Tag: 1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint

Limiting the Spectrum of Acceptable Opinions

The longer this gun control debate rages on the more I’m reminded of Noam Chomsky’s quote, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” Currently the gun control debate seems to involve three acceptable opinions: guns are the problem, violent media is the problem, or mental health is the problem. During its press conference the National Rifle Association (NRA) moved to pin blame for mass shootings on violent media and the mentally ill. John Riccitiello, the head of Electronic Arts, recently made a statement opposing the idea that violent video games lead to real violence. Advocates of gun control state that addressing the mental health issue isn’t enough. What’s interesting is that each faction seems to agree on one thing, the state needs to control something more.

Those who believe guns are the problem are advocating for stricter state control over guns and gun owners. People who believe mental illness is the problem are advocating for stricter state control over the mentally ill. The final group, those who believe violent media is the problem, are advocating for stricter state control over video games and other media. All three factions are holding a very lively debate within a very narrow spectrum. It seems that the only acceptable opinion is that the state must get involved and the only disagreement is how the state should get involved. The conversation has been controlled in such a way that no matter what the result is the state will increase its power. So thorough is this control that all three sides seem poised to attack anybody with an opinion that falls outside of the narrow spectrum. Those of us outside of the spectrum are told we’re crazy, our ideas are unworkable, and that we’re not helping.

If nothing else I believe this gun control debate has shown us how pervasive the state’s influence over our lives truly is.

No Mr. Biden, the “Assault Weapon” Ban Didn’t Reduce the Number of Killed Police Officers

Another day, another lie by a politician. Mr. Biden, who some believe holds some kind of power, put his foot in his mouth by claiming more police officers were killed after the original “assault weapon” ban was lifted:

“There were fewer police being murdered, fewer police being outgunned when the assault weapons ban, in fact, was in existence,” Biden said.

Except such things weren’t in existence :

Well the ban went into effect in 1994. It expired in 2004. But last year — eight years after the ban expired — was actually the second safest year for police officers in America since the early 1960s. The safest year since the early 1960s was 2009 — also well after the assault weapons ban expired. The 2001 terrorist attacks were of course an anomaly. There was also an isolated spike in 2007. But as you can see from the graph below, on-the-job police officer fatalities have been in steady decline since the late 1970s. The assault weapons ban doesn’t appear to have affected the trend either way.

Nothing about this is surprising. Biden is a politician and therefore a likely liar and rifles are seldom used to commit murder.

NYPD to Begin Deploying Terahertz Scanners to Detect Carried Firearms

Earlier this year New York City’s so-called “stop and frisk” policy, which involved police officers stopping random serfs and frisking them without evidence of wrongdoing, was ruled unconstitutional. Now that the ruling has had some time to sink in we can look at what has changed for those living in New York City. First a judge decided to lift the ban on “stop and frisk” making the ruling entirely irrelevant. In addition to being allowed to resume “stoping and frisking” the New York Police Department (NYPD) is also deploying terahertz scanners to detect if individuals are carrying firearms:

Get ready for scan-and-frisk.

The NYPD will soon deploy new technology allowing police to detect guns carried by criminals without using the typical pat-down procedure, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday.

The department just received a machine that reads terahertz — the natural energy emitted by people and inanimate objects — and allows police to view concealed weapons from a distance.

“If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation, for example a weapon, the device will highlight that object,” Kelly said.

A tip of the hat goes to Paul Blincow for e-mailing me this story.

I briefly discussed these scanners, and their health effects, last year. It seems that the NYPD was merely looking for an excuse, such as a court ruling against “stop and frisk,” to justify the purchase and deployment of these potential DNA shredders. Of course it’s all being done in the name of disarming the slaves safety.

It’s Because He’s the King

The New York Times surprised me today by asking a relevant question, “Who Says You Can Kill Americans, Mr. President?” The article opens by explaining:

PRESIDENT OBAMA has refused to tell Congress or the American people why he believes the Constitution gives, or fails to deny, him the authority to secretly target and kill American citizens who he suspects are involved in terrorist activities overseas. So far he has killed three that we know of.

Presidents had never before, to our knowledge, targeted specific Americans for military strikes. There are no court decisions that tell us if he is acting lawfully. Mr. Obama tells us not to worry, though, because his lawyers say it is fine, because experts guide the decisions and because his advisers have set up a careful process to help him decide whom he should kill.

He must think we should be relieved.

The three Americans known to have been killed, in two drone strikes in Yemen in the fall of 2011, are Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico; Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who had lived in New York and North Carolina, and was killed alongside Mr. Awlaki; and, in a strike two weeks later, Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born in Colorado.

Mr. Obama, regardless of the fairy tales he told everybody about opposing war, has been one of the most dangerous warmongers of our time. He continued the war in Iraq (which is still ongoing), ramped up the war in Pakistan, got American involved in a war in Libya (even though Gaddafi was previously awarded for advancing human rights in the region), has failed to wrap up the war in Afghanistan (he claims we’re leaving earlier than expected, but he’ll probably pull another Iraq and replace our forces with mercenaries), has ordered several bombings in Yemen, and involved this country in other scattered conflicts around the world. On top of engaging this country in numerous wars Mr. Obama has also ordered the assassination of American citizens, making him the first president to publicly do so.

What gives him such powers? We haven’t a clue because he refuses to even provide his justification. At the very least it would be nice to know why he thinks he can do these things. In all likelihood his justification would be something along the lines of “I’m the king so I get to kill whoever I want. Now get out of my sight before I have you executed, serf.”

Gun for Me, Not for You

Gun control advocates can be a fickle bunch. On the one hand they claim to want peace but then they turn around and advocate murder. This brings use to another characteristic of gun control advocates that I find disturbing, their claimed opposition to violence disappears whenever violence will promote their agenda. The vast majority of gun control advocates are statists. Their agenda isn’t so much eliminating gun violence as granting the state absolute power. Through an absolute state statists desire to create the perfect society. Unfortunately their idea of a perfect society doesn’t involve individual freedom, it involves obedience to masters. If there were no armed individuals the state would be free to redistribute all wealth, force individuals to pay for universal healthcare systems, regulate away any product that may be in the slightest bit dangerous, eliminate pollution, and kill anybody who stood in the way of such “progress.”

Expectedly statists are myopic, they can’t see the logical conclusion to what they advocate. Statists usually see themselves as part of the state, the ruling class. What they don’t seem to understand is that they will be relegated to subservience with the rest of us “uneducated” scum. For you see the average statist isn’t currently part of the ruling class and the ruling class isn’t apt to let new members join their ranks. To quote George Carlin, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.” Instead the average statist is, to borrow a once popular phrase, a useful idiot. They are the suckers who invest their time, money, and labor transferring power from the people to the state. Once the state has complete authority, once these low level statists are no longer useful, they will be discarded. It’s true, some of them may be allowed to hold low level positions within the state but they will still be subjected to the same terror as everybody else not in the upper echelons.

We’ve seen the logical conclusion of absolute statism many times in the last century alone. From Hitler’s Germany to Stalin’s Russia to Mao’s China to Pol Pot’s Cambodia history shows that absolute statism isn’t kind to anybody outside of the ruling class. Millions have paid the ultimate price when the desires of statists were fulfilled. In ever case people believe such atrocity would never happen in their country. People had faith that their rulers only wanted what was best for them. They learned very quickly that such atrocities could happen in their country and that their rulers didn’t care about what was best for the people. Those who did the footwork, the low level soldiers of statism, also learned that they were not giving positions of power but were treated the same as those “idiots” that stood in the way of “progress.”

Gun control advocates are frightening because they are statists, they want to strip power from the people, and they believe the ends justify the means. Violence is only deplorable when it’s not used to forward the cause of statism. Although it saddens me to see so many suckered into promoting the statist ideal I take solace in knowing that when I’m rounded up and sent to die in some prison camp they’ll be on the train right behind me.

The CIA Accused to Making Torture Sound Like a Valuable Tool in Information Gathering

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) apparently lied to the producers of Zero Dark Thirty by claiming torture was a valuable tool in gathering the whereabouts of Osama bin Lauden:

Lawmakers accused the CIA of misleading the makers of the Osama bin Laden raid film “Zero Dark Thirty” by allegedly telling them that harsh interrogation methods helped track down the terrorist mastermind.

The film shows waterboarding and similar techniques as important, if not key, to finding bin Laden in Pakistan, where he was killed by Navy SEALs in 2011.

A Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA’s detainee program found that such methods produced no useful intelligence.

This shouldn’t surprise anybody. The CIA is one of the most frightening organizations that has ever existed. We’re talking about the same organization that experimented on unwitting United States and Canadian civilians by administrating mind altering drugs in the hope of developed a truth serum. The CIA likely wanted to make torture sound like a valuable tool in the hopes that it would convince a majority of Americans to support the heinous act. In true torture is unlikely to reap useful information because a victim will try to say whatever he believes his torturers want to hear in order to make the pain stop. Torture is a great tool to use when you want an innocent person to confess to a crime but it isn’t a reliable method of gathering reliable information.

Double Tapping

Most defensive firearm instructors will tell you to fire two shots at your target in rapid succession. This technique is known as a double tap and it seems somebody operating the United States drone fleet has taken this concept to a new and absurd level:

NYU student Josh Begley is tweeting every reported U.S. drone strike since 2002, and the feed highlights a disturbing tactic employed by the U.S. that is widely considered a war crime.

Known as the “double tap,” the tactic involves bombing a target multiple times in relatively quick succession, meaning that the second strike often hits first responders.

In a self-defense situation double tapping is a method of compensating for the generally anemic ballistics of handgun cartridges. I’m not sure what practical aspect double tapping somebody with a $68,000 Hellfire missile has other than posing a threat to first responders and therefore generating a great deal of justifiable animosity and hatred towards the United States.

In a rather ironic twist the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has something to say about double tapping in regards to explosive ordinance:

A 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute called double taps a “favorite tactic of Hamas” and the FBI considers it a tactic employed by terrorists.

The more you fight the enemy the more you become the enemy.

Watch Rand Paul Advance Tyranny Again

Rand Paul has become something of a punching bag for me. Some libertarians claim that I’m too hard on the man and urge me to support him because he is just “playing ball” in order to gain a position where he can bring liberty to the masses. I have two problems with such plees. First there is the fact that we have no guarantee that he will every being to advance liberty. At what point in time will Rand’s secret liberty agenda be unleashed? Will it only happen if he gets elected president? If that’s the case what happens if he never gets elected as president, will he just continue advancing tyranny indefinitely? That brings me to the second problem I have with Rand. So long as “playing ball” involves advancing tyranny we’re not going to be better off under his “leadership.”

Consider the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA’13). If you look at the roll call you’ll notice something very interesting:

Paul (R-KY), Yea

None other than Rand Paul voted in favor of this $631 billion spending bill. Rand likes to come off as being fiscally conservative but nobody can really hold that title if they’re willing to vote in favor of a $631 billion spending bill at a time when the country is already massively in debt. On financial grounds alone Rand should have voted against this bill. But the financial side of the bill isn’t the only issue, there was a lot of garbage added to the legislation such as an amendment to impose stronger sanctions on Iran. The people of Iran are already suffering greatly under current sanctions yet the United States government wants to impose even stricter sanctions (is there any wonder why Iran hates us). If you look at the roll call for the amendment you’ll notice something very interesting:

Paul (R-KY), Yea

Rand not only voted on the NDAA’13 as a whole but he specifically voted in favor of an amendment that places stricter sanctions on Iran. This isn’t a minor issue. By voting for this amendment Rand is directly supporting increased violence and suffering against the people of Iran. If “playing ball” requires harming innocent people then the liberty movement can’t afford to “play ball.” The liberty movement is supposed to be about increased the liberty of individuals. Increasing violence and suffering against a group of individuals is nothing more than enhancing tyranny. Sanctions are an act of war therefore supporting any amendment that imposes or increases sanctions against another country is war mongering.

Through his votes Rand has failed to support his claimed fiscal conservatism and demonstrated that he’s a war monger, but that’s not all. Before voting in favor of the NDAA’13 Rand threatened to filibuster the legislation if an amendment wasn’t included that guaranteed citizens detained under the bill the right to a trial by jury. What’s ironic is the amendment actually made it easier to indefinitely detain individuals:

Afran explained that the new provision gives U.S. citizens a right to go to civilian (i.e. Article III) court based on “any [applicable] constitutional rights,” but since there are are no rules in place to exercise this right, detained U.S. citizens currently have no way to gain access to lawyers, family or the court itself once they are detained within the military.

“The biggest thing about the [2012] NDAA was that you weren’t getting a trial … Nothing in here says that you’ll make it to an Article III court so it literally does nothing,” Dan Johnson, founder of People Against the NDAA, told BI. “It’s a bunch of words, basically,”

Afran noted that the newest version actually goes further than the NDAA that’s now in effect.

“The new statute actually states that persons lawfully in the U.S. can be detained under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force [AUMF]. The original (the statute we are fighting in court) never went that far,” Afran said. “Therefore, under the guise of supposedly adding protection to Americans, the new statute actually expands the AUMF to civilians in the U.S.“

Supporting legislation that has a pretty title but does nothing is par for the course for Rand Paul but supporting legislation that actually increases the state’s ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial is a new low.

I know a lot of people that are currently on the fence regarding Rand Paul. They have expressed a desire to wait and see what Rand’s record looks like. To those people I say his record is pretty obvious at this point and he’s proven to be no friend of liberty. He argued in favor of an amendment that actually makes it easier for the United States government to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial. Then he voted in favor of an amendment that stands to directly increase the violence and suffering inflicted on the Iranian people. Finally he voted for a bill that contained both of the previous amendments and allowed the spending of $631 billions the United States government doesn’t have. I’m sure Rand could create a more deplorable record if he tried but it would require quite a bit of work.

Seeing Through the Propaganda

Israel and Palestine are at it again. After Israel killed the top military official of Hamas, and posted the video of the assassination on YouTube (classy Israel, just plain classy), things have gone nowhere but down. After the assassination rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, which caused Israel to call in the reserves (isn’t it funny how quickly things spiral out of control). During all of this propaganda has been flying every which way. Of everything I’ve read so far the most outright disgusting piece of propaganda I’ve seen so far was the following statement made by Netanyahu:

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Hamas “deliberately targets our children and they deliberately place their rockets next to their children.”

Hamas his deliberately targeting Israeli children? Let’s talk about children for a moment. How many children have been killed by this pissing contest between Israel and Palestine? Quite a few, but the numbers are certainly skewed against Israel. By September 2000 1,477 Palestinian children were killed by Israelis while 129 Israeli children were killed by Palestinians. Adding the totals since September 2000 we get 2,863 Palestinian children killed by Israelis and 258 Israeli children killed by Palestinians. Looking at the numbers it seems Israel is the one that has a higher propensity to target children.

Somebody reading this will probably try to label me an anti-Semite as that is the traditional insult of Israelophiles. Such a charge would be entirely false. In fact I don’t like either Israel or Palestine. I’m an anarchist, I don’t like any state. All I’m trying to do with this post is point out the propaganda and explose it for the falsity it is. Honestly the only way this fighting will end is if the people in each country give their respective governments the boot. Until that day people on both sides are going to be killed and state agents on both sides will be spewing out propaganda to win the hearts and minds of the world in the hopes of rallying public support for their wars.

Terrorist Food Trucks

Thanks to Bruce Schneier’s blog I now know that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone off the deep end:

Public Intelligence recently posted a Powerpoint presentation from the NYC fire department (FDNY) discussing the unique safety issues mobile food trucks present. Along with some actual concerns (many food trucks use propane and/or gasoline-powered generators to cook; some *gasp* aren’t properly licensed food vendors), the presenter decided to toss in some DHS speculation on yet another way terrorists might be killing us in the near future.

That’s right. Instead of serving up a quick hot meal, these food trucks will be serving up death, and lots of it! Under the heading “Terrorist Implications,” the FDNY lists the exact reasons we should be concerned, most of which begin with the word “high.”

I hope you’re afraid of food trucks now because they may actually be terrorists in disguise! This is another case of the state creating fear to justify itself.