Tag: Shut Up Slave

Croatia Declares War on Liberland

That didn’t take long. Not even two weeks since Liberland declared independence the Croatian government has decided to declare war on the small country by kidnapping its president:

Croatian authorities could not be reached for comment to confirm the arrest of Vít Jedlička, a libertarian politician from the Czech Republic. A group calling itself the Liberland Press Association, which has spoken in the past for Jedlička, made the announcement in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com.

“The president of the self-proclaimed micro-nation of the Free Republic of Liberland, Vít Jedlička, has been arrested by Croatian police for illegally trespassing an international border,” read the statement. “The arrest may have taken place on no man’s land territory. This would raise issues on the Croatian-Serbian border and could start a new crisis in the Balkans.”

What was his crime? Occupying an unclaimed chunk of land apparently. I was kind of curious whether Serbia or Croatia would be the first country to declare war on the small nation. After all, the inhabitants of a 2.7 square-mile piece of unclaimed territory are quite the threat to established nations such as Serbia and Croatia. Perhaps Croatia was concerned its serfs would migrate to the small nation to enjoy the voluntary taxes.

Rap Sheets

I haven’t spent any time discussing the death of Freddie Gray. Sadly the rate at which police officers kill people in this country is so high that it’s difficult to cover these incidents without feeling like you’re just repeating what you’ve said a thousand times before. But those wonderful neocons have given me something to sink my teeth in. Their love of “tough on crime” has, once again, lead them to dig up whatever excuse they can find to justify the officers’ actions. To this end they have latched onto Freddie’s rap sheet (read the comments for maximum face palm):

His arrest record includes at least 18 arrests:

  • March 20, 2015: Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance
  • March 13, 2015: Malicious destruction of property, second-degree assault
  • January 20, 2015: Fourth-degree burglary, trespassing
  • January 14, 2015: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute
  • December 31, 2014: Possession of narcotics with intent to distribute
  • December 14, 2014: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance
  • August 31, 2014: Illegal gambling, trespassing
  • January 25, 2014: Possession of marijuana
  • September 28, 2013: Distribution of narcotics, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, second-degree assault, second-degree escape
  • April 13, 2012: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, violation of probation
  • July 16, 2008: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession with intent to distribute
  • March 28, 2008: Unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance
  • March 14, 2008: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to manufacture and distribute
  • February 11, 2008: Unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance
  • August 29, 2007: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, violation of probation
  • August 28, 2007: Possession of marijuana
  • August 23, 2007: False statement to a peace officer, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance
  • July 16, 2007: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance (2 counts)

How is this information relevant to the case at hand? It’s not. Except to neocons. They tend to believe that once you’ve been found guilty of a crime, whether it be a real crime or a made up victimless “crime”, anything an officer does to you in the future is justified. Due process, you see, is not a thing neocons hold especially dear.

In their zealous attempt to smear Freddie’s character in order to justify what happened to him the neocons have failed to bring up the rap sheet of the officers who interacted with him. From what I’ve found the only thing Freddie did was run away from a gang of armed men with a history of violence. That’s just common sense. But officers, like dogs, tend to chase anything that runs away from them. When some officers caught up with Freddie they assaulted and then kidnapped him. Why? Because he was in possession of a switchblade, which is one of those victimless “crimes”.

Not only did the officers assault and kidnap Freddie but they almost certainly have a long history of kidnappings, extortion, assault, and armed robbery if not more. Their job description might as well be extort money from the populace and beat or murder anybody who fails to pay their protection money to the state. Freddie’s rap sheet is small potatoes compared to the rap sheet of the average officer “just doing their job.”

If you want to condemn rioters for destroying the property of people who had nothing to do with Freddie’s death that’s fine. But dragging out a dead man’s rap sheet while ignoring his kidnappers’ rap sheets in order to criticize people committing an entirely unrelated crime is not the proper way to make a valid argument.

The United States Doesn’t Have Shit on France When it Comes to Religious Discrimination

The United States has a bad reputation when it comes to religious discrimination. This reputation isn’t undeserved as the country’s new boogeyman is Muslims. But the United States doesn’t have shit on France. France takes religious discrimination to new levels. Where else could wearing a long skirt be considered provocative? Apparently it is in France, at least as long as the skirt is being worn by a Muslim girl:

According to French media reports, a 15-year-old French Muslim girl was banned from her class twice for wearing a skirt that was too long, and therefore supposedly a conspicuous display of religion. France’s state secularism has led to very strict laws prohibiting students from wearing overtly religious symbols in institutions of education.

The student, identified as Sarah, already apparently removed her headscarf before entering the school, in accordance with French law. But her long skirt was deemed a “provocation,” and potential act of protest.

If a skirt is too short the poor girl would have probably been sent home for being sexually provocative. I guess the French policy regarding skirts is now that they must all be below the knee and above the knee. Unless the student is Christian, of course. Then I’m sure a skirt can be a long as the wearer wants without any issue.

Rubber-Hose Cryptanalysis is Effective

I’m a big privacy advocate, which means I urge people to encrypt their hard drives (amongst many other things). This protects your data from a thief who has stolen your device, snoopy significant others, and law enforcement agents trying to dig up a reason to throw you in a cage for the remainder of your life. But encryption isn’t perfect. Rubber-hose cryptanalysis is effect. What that means is that officers, thanks to their magical liability shields, can bypass your encryption by threatening or actually using violence against your person:

After a few hours of this, which involved an attempt to lure one of Cascioli’s suppliers to his building, the officers focused on Cascioli’s Palm Pilot, which they (correctly) believed contained the information they wanted. But Cascioli wouldn’t provide the password. He claims that police then tried to extract the password through intimidation.

Cascioli says [Officer Thomas] Liciardello asked him a question: “Have you ever seen Training Day?”

When Cascioli said yes, Cascioli says Liciardello looked him in the eyes and said: “This is Training Day for f—ing real,” and then instructed officers Norman and Jeffrey Walker to take him to the balcony.

According to Cascioli and the indictment, Liciardello told them to “do whatever they had to do to get the password.”

Out on the balcony, Cascioli says officers Norman and Walker lifted him up by each arm and leaned him over the balcony railing.

In his testimony at trial this month, Cascioli provided more details, under oath, about what happened that night. The Palm Pilot, he said, contained records on his $400,000 stash, which he had split for safekeeping between the home of his brother and the home of a friend. When the cops allegedly took him out to the balcony, Cascioli said he truly feared for his life.

“They started to lift me a little,” he said. “My feet were off the ground.”

He said he was afraid. “I thought they were going to drop me” over the railing. Cascioli said he then gave up his password.

As a side note it’s worth bringing up that no Palm Pilot ever supported storage encryption so the most Cascioli’s device could have had was a password that could be easily bypassed by plugging the device into a computer and syncing all of the data (which copies the data from the Palm Pilot to the computer). But that really has nothing to do with the case at hand.

What is important here is threat modeling. Police rarely suffer consequences for using excessive force or even committing murder. That makes them more likely to use rubber-hose cryptanalysis. Fortunately encrypted drives are usually easy to erase because only the decryption keys need to be wiped out. If you really want to keep your information secret it would be wise to begin formatting your computer and mobile device upon confirming police are trying to gain entry into your dwelling. Otherwise you’re at the mercy of the court, which will tend to side with the police, to throw out any condemning evidence (and there will always be condemning evidence since everything is illegal these days).

Parking Illegally isn’t Illegal When You’re a Cop

If you park somewhere illegally you can get booted or towed. It sucks when it happens because you end up paying out a sizable chunk of change most of the time. Unless you’re a cop. When you have a shiny liability badge and you park illegal you can arrest the person who booted your undercover car:

The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, stems from a run-in that happened after the troopers, Sgt. Joseph Patout and Master Trooper Christopher Treadaway, parked a pickup with a Mississippi license plate in a lot across the street from Kyoto, a sushi bar on Prytania Street, and left it unattended for about 30 minutes.

The attendant, Brandon Hardeway, watched the troopers go into the Japanese restaurant, whose customers weren’t allowed to use the parking lot, and booted the pickup after allowing a grace period of several minutes, said Hardeway’s attorney, Isaac Soileau Jr.

“He felt pretty confident that he was doing the right thing when he booted it,” Soileau said of his client.

After leaving the restaurant, the troopers demanded that Hardeway remove the boot from their Dodge Ram pickup, saying they were undercover law enforcement officers, according to the lawsuit.

After checking with his employer, Premier Parking Enforcement, Hardeway told the troopers that the company “extended courtesy” to official vehicles used by New Orleans police as well as “other plainly marked emergency vehicles,” the lawsuit says. The company, also known as Boot Man Inc., did not make the same accommodation for unmarked State Police vehicles, “nor was it required to,” the lawsuit says.

After Hardeway told the troopers he wouldn’t remove the boot until they paid a $90 fee, the troopers told him he was “interfering with their official duties” and arrested him, the lawsuit says, handcuffing him and “forcing him into the back seat of a police vehicle.”

As they say, you can beat the charge but you can’t beat the ride. Even though state law doesn’t exempt undercover police cars from parking regulations the cops were able to kidnap the parking attendant, who was just doing his job I might add ironically, and are requiring him to suffer through the court system in order to get compensation.

Those shiny liability badges also ensure that the officers responsible for this mess will go unpunished. The lawsuit is against the Louisiana State Police, the two officers’ employer. Since the Louisiana State Patrol is tax payer funded the lawsuit, if successful, will do little more than return some of Premier Parking Enforcement’s stolen tax money. In all likelihood the two officers will go entirely unpunished. At most they may lose their jobs. But they certainly won’t be charged for unlawful kidnapping as they should be. Ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse — unless you have a badge.

Crossing the Thin Blue Line

One of the difficulties in holding police accountable in this country is that when an officer is accused of doing something wrong he is investigated by his fellows and usually found innocent of any wrongdoing. This thin blue line of cops protecting other cops is a breeding ground for corruption. When an officer does cross the thin blue line the vengeance dished out by their fellow officers can be terrible. Just ask Frank Serpico. His fellow officers attempted to get him killed on a drug raid because he spoke out against corrupt officers.

Smart officers who want to blow the whistle on their corrupt fellows lawyer up first. Even then the level police officers will sink to in order to exact revenge is frightening. A Arkansas lawyer who is representing some good officers that came forth against corruption found out first hand how low departments still stoop:

An Arkansas lawyer representing current and former police officers in a contentious whistle-blower lawsuit is crying foul after finding three distinct pieces of malware on an external hard drive supplied by police department officials.

The hard drive was provided last year by the Fort Smith Police Department to North Little Rock attorney Matt Campbell in response to a discovery demand filed in the case. Campbell is representing three current or former police officers in a court action, which was filed under Arkansas’ Whistle-Blower Act. The lawsuit alleges former Fort Smith police officer Don Paul Bales and two other plaintiffs were illegally investigated after reporting wrongful termination and overtime pay practices in the department.

According to court documents filed last week in the case, Campbell provided police officials with an external hard drive for them to load with e-mail and other data responding to his discovery request. When he got it back, he found something he didn’t request. In a subfolder titled D:\Bales Court Order, a computer security consultant for Campbell allegedly found three well-known trojans, including:

  • Win32:Zbot-AVH[Trj], a password logger and backdoor
  • NSIS:Downloader-CC[Trj], a program that connects to attacker-controlled servers and downloads and installs additional programs, and
  • Two instances of Win32Cycbot-NF[Trj], a backdoor

All three trojans are usually easily detected by antivirus software. In an affidavit filed in the whistle-blower case, Campbell’s security consultant said it’s unlikely the files were copied to the hard drive by accident, given claims by Fort Smith police that department systems ran real-time AV protection.

It makes you wonder what the officers who installed the malware on the hard drives were thinking. Did they believe their programs would bypass the lawyer’s anti-malware? Were they hoping he didn’t keep backups of the information he had related to the case and that erasing them on the laptop would ensure they were gone forever? Or were they hoping to install illegal material, such as child pornography, on his laptop in order to frame him? Who know. But this shows just how far officers will go to lash out against those who cross the thin blue line. Going after whistle blower’s lawyers is probably seen as nothing more than collateral damage to them.

Children Are Property of the State

Many parents mistakenly believe that they are the legal guardians of their children. I say mistakenly because they are merely enjoying the temporary privilege of being the legal guardian of their children. That privilege, like all privileges, can be revoked at any moment by the state. One may wonder what would convince the state to revoke such a privilege. Most people would likely answer things such as letting a child starve or beating the child. Perhaps that was the case at some point in the past but more and more the state is revoke the permission of parents to be legal guardians of their children for asinine reasons. Now the state has gone so far as to rule that parents need not be at fault of anything to lose their guardian privileges:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The state can remove an out-of-control child from the custody of a parent even if the mother or father is not to blame for the child’s behavior, a California appeals court said Thursday.

If children face substantial risk of harming themselves, it doesn’t matter whether the parent did anything intentional to put them in that position, the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled.

When you see the words “substantial risk of harming themselves” you may think about suicidal children and parents not properly securing things like knives, guns, or pills. That’s not the case here:

Thursday’s ruling came in the case of a Los Angeles County mother whose teen daughter repeatedly ran away from home and had a child at the age of 15. The appellate court said the girl remained incorrigible despite her mother’s best efforts, which included looking for her each time she left home, sending her to live with her grandparents and calling the police and Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services for help. The mother was identified in court documents only as “Lisa E.” and her daughter as “R.T.”

“(The) mother in this case was neither neglectful nor blameworthy in being unable to supervise or protect her daughter,” the court said.

Fortunately the state decided to swoop in, revoke the mother’s guardian privileges, and kidnap the child. In the end the state decided to grant guardianship privileges to the child’s grandparents but it could have just as easily decided to be less benevolent and placed the child in foster care or even prison (since the intention was to prevent the child from running away). This case just demonstrates what us anarchist already know; children are the property of the state.

Feinstein Doesn’t Understand How the Internet Works

Dianne Feinstein has made herself famous amongst gun owners by spouting entirely false claims. But she’s not satisfied with simply being ignorant about firearms. She also wants to prove to the world that she’s ignorant about how the Internet works. Her latest crusade is to remove the Anarchist Cookbook from the Internet:

“The arrests of two women in New York accused of plotting to carry out bombings remind us that the threat of terrorism inside the United States endures. We must remain vigilant against these types of attacks and place a high priority on tracking and interdicting such plots.

“I am particularly struck that the alleged bombers made use of online bombmaking guides like the Anarchist Cookbook and Inspire Magazine. These documents are not, in my view, protected by the First Amendment and should be removed from the Internet.

How does she propose to do that? The Internet is a decentralized system where no single government’s rule dictates jack shit. Even if she could declare the Anarchist Cookbook illegal in the United States, which would carry some serious free speech ramifications, it wouldn’t prevent servers in other countries from hosting the book. There is literally no way for the book to be remove from the Internet. The fact that Feinstein doesn’t understand this should be more proof that she has no business writing or voting for any legislation affecting the Internet (just as she has no business writing or voting for legislation affecting firearms).

As an interesting side note the book, despite the title, has nothing to do with the philosophy of anarchism. It was written by William Powell as a response to the fact that the government was trying to send him off to fight a war without his consent (also known as a draft). The book wasn’t about anarchism but about retaliating against a government that would make him act against his will. Unfortunately the title selection has been used as evidence that us anarchists are a bunch of violent psychopaths since its publication.

Killing is the Only Thing the State Excels At

European manufactures of drugs used in lethal injection have been holding out on the United States. This has many states very concerned because they’re running out of the drugs but not people to kill. To solve this problem Virginia has been looking into bringing a classing killing instrument back. Utah, not wanting to be outdone, is bringing back the firing squad:

Utah became the only state that allows firing squads for executions when Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law Monday approving the method for use when no lethal injection drugs are available, even though he has called it “a little bit gruesome.”

The Republican governor has said Utah is a capital punishment state and needs a backup execution method in case a shortage of the drugs persists.

Do you know what else Utah could do if it ran out of lethal injection drugs? Stop killing people. Numerous people sentenced to death have later been exonerated. That means those sentenced to death are not guaranteed to actually be guilty. Since guilt can’t be guaranteed the death sentence should be entirely unacceptable as a person should have the right to continue fighting their case as they very well may be innocent.

But the state is only good at one thing and that’s killing people. It’s not going to let anything interfere with that, especially pesky people who think prisoners have rights and shouldn’t be executed.

Arizona Moves to Make Police Less Accountable

How could the United Police States of America possibly make police less accountable? By keeping their names secret for 60 days after shooting somebody, which is what Arizona is moving to do:

Critics call Senate Bill 1445 an attack on government transparency at a time when American police departments are trying to earn the public’s trust after a series of controversial shootings.

The bill would prevent law enforcement agencies statewide from releasing the names of police officers “involved in a use of deadly physical force incident that results in death or serious physical injury” for 60 days.

Why 60 days? Because that’s more than enough time for the story to fall off of the media’s radar. In fact 60 days is overkill since the media forgets about stories about two weeks after they happen in most cases. Regardless this bill would ensure that when people learn the identify of the shooter it will have little in the way of consequence. At most it will get a mention on the back page of a newspaper section under a generic title such as “Identify of police officer released.”