police Department to find out if Ryan has been charged, or under what pretext he was detained. But needless to say, it’s an outrage that he was stopped and handcuffed by police in the course of lawfully doing his job on the streets of Ferguson. We are trying to contact Ryan now.

I think the law enforcers in Ferguson fail to understand that we live in the era of social media and ubiquitous cameras. Silencing journalists isn’t enough to suppress a story. Any individual can take pictures and record video to post on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other sites. Events can no longer be censored and every attempt to do so just stirs up more anger.

But Police Need Military Gear

I’m firmly in the camp that says police officers should have all surplus military gear stripped from them. They’ve been handed this gear and proven to be irresponsible with it. But there are a lot of people claiming that the police need that equipment. Sadly most of the people making this claim do so because they want the police to be protected when they’re initiating aggression against nonviolent individuals not for protecting people. Take these two letters sent to the Star Tribune by, presumably, readers:

After reading Ross Douthat’s commentary “When the police dress for war” (Aug. 19), I’m thinking he has very little firsthand experience with enforcing the law. I’m thinking that he might completely reconsider his final comment — “time to take their toys away” — if he were sent to a “drug house” on a no-knock warrant, pushed to the front of the line of cops and told to “go in there with your six-shooter and take those drugs and weapons away from those hooligans.” One or two entries like that, and I believe we would find old Ross standing in front of the line at the “SWAT store” buying the latest, greatest offerings that would put him on par with what the criminals are toting.

Richard Greelis, Bloomington

You see the police need all of those toys so they are better protected when they kick in a person’s door, burn their baby with a flashbang grenade, and shoot the family pet all in the name of stopping them from smoking a plant or using some other unpatentable drug.

Every cop who stops a car knows things can go from routine to life-or-death without warning. This is true night or day, even with Volvos driven by middle-aged white men like the author of the Aug. 17 Short Takes (“Questioning authority: Trooper wanted to be in control”). If the writer chooses to drive with illegally tinted windows, then it is he, not the law officer, who is being rude and disrespectful.

By the way, the weather was bright and sunny when the officer from West St. Paul was recently murdered. I’m sure you get the picture.

Dennis H. Roberts, Maplewood

Police officers also need those toys so they can pull you over for exceeding the arbitrarily selected speed limit, create a dangerous situation by forcing motorists to slam on their brakes or pile into another lane in order to avoid hitting the dumbass getting out of his vehicle on a major highway, and issue you a citation for being a safe driver by driving with the flow of traffic.

This is a trend I’ve noticed with police apologists. They usually use examples where police officers are the aggressors and seldom discuss situations where officers are actually protecting lives. Perhaps this is because modern police spend so much time doing the former that nobody realizes that they’re ideally supposed to be doing the latter. But I haven’t heard an apologist say that the police need surplus military gear to handle hostage situations in a way that saves the hostages’ lives or to respond to calls from wives being viciously attacked by their husbands. Some have mentioned that they need that gear to stop riots like those occurring in Ferguson but I don’t give points to government goons who “solve” problems that they created in the first place (I’m harsh, I know).

No First Amendment Rights in Ferguson

At this point it’s pretty fucking obvious that the First Amendment doesn’t apply in Ferguson, Missouri anymore. But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has finally come out and declared it so:

Police in Ferguson, Mo., on Monday began telling protesters – who have been gathered for days demanding justice for the death of an unarmed teenager at the hands of police – that they were no longer allowed to stand in place for more than five seconds, but had to keep moving.

“When inquiries were made to law enforcement officers regarding which law prohibits gathering or standing for more than five seconds on public sidewalks,” the ACLU of Missouri wrote in its emergency federal court filing to block the apparent policy, “the officers indicated that they did not know and that it did not matter. The officers further indicated that they were following the orders of their supervisors, whom they refused to name.” The ACLU argued the policy was a prior restraint on speech and asked for a temporary restraining order.

As if the emphasis the ACLU’s point law enforcers in Ferguson put their boots on the faces of nine protesters, one of whom was a 90 year-old Holocaust survivor:

She knew about a gathering in downtown St. Louis to protest Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s decision to activate the National Guard. As she and her fellow protesters peacefully marched towards the Wainwright Building, where Nixon keeps an office, they chanted “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! National Guard has got to go!” and “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” according to The Nation. Some people gave speeches. Others held signs. Epstein says she and her fellow protesters aimed to walk into Nixon’s office and formally ask him to de-escalate the situation in Ferguson. But police and security officers blocked the door, preventing them from entering.

“I really didn’t think about being arrested or doing anything like that,” Epstein told Newsweek. “I was just going to be somebody in the crowd. I guess maybe I was impulsive: Someone said, ‘Who is willing to be arrested if that happens?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m willing.’”

A police officer informed the crowd that Nixon and his staff were not in the building, Epstein says, and urged them to leave. When she and eight other protesters refused, they were arrested for failure to disperse. Police handcuffed Epstein behind her back and took her to a nearby police substation. She was booked, given a court date of October 21, and then told she could leave.

I’m sure that won’t fan the flames even more! Sheesh. With the way law enforcers in Ferguson are acting you’d think they were trying to ignite the powder key that city has become.

We keep hearing about the violence occurring in Ferguson as a justification for law enforcer tactics. But law enforcer tactics are instigating violence by depriving people of peaceful means of addressing this situation. When people are being arrested for reporting on the situation, tear gassed for assembling peacefully, and being prevented from petitioning their government then the people perpetuating violence are going to feel justified and the people barred from peaceful action may turn to violent action instead.

Civil unrest needs to be handled with calm and cool heads. When the civil unrest is caused by police actions then the only way to properly resolve the situation is to have a neutral third party investigate the matter and make all information regarding the investigation available to the people. By actively oppressing peaceful protesters and restricting information regarding the investigation the law enforcers of Ferguson are guaranteeing continued civil unrest.