Tag: 1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint

I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.

Add this story to the reasons you can’t trust anybody these days. A man who was charged with being a terrorist, although he committed no crimes related to terrorism, was first tortured in a South Carolina military prison. After that he was sent to the court system where he was threatened with a life sentence. In 2007 he was sentenced to 17 years in prison. But the justice system is a funny thing and the rules can change on a whim, which is what happened:

MIAMI (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge in Miami re-sentenced Jose Padilla on Tuesday to 21 years for a 2007 terrorism conviction after an appeals court deemed the original 17-year sentence too lenient.

Now instead of the original 17 years he going to be locked in a cage for 21 years. His crimes? Conspiracy to commit crimes, which means he didn’t actually commit a crime but the state merely said he was planning to do so:

Padilla, an al Qaeda recruit and the first U.S. citizen labeled an enemy combatant, was convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people abroad, as well as providing material support for terrorism.

He was accused of plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States. In all likelihood the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) arrested him when he turned out to be too smart to actually press the button on the fake detonator for the fake bomb supplied to him by the agency in another one of its fake terrorist bomb plots.

A Scared Citizen is a Good Citizen

The Islamic State (IS), formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria (ISIS), has been front page material for weeks now. After being unable to make citizens fear Iran and North Korean and only having moderate success at making citizens fear Vladimir Putin the state and its corporate media partners have been trying to make the IS the thing for fashionable citizens to be afraid of. But the IS is way the fuck over in the Middle East so why should an American citizen fear it? Here we see Allen West, one of the state’s most effective agents at instill fear in the hearts of neocons, entering stage right:

Judicial Watch reports that ”Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED).”

“High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources have confirmed to Judicial Watch that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border has been issued. Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat. Specifically, the government sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas.”

This article combines the IS, illegal immigration, and drug cartels into one giant fear smoothy! Oh, I also forgot to mention, that it is almost certainly bullshit. Why would Mexican drug cartels, which are not exactly apostles of Islam, work with an organization that seems bent on destroying anything not Islam? If the only answer you can come up with is “Because drug cartels hate Americans.” then you don’t understand how drug cartels work. Americans are their biggest source of revenue. The last thing they want is for their customers to get slaughtered en masse, which the IS is supposedly interested in doing.

Another question one should be inclined to ask is why anybody would give weight to a government terror warning. Since 9/11 this country has lived in a constant state of terror warnings. Statistically if we looked at the number of terror warnings issued since 9/11 versus the number of actual instances of terrorism in this country we would see that the percentage is almost in the negative (for those of you who don’t believe I understand how percentages work please look up hyperbole)!

But the state needs a scared citizenry. Tyrannical bullshit is very hard to sell by itself. That’s why tyrannical acts are usually preceded by a period of fear mongering. The United States government has been trying to get widespread support from the citizenry to turn this country into a prison. We’re told that our “unprotected” border will let communists (removed from the latest version of the Newspeak Dictionary) violent drug cartels, terrorists, and other people who want to kill every American across. And since the threats looking to cross today are far more dangerous than the nuclear armed militaries that were supposedly trying to cross previously we’re also told that the police must be militarized. Supposedly if our police officers aren’t roaming the streets in armored personnel carriers, clad in body armor, and armed with machine guns we’re all going to be killed by terrorists!

But fences, guard towers, and barbed wired are interesting in their ability to equally keep things outside of an area and inside of an area. The more secure a border becomes the more difficult it is to cross it when escape is your goal. Uprising are also more difficult to successfully pull off when you’re facing a force that is much better armed than yours. People know this, which is why selling tyranny is difficult unless you have a good pitch. Fear is probably the best pitch of them all.

Whenever you hear people like Allen West, Bill O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper, and Wolf Blitzer talk about why you should be afraid of the week’s boogeyman just remember that their revenue is generated by generating fear. Fear leads to page clicks, video views, and better Nielsen ratings. They’re also in, what George Carlin referred to as, the big club. If you’re in the big club the tyrannical shit being enacted by the state doesn’t impact you. But we’re not in the big club so we should be wary of people peddling fear because what they claim we need sure as the hell will impact us.

Children Recite Pledge of Undying Allegiance in a Foreign Language; Neocons Freak Out

We’ve all heard the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a pledge written by a socialist (which should make it poison to neocons) many of us were required to recite in school before we had the ability to understand what it meant. In it the reciter promises to lay down his life for a piece of colored cloth that represents his or her rulers. Neocons, being an incredibly patriotic bunch, often jerk themselves off to the Pledge of Allegiance. But neocons also hate all things Middle East. So it’s no surprise that they’re flipping their shit over a school that allowed children recite the Pledge in Arabic:

A Colorado high school principal is defending his decision to allow students from a cultural club to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic — and denied that it was attempt to push an Islamic agenda.

Tom Lopez, the principal at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, told Fox News he has received a number of telephone calls and emails from outraged parents – but he stands by his decision.

“These students love this country,” he said. “They were not being un-American in trying to do this. They believed they were accentuating the meaning of the words as spoken regularly in English.”

The school recites the Pledge of Allegiance once a week and on Monday a member of the Cultural Arms Club led the student body in the Arabic version of the pledge.

What really gets me about this is that the United States doesn’t have an official language. Neocons love to say “If you can’t speak English then get the fuck out!” but they have no legal grounds, thankfully, for expelling people who can’t speak English. In fact neocons should be overjoyed that somebody has translated this oath of mindless obedience into other languages so children of foreign lands can pledge to die for this forsaken government.

Now let’s discuss the real problem here: children being told to recite a oath of undying loyalty by school officials. Having the pledge in school, in my opinion, is an attempt to get them while they’re young. Tell them that America is the freest country on Earth enough times that they begin to believe and also get them to mindlessly recite a pledge to fall over dead for some suit-clad assholes in a far away marble building enough times that they may actually do it. If there’s anything to be angry about it’s this attempted brainwashing of America’s children.

Down the Memory Hole

There’s no doubt that the Internet has been one of the greatest tools for information sharing every invented. Instead of having to go to the library, request a book, wait two weeks for that book to arrive, and squeeze every bit of knowledge you need out of that book in one or two weeks we not open a browser and type a search into Google. But it’s not limited solely to books. The state, failing to comprehend a future where the plebs could access and read its documents, put a bunch of stuff online for us to access. This saves a lot of people a lot of headaches having to go to a court to obtain a physical copy of records related to cases. Slowly the state is realizing its mistake and disappearing things down the memory hold:

The Administrative Office of the US Courts (AO) has removed access to nearly a decade’s worth of electronic documents from four US appeals courts and one bankruptcy court.

The removal is part of an upgrade to a new computer system for the database known as Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER.

Court dockets and documents at the US Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 7th, 11th, and Federal Circuits, as well as the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, were maintained with “locally developed legacy case management systems,” said AO spokesperson Karen Redmond in an e-mailed statement. Those five courts aren’t compatible with the new PACER system.

If your tax funded upgrade of a public system removes public records then the upgrade was not done correctly. As somebody who relies on being able to download the state’s dirty laundry and court records (but I repeat myself) to entertain my readers this kind of shit pisses me off. And I’m probably going to be pissed off more and more because I guarantee the state is going to “upgrade” more of its systems and toss a ton of online records down the memory hole. It’s a classic maneuver, if you can’t get away with destroying public records then you just make them very difficult to access.

Real Heroes

Tor is a great tool for those in need of anonymity online. But online anonymity is something spy agencies don’t like because it makes their job much harder. Therefore it seems highly probable that agents within the National Security Agency (NSA) are actively investing resources into compromising Tor. In fact all evidence indicates the agency, and other spy agencies, are doing exactly that. Thankfully evidence also indicates that there are real heroes working within those agencies to undermine such efforts:

British and American intelligence agents attempting to hack the “dark web” are being deliberately undermined by colleagues, it has been alleged.

Spies from both countries have been working on finding flaws in Tor, a popular way of anonymously accessing “hidden” sites.

But the team behind Tor says other spies are tipping them off, allowing them to quickly fix any vulnerabilities.

While the leviathan that is government is powerful it is also composed of people, many of whom have a conscience. Because of this many of the government’s nefarious acts are undermined by people within itself. If the NSA is attempting to compromise Tor then it’s very likely some of its agents are anonymously tipping off Tor’s developers, which renders the NSA’s overall efforts futile.

These are real heroes who should be celebrated. They actively put themselves at risk to fight against the illegal government activities and therefore make the world a better, and safer, place.

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.

Who Rules America

Are you sitting down? If you’re not you should be before reading further because I’ve got some news that will shatter your reality:

A shattering new study by two political science professors has found that ordinary Americans have virtually no impact whatsoever on the making of national policy in our country. The analysts found that rich individuals and business-controlled interest groups largely shape policy outcomes in the United States.

The new study, with the jaw-clenching title of “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” is forthcoming in the fall 2014 edition of Perspectives on Politics. Its authors, Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, examined survey data on 1,779 national policy issues for which they could gauge the preferences of average citizens, economic elites, mass-based interest groups and business-dominated interest groups. They used statistical methods to determine the influence of each of these four groups on policy outcomes, including both policies that are adopted and rejected.

The analysts found that when controlling for the power of economic elites and organized interest groups, the influence of ordinary Americans registers at a “non-significant, near-zero level.“

Ho. Ly. Shit. You mean to tell me that economic elites and organized interest groups basically own the government? Mind. Blown.

I can’t believe it! Somebody actually had to do a study to figure this out? It wasn’t at all obvious that the people of the United States have had effectively no say in their government for the last several decades (I would argue since the government’s inception but I’ll be conservative for the sake of this post). Like all men are created equal, the fact that we have no say in our government is self-evident. Without much effort you can usually figure out what special interest group bought a law even when most Americans opposed it.

It’s still nice to see more people pointing this fact out since there are a lot of people who don’t seem to realize it.

Freest Country on Earth

Yesterday the police of Ferguson, Missouri were telling news reporters to get the hell out. Some of them didn’t listen and decided to exercise their press rights and were duly arrested:

Two reporters covering the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri were arrested and physically assaulted by police on Wednesday.

Ryan Reilly, the justice correspondent for The Huffington Post, and Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery were working in a McDonald’s when a SWAT team suddenly invaded the restaurant. After being told to stop recording the proceedings, and refusing, both men were then violently arrested. (Recording police officers is a legal act.) Lowery was shoved into a soda machine. An officer slammed Reilly’s head against glass.

In defense of the brave men and women of the Ferguson SWAT team the reporters were told to get the hell out yesterday. Since they didn’t listen the city’s heroes did what they had to do to make a point: beat the fuck out of the reporters and throw them in a cage. That will teach those disobedient reporters what the First Amendment is all about!

What’s ironic is that the biggest criticism people wield against anarchy is that it would be a state of perpetual chaos where the strong prey on the weak. The reason that criticism is ironic is because we currently live in a society that has a state that creates perpetual chaos and preys on the weak. What is happening in Ferguson right now is the product of statism. A gang of thugs working for the state are able to beat people with impunity, even those who supposedly have a legal right to report on the disturbance, because they are soldiers of the state and have shiny badges pinned to their chest that grant them legal immunity. This is why I don’t take that criticism seriously.

Freedom of the Press Means the Freedom to Shut Up and Obey

Welcome to America where the freedom of the press is ensconced in our Bill of Rights. What freedoms does the press have? For starters it has the right to shut the fuck up and do what its told:

While there was a spate of looting on Sunday night, Monday’s demonstrations were peaceful. Protestors faced tear gas and rubber bullets from officers trying to break their ranks up. At the same time, police told local media to get out of the area.

Of course after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declared all airspace up to 3,000 in Ferguson feet a no-fly zone it’s not like the press was going to get helicopters in to cover the unfolding events. Living in a totalitarian state is fun!

680,000 Names on the Government’s Various Terrorist Watch Lists

When the government announced the Terrorist Screening Database (TSD), which is the source for the various terrorist watch lists, most people probably assume that it would only contain a handful of names. After all, if the government had evidence that somebody is a terrorist they would arrest them, right? Wrong. As it turns out there are 680,000 names in the TSD and almost half of them aren’t believed to be affiliated with any known terrorist organization:

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

Now we know for a fact that the database has nothing to do with people affiliated with known terrorist organizations. That means everybody is a potential terrorist. What’s even funnier (in a sick sort of way) is that the man who promised to save us from George W. Bush’s police state is responsible for most of the names appearing in the database:

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

This is why I laugh every time somebody tells me that we live in the freest country on Earth. Only a police state could have a list 680,000 names long of suspected enemies. I wonder if getting on the list qualifies an individual as a potential drone target.