Tag: 1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint

Constitution Free Zones

We’re all aware of so-called gun free zones, places in the United States where it is verboten for law abiding people to carry firearms. Most readers of this blog are likely aware of the so-called Constitution free zones, the areas of the country within 100 miles of the border that the government have claimed fall outside of Constitutional protections. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put together a rather frightening map that displays the areas of America where the Constitution apparently doesn’t apply:

Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.

The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This ” Constitution-Free Zone” includes most of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.

Ever wonder why they only made it 100 miles? Because that covers a majority of the population and as far as the state is concerned that’s good enough for now. Personally I don’t buy the bullshit idea of a Constitution free zone, nowhere in the document does it state that it ceases to apply within 100 miles of the borders and I’m pretty sure the founders would have put something that important somewhere in writing.

America: land of the free so long as you live 100 miles or more inland.

If I Disappear the FBI Probably Kidnapped Me

The state’s war on self-ownership is ramping up something fierce:

The Homeland Security Department has ranked the movement [sovereign] as a major threat.

[…]

According to court papers, Rice was involved in the “sovereign citizen” movement, a group that has attracted little national media attention but which the FBI classifies as an “extremist antigovernment group.” So-called sovereign citizens argue that they are not subject to local, state or federal laws, and some refuse to recognize the authority of courts or police.

Since 2000, members of the movement have killed six police officers, and clashes with law enforcement are on the rise, according to the FBI. The deadliest incident came in 2010, when a shootout with a member left four people dead, including two police officers, during what began as a routine traffic stop in West Memphis, Ark.

[…]

In two recent unpublished studies, the Homeland Security Department and the National Counterterrorism Center ranked the sovereign citizen movement as a major threat, along with Islamic extremists and white supremacists. The FBI assigned a supervisor to coordinate investigations of the movement last year.

“This is a movement that has absolutely exploded,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization based in Montgomery, Ala., that tracks domestic terrorists and hate groups. More than 100,000 Americans have aligned themselves with the sovereign citizens, the center said.

It’s come to this, those of us who recognized the axiomatic principle of each person being a sovereign are not seen as equal to Islamic extremists in the eyes of the state. If this site goes offline (and it’s not a DNS issue) it probably means I’ve been kidnapped by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and am being held on fabricated charges. Never mind the fact that out of, supposedly 100,000 people, only six incidents of violence (that’s 0.006%) have been recorded, we’re all apparently violent scumbags.

What I find most hilarious is the fact that this “sovereign” movement supposedly only consists of 100,000 people. Why does this strike me as funny? Because every human being is sovereign. How can I make such a claim? By using Hans-Herman Hoppe’s demonstration of the axiomatic nature of individual sovereignty.

When you choose to persuade somebody that they’re not sovereign using argumentation you’re recognizing the other person’s sovereignty by the fact you recognize their right to use their body in order to argue. The act of arguing demonstrates you’re recognition of another’s free will and that free will is the definition of sovereignty.

Let’s look up the definition of sovereign on Google:

1. A supreme ruler, esp. a monarch

2. A former British gold coin worth one pound sterling, now only minted for commemorative purposes

For this case we’re interested in the first definition, a supreme ruler. By definition having complete control over one’s own actions makes that person a sovereign, or supreme ruler, of him or herself.

There is no “sovereign” movement. Yet most people don’t understand the nature of sovereignty and therefore the state, who doesn’t recognize the sovereign nature of individuals as demonstrated by their use of force instead of arguments to convince, can use it to drum up more fear and therefore justify seizing more power. Looking at the FBI’s presented numbers shows how much of a non-threat the “sovereign” movement is, only 0.006% have demonstrated any capacity for violence.

This is likely because those who recognize their sovereign nature also recognize the sovereign nature of others. Recognition of another person as a sovereign individual usually brings the non-aggression principle into play. That is to say you recognize every other person as a sovereign, recognize that sovereigns coming together to cooperate is more productive than fighting, and therefore find the idea of initiating violence against others distasteful.

Saying one recognizes the value of cooperation by recognizing sovereignty probably sounds like a large assumption but it is one that can be stated with reason. As previously state one recognizes another as sovereign by the very act of using arguments to persuade them of something instead of force. If you desire a property held by another you will likely attempt to persuade him or her to give it to you by offering something to exchange. That is to say you recognize the sovereign nature of the other individual by using something other than force in an attempt to get something they hold, and by not using force you have chosen to use cooperative non-violent methods in your attempt to obtain the object you desire. Therefore those that actually understand and recognize sovereignty also adhere to the non-aggression principle.

What the FBI is claiming is false. They’re applying the title “sovereign” movement to anybody that doesn’t recognize the state’s authority over their person. Basically “sovereign” to them means inconvenient or politically undesirable. Don’t believe the FBI’s lies, these are the same people who create terrorists so they can look like heros when they “stop” them. Their actions are built on lies and deception because that is the only way to drum up fear and fear is the only way they get more funding and power.

It’s 1984 in Britain

The Stasi are going to be working overtime in formerly Great Britain now that they’ll have records of every phone call, e-mail, and text message sent in the country:

Details of every phone call and text message, email traffic and websites visited online are to be stored in a series of vast databases under new Government anti-terror plans.

Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to the security services under the scheme.

If you live in that forsaken realm of the damned it would be wise to personally run your own e-mail server that only accepts SSL-secured connections. While the Stasi are claiming they won’t store the contents of intercepted messages that matters not because once they know messages exist they can obtain records of them through glorious court orders (or if they have the equivalent to the United States National Security Letters they don’t even have to putz around with that). Remember that deleted e-mails may no longer be accessible to you but they’re likely accessible on some backup somewhere.

I would say denizens of Britain should attempt to flee to free America but we’re no longer free either. The best hope of not being spied on by your government is to live in a region controlled by a government that is too poor to implement a police state.

Printer Manufacturers that Cooperate with the United States Government

In an attempt to grant a monopoly on counterfeiting to the Federal Reserve the United States government has been working with printer manufacturers. This cooperation, better known as corporatism, has lead to certain printer manufacturers equipping prints to place tiny dots on every page printed in order to trace what printer any document came from. No publicly available list of printer manufacturers who were implementing this system was publicly available until now. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we now know who these printer manufacturers are:

Canon
Brother
Casio
Hewlett-Packard
Konica
Minolta
Mita
Ricoh
Sharp
Xerox

Basically every major printer manufacturer. Still it’s nice to have a definitive list to reference.

The FBI Stops Another Agency Created Terrorist

It’s a good thing we have the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) out there creating terrorists to fight, otherwise the American populace wouldn’t have fear stricken into their hearts. Last week the FBI “stopped” a plot that could have ended with nobody being hurt:

A man has been arrested near the US Capitol building as part of an anti-terror investigation, US officials say.

Amine El Khalifi, 29, of Alexandria, Virginia was taken into custody by the FBI.

Officials told US media the man thought he was heading to carry out a suicide attack on the Washington DC building, home to the US Congress.

Why do I say nobody would have been hurt? Because the FBI supplied “explosives” were inactive:

He carried a vest he thought was packed with explosives, reports said, but had in fact been supplied and made harmless by undercover agents.

“Explosives the suspect allegedly sought to use in connection with the plot had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public,” a spokesman for the US Justice Department said.

Hell the FBI didn’t even let him get as far as the Capitol grounds:

Mr Khalifi was not arrested on the Capitol grounds and had been under surveillance for several weeks, AP reported.

This is the new strategy of the FBI. First they find somebody who is, for all intents and purposes, harmless but also fairly gullible. An agent will make contact and begin encouraging the non-violent individual to perform acts of violence. After enough goading the person finally agrees and the FBI agent supplies the sucker with a device that is claimed to be an explosive. With the fake explosive in hand the man is arrest and charged with attempting to commit and act of terror. Had the FBI never been involve, had they never approach, goaded, and provided weapons to the man it is almost certain that man would have never caused harm to anybody. Yet this is how the FBI is able to drum of fear and justify their ever expanding budgets and enforcement powers to the American people.

Don’t fall for this kind of shit.

The Stasi in School Lunchrooms

Parents who send their children to public schools have two options when it comes to food; have the kid eat the school provided lunches or pack lunches for the kid. Well it appears as through the latter option is going away as the Stasi are inspecting lunches and confiscating those that aren’t approved by the state:

The West Hoke Elementary School student was in her More at Four classroom when a U.S. Department of Agriculture agent who was inspecting lunch boxes decided that her packed lunch — which consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips — “did not meet USDA guidelines,” the Journal reports.

The decision was made under consideration of a regulation put in place by the the Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services, which requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs to meet USDA guidelines.

In other words the state makes the requirements. If you don’t agree with those requirements that’s just too fucking bad. Do you believe your child needs turkey and cheese instead of the pink goo used to make chicken nuggest? Too bad, the state has deemed that you believe wrong and will steal your child’s lunch just like it steals your money.

This is no longer the land of the free, it is a police state where every action is controlled by the state at the point of a gun.

EDIT: 2012-02-16 13:20: The link posted by Nicole calls several aspects of this story into question. Namely the situation has become a bit of a he said, she said situatation:

Additionally, citing the above-linked statement, a local TV news outlet which had jumped on the bandwagon claims that “the agency says it gave the little girl milk to offset a missing dairy item.” However, this claim does not appear to be in the cited statement.

The TV station’s update further quotes the school district’s superintendent as saying that the child was simply instructed (it is unclear by whom, and it is unclear whether the child was first asked whether she wanted milk) to go through the lunch line to get some milk, and that the superintendent thinks “that the child became confused about what she had to do. I think the child, instead of going over and picking up the milk, I think the child, for whatever reason, thought she had to go through the line and get a school meal which, that’s not our policy.”

In other words one of two possibilities exist; either an overzealous employee, given legitimacy by the state, ordered the girl to get a school provided lunch or the child was simply order to get milk but became confused. It does sound as though the lunch was not confiscated, which is a relief to know. What becomes far more interesting though is the following:

Notably, as the second-linked story above suggests, the mother’s main gripe here does not even appear to be with this “state agent,” but instead with the school’s teachers, who continue to give the girl milk and vegetables despite letters from the mother asking them not to.

What is not made clear is why the mother desired her child not to be provided milk and vegetables. This is of importance because it is very possible that the child has allergies that must be avoided or the family has religious reasons (for example if they’re strict Orthodox Jews they may require food to be kosher). Regardless the mother’s wishes were ignore. The following claim is then made:

The mother apparently objects to this option being provided to her daughter, not because of any health concerns or the like, but because she incorrectly believes that she will be charged additional money for her child being provided this option.

Of course this statement is in question because we do not know if there is a health concern regarding the child or not, that is never made clear. It seems to me that the mother had some kind of reason for wishing her child not be provided certain foodstuffs and that reasoning is important to know. The author is also unaware of how the state only expands its powers:

Since this is also an opt-in program, there is no chance of this becoming some sort of generally applicable concern even to the extent there is some sort of nanny state concern here. If the mother has some sort of ethical problem with her child being provided with the option of drinking milk or eating vegetables at school, then she is surely free to send her child to an unsubsidized day care program.

Emphasis mine. The state often uses opt-in programs to field test new powers and authorities before making them mandatory elsewhere. Saying there is no chance of this situation becoming generally applicable shows a gross lack of understanding in how governmental powers expand. I also find the second claim interesting because it’s a play on the statist’s usual rebuttal of, “If you don’t like it leave.” Apparently the state should provided these subsidized services, make everybody pay for them at the point of a gun, but if you partake in one of these programs that you’re forced to pay for you should have no say in how it’s run. That sounds like a typical statist to me.

At most, the only actual concern here, hinted at by the second-linked article, is the expense to the taxpayer of providing the extra food free of charge. Then again, since we are definitionally dealing with children whose parents will often lack the resources to provide a consistently balanced lunch, and since the whole point of the program is to provide those children with a pre-K experience that their parents’ income would otherwise prevent, this would not seem to be a tremendously important concern.

Again, emphasis mine. So we’re definitely dealing with a maybe here.

I’m going to toss this story into the he said, she said pile. Evidence exists that both sides of the story are exaggerated and contain misunderstandings and conjecture. It is my belief that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes although we’re unlikely to ever find out what the truth is.

Abuse of Body Scanner Technology by the TSA

File this story under obvious outcomes of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) naked body scanners:

TSA agents in Dallas singled out female passengers to undergo screening in a body scanner, according to complaints filed by several women who said they felt the screeners intentionally targeted them to view their bodies.

One woman who flew out of Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport several months ago said a female agent sent her through a body scanner three times after the agent commented on her “cute” body.

“She says to me, ‘Do you play tennis?’ And I said, ‘Why?’‘You just have such a cute figure,’” Ellen Terrell recalled to CBS News in Dallas.

Agents of the TSA targeted women for naked body scans? Who would have predicted such a possibility? Everybody with a functioning brain of course. I’m sure there was a conversation that went something like this:

TSA Thug 1: “Check out that hottie. Send her through the scanner, let’s take a look.”

TSA Thug 2: “AWWW YEAH!”

Then they bump fists and send the unsuspecting woman through the scanner. If the agents like what they see they’ll send her through a few more times. These body scanners give viewing TSA thugs all the porn they could hope for without making them sink to the level of using Google to find it.

I’ve Detected a False Dichotomy

In a way you almost have to admire statists. Regardless of how often they are proven wrong they always managed to find some way to make ultimatums that make their opposition look like really bad people. Case in point, the current debate over Internet surveillance laws that is taking place in Canada right now. Opponents of Internet surveillance laws say they will violate the privacy of Canadian citizens while the supporters have said anybody who opposes said laws support child pornography:

But when Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia attacked the Conservatives for “preparing to read Canadians’ emails and track their movements through cellphone signals” – which does appear to be a severe distortion of the bill’s powers – Mr. Toews’s counterattack was fierce.

“As technology evolves, many criminal activities, such as the distribution of child pornography, become much easier,” he told the House. “We are proposing to bring measures to bring our laws into the 21st century and to provide police with the lawful tools that they need.

“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”

“Child pornography” is the new say for statists to say, “Shut up slave!” without actually using the word slave (as that word has some negative connotations). Anytime they want to shove a new law down our throats they either claim it’s for the children or to fight terrorism. In this sense you have to give the statists credit for being consistant. While anti-statists find an almost uncountable number of reasons statism is bad the statists only need one; fear. When anti-statists say Internet surveillance is a violation of laws protecting people from unwarranted search and seizure the statist only needs to reply with one of two boogeymen; child pornographers or terrorists (or, theoretically, terrorist child pornographers).

I doubt it needs pointing out but the choice between an Internet free of government snooping and child pornography is a false dichotomy. The Internet is remarkably good at policing itself. When a highly undesirable thing appears on the Internet groups like Anonymous move to attack it.

NYPD to Pay $15 Million for Illegally Arresting People

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has been illegally arresting people under laws that were deemed unconstitutional far in advance of the arrests:

For almost 30 years — from 1983 to 2012 — the New York Police Department went about arresting people under laws that state and federal courts had long declared unconstitutional, cuffing and booking almost 22,000 people. In 2010, federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin finally held them in contempt of court. Yesterday, she signed an order approving what is effectively their punishment: a $15 million class-action settlement that could generate individual payments of as much as $5,000.

Those arrested were forced to defend themselves in court and even served jail time for completely lawful behavior. The class action settlement also requires the city to help the courts vacate and seal all convictions stemming from the illegal arrests.

This story doesn’t surprise me, especially coming from New York City. Perhaps this is the reason Mayor Bloomberg wants to prohibit guns so desperately, he need to keep the denizens of his city disarmed less they rise up and refuse to comply with the police making illegal arrests.

What’s really sad is the fact our country has reached a point where police officers not only arrest people for perfectly lawful activity but juries are more than happy to hand out a guilty verdict. Once again we come to the fact that jury nullification is one of the few options we have left in our toolbox to prevent tyranny and most people absolutely refuse to use it (likewise potential jurors who know about their powers are disallowed from sitting on a jury).

Over the years I’ve changed my outlook on prisons and people who have been in prison. Previously if I heard somebody was pronounced guilty of a crime and went t prison because of it I offered no protest. Now I give prisoners the benefit of the doubt because a huge majority of them are in prison for victimless crimes. When somebody gets thrown into prison their life is often destroyed as future employment because difficult, if not impossible. Without the prospect of obtaining work many former prisoners end up becoming repeat offenders because no legal means of survival is available to them. After being released from prison your slate should be considered clean as your punishment has been completed; instead our government continues the punishment for the entirety of many former prisoner’s lives. The people wrongfully arrested in New York have lost years of their life because they violated laws that weren’t even laws at the time. We live in a police state and the fact things like this happen prove it.