Shut Up Slave – Page 58 – A Geek With Guns

Story of the Week

The ultimate story of statism run amok occurred in China this week when the country’s government decided that the Dalai Lama can’t choose to not reincarnate without government approval:

Party functionaries were incensed by the exiled Dalai Lama’s recent speculation that he might end his spiritual lineage and not reincarnate. That would confound the Chinese government’s plans to engineer a succession that would produce a putative 15th Dalai Lama who accepts China’s presence and policies in Tibet. Their anger welled up on Wednesday, as it had a day earlier.

Zhu Weiqun, a Communist Party official who has long dealt with Tibetan issues, told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that the Dalai Lama had, essentially, no say over whether he was reincarnated. That was ultimately for the Chinese government to decide, he said, according to a transcript of his comments on the website of People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper.

“Decision-making power over the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, and over the end or survival of this lineage, resides in the central government of China,” said Mr. Zhu, formerly a deputy head of the United Front Department of the Communist Party, which oversees dealings with religious and other nonparty groups. He now leads the ethnic and religious affairs committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body that meets at the same time as the Legislature, or National People’s Congress.

There’s nothing I can add to this story. It’s so ridiculous it stands entirely on it own.

Franklin Graham, the son of Bill Graham (who made a hilarious guest appearance in The Illuminatus! Trilogy), is your typical religious zealot. He espouses a belief in god, hates everybody who isn’t a cisgender heterosexual, and becomes sexually aroused when in the presence of authority. That last part really confuses me though. As a Christian I would think he would find it sinful to worship the false idol of the state. After all, Jesus was about as anti-state as one could get and ended up being killed by the Roman state because of it. But Graham loves the state so much that he took time out of his busy day of judging everybody (which is also something I thought Christians were supposed to refrain) to write a very important message on his Facebook wall:

In other words as long as you’re an obedient little slave you (probably) won’t get hurt! This is one of the sickest messages imaginable. He just justified any police action taken if somebody refuses to get down on their knees and kiss an officer’s boot. I though this was supposed to be the freest goddamn country on Earth and a nation of laws. In a free state (I know that’s an oxymoron) one would be free to disobey unlawful orders regardless of who barked them. And a nation of laws would hold everybody to the same standard regardless if they wear a shiny badge and a silly looking costume or not.

This is an attitude shared by most of the touch on crime fuckwits. Not only is it an endorsement of fascism but it’s also blatant victim blaming. Blaming somebody who was shot dead by a cop for refusing to obey an unlawful order is right up there with blaming a woman who was raped for wearing too short of a skirt. If a cop acts unlawfully they are the wrongdoer. Period. There is no situation where a cop shooting somebody that doesn’t comply with an unlawful order is OK.

Franklin Graham is one of those people on my very long list of psychopaths who should be shipped to a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific to isolate their wickedness from civilized society.

As an aside, I wonder how Graham copes with his belief that homosexuality is a sin and getting a raging erection every time he’s in the presence of a male police officer.

Bloomington City Attorney Wanted to Prosecute Mall of American Employees Who Supported December’s Protesters

There was a major protest inside the Mall of America in December. Since then the authorities have been working hard to find ways to punish the protesters and that has resulted in some ridiculous charges. But it seems that the Bloomington City Attorney wasn’t satisfied with only charging a handful of protesters. She wanted to punish the employees at the Mall of America who showed support for the protesters:

Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson said the emails “appear to be valid” after they were posted on Facebook Monday by Black Lives Matter Minneapolis. The group said it obtained the emails through a public records request.

The December emails show the city attorney and Mall of America Corporate Counsel Kathleen Allen weighing trespassing orders and civil charges to deter further unsanctioned demonstrations. In one, Allen says the mall’s owners did not want trespassing orders against Lush employees who showed support for the protest, citing “the potential for further press.”

Johnson argued for a six-month ban from the mall for employees (with an exception allowing access to work at the store) in order to “send a good message to all persons employed at MOA. … Future demonstrations cannot be tolerated.”

This shows that these charges have nothing to do with the law. Under the law the protesters, at most, may have been guilty of trespassing (depending on whether or not you believe a mall that receives massive amounts of tax payer subsidies qualifies as private property). Any working employee wasn’t trespassing since it was their job to be there. If their employer felt those employees had violated any policies it could fire them but there was absolutely no reason for the Bloomington City Attorney to even suggest going after them.

What these charges amount to is petty vengeance. The Bloomington City Attorney is pissed that people decided to ignore her employer’s authority and protest in the Mall of America after being told not to. In the e-mail she said she wanted to “send a good message to all persons employed at MOA.” that future protests will not be tolerated in any way. Putting that statement into plain English she wanted to send a message to all of the serfs at the Mall of America that any disobedience against their lords will be punished swiftly.

She should be fired immediately.

South Carolina Republicans Demand Oath of Purity

Although I hate both the Democrats and Republicans equally I have to say that the Republicans certainly give me more material to work with. The Democrats tend to keep their stupidity aimed at policy whereas the Republicans spread their stupidity out to include their policies and the things many of their members say. Case in point, the Republicans like to make public statements about their social conservatism. In the Republican Party in one South Carolina county took such statements to the next level when demanded its members take a pledge of purity. This pledge included some real gems:

“You must oppose abortion, in any circumstances.

“You must uphold the right to have guns, all kinds of guns.

“You must endorse the idea of a balanced state and federal budget, whatever it takes, even if your primary responsibility is to be sure the county budget is balanced.

“You must be faithful to your spouse. Your spouse cannot be a person of the same gender, and you are not allowed to favor any government action that would allow for civil unions of people of the same sex.

“You must have:

“A compassionate and moral approach to Teen Pregnancy;

“A commitment to Peace Through Strength in Foreign Policy; and

“A high regard for Unites States Sovereignty.”

Now I question a the sincerity of many of these points. For example, I doubt they mean members must uphold the right to have all kinds of guns. In my experience Republicans, while claiming to support gun rights, tend to get very squeamish around things such as grenade launchers.

The statement about spouses really takes the cake though. Republicans, at least the ones I know, seem to have a problem with faithfulness. I know several local Republicans that ended up having affairs at the last Republican National Convention and a few even ended up getting divorced. From what I’ve been told this is a common problem within the party. The fact that members of the party must also pledge against supporting any government action that would allow for same-sex marriages is laughable. Republicans always claim to be the party of small government. Getting the government entirely out of the marriage game would greatly reduce the size and power of government but would necessarily allow for same-sex marriages. Catch-22, Republicans.

I also enjoy the quip about a peace through strength foreign policy. Do you know what that makes me think of? Kane:

Granted, unlike Republicans, Kane was actually competent at fulfilling his goals. But it’s nice to see the Republican Party’s rhetoric reflects that of the supreme bad guy of the original Command and Conquer series.

Besides being incredibly pathetic this pledge also demonstrates why the Republican Party is having such a tough time getting new ~~suckers~~ members under the age of 500 billion years old. My generation cares far less about social issues than the one before it and it’s likely the generation after mind is going to care even less. So as long as the Republican Party continues pushing social issues it will find itself becoming more and more irrelevant in this country’s politics.

Why I Self-Host

For many years this site has been hosted on a server sitting in my dwelling. I did this in part for educational purposes, hosting your own site does teach you a lot about server administration. The other reason I did this was so I could be free of any third-party’s terms of use agreement. While many hosts; including my original one, WordPress.com; have very permissive use agreements those agreements are subject to change. Google just announced a major change to its use agreement that will leave some blogs reeling:

TORONTO — Google is cracking down on adult content posted to its popular Blogger service.

The company started notifying users on Monday that they have until March 23 to delete “images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity.”

Google said it will not delete existing blogs that haven’t been purged of explicit content by March 23 but warned it will set them to “private” — meaning only the user and people with whom he/she has directly shared the blog will be able to view it.

I don’t host any adult content on my site but I do discuss firearms, anarchism, and other subjects that can be unpopular with many companies. It isn’t impossible to imagine a host decided it doesn’t want to allow anybody to use its service to discuss weapons or how terrible statism is. But since I host this site on my own server I don’t have to worry about such bullshit!

The United States is, Like, Totally Not a Police State

I’m constantly reminded by self-proclaimed patriots that the United States is the freest goddamn country on Earth. While they admit things have gone downhill since Ronald Reagan blessed this fine country with more freedom than 1776, they point out that we don’t have thuggish police killing people at random or secret facilities where citizens are held without charge or access to a lawyer. In other words they are totally divorced from reality (which should have been obvious when they started claiming Reagan was some kind of paragon of freedom). Police officers killing people at random is nothing new in this country but now we know that one department does run an actual black site:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

This wonderful black site allows the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to keep detainees off of the books, beat detainees, and deny detainees their privilege to legal council. It also provides the CPD a place to cut off people from their friends and family members.

The article is lengthy and contains numerous accounts of abuse and even one death. But the more worrisome thing about this story is that if the CPD have one of these black sites you can be assured other domestic police departments are operating similar black sites.

Living in “a nation of law” is supposed to provide comfort to us. Unfortunately the laws on the books grant law enforcers a great deal of leeway in how they act and the system is designed to shield law enforcement officers form liability when they perform misdeeds. When the laws of a nation are stacked against the people the phrase “a nation of laws” is entirely meaningless. And since statism grants a monopoly on creating laws to a handful of individuals you can ensure that anywhere a state exists the legal system will be stacked against the people.

Court Rules State Secrets Trump Justice

I really do appreciate living in the United States. In what other country could you be subjected to constant surveillance by your own government and enjoy a court system that declares the practice legal? OK, that’s actually a lot of countries. But what makes the United States so special is its propaganda about being the land of the free. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been working on a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) for violating our supposed Constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure. Today a district court in California ruled that the NSA’s was above the law because prosecuting it would require revealing state secrets:

A district court in California has issued a ruling in favor of the National Security Agency in a long-running case over the spy agency’s collection of Internet records.

The challenge against the controversial Upstream program was tossed out because additional defense from the government would have required “impermissible disclosure of state secret information,” Judge Jeffrey White wrote in his decision.

That really shows how much protection the Constitution provides. The amendments in the Bill of Rights can be rendered null and void the second state secrets exist. If the Soviet Union were around today it would likely be envious of the American system.

She Should Have Been a Security Expert

As you can expect from a man who has a blog just so he can bitch about whatever he feels like, there are a lot of things that really piss me off. One of the things at the top of the list of things that piss me off is blaming victims of rape fore being raped. Oftentimes such blame comes in the form of people claiming a woman shouldn’t have worn revealing clothing or gotten drunk at a party. But the Arizona Attorney General’s Office may have just taken the cake. A woman is suing the state because she was raped by a prisoner while working at the prison. The Attorney General’s Office is claiming she was at fault because the prison failed at provider her effective security:

“Plaintiff is an ADOC (Arizona Department of Corrections) employee who routinely worked at the prison complex,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Weisbard wrote in his motion to dismiss. “By being placed in a classroom at the complex, the officers were not placing Plaintiff in any type of situation that she would not normally face. The risk of harm, including assault, always existed at a prison like Eyman.”

[…]

Normally, such tests are given in the visitation room, which is monitored by security cameras and corrections officers. But on that day, because of a special event, she was sent to an unmonitored classroom, handed a radio and told to use it if there was any trouble, her lawsuit says.

The test lasted 90 minutes during which not a single corrections officer checked on her or radioed to ask if everything was OK. As they finished, six inmates left, returning unescorted to their dorm. One, Jacob Harvey, lingered.

According to the lawsuit, the 20-year-old inmate grabbed her from behind and took her to the ground as she struggled. He then stabbed her repeatedly in the head with a pen, choked her, slammed her head into the floor, tore away her clothes and raped her, the lawsuit says.

The teacher told investigators she screamed for help, but no one came. After the attack, Harvey tried to use her radio to call for help but it was tuned to a channel the guards didn’t even use. Eventually, Harvey allowed her to phone for help.

In other words the Attorney General’s Office is saying she should have known the room was unmonitored and therefore demanded a different room and to verify the radio given to her was set to the proper channel. Its defense is literally claiming she was at fault for being raped because she wasn’t a trained security expert. I don’t even have words for how disgusting that claim is.

Prisons are supposed to be completely controlled facilities. That’s why there are walls, fences, bars, and guards literally everywhere. But even in these tightly controlled environments the state can’t protect people. It really makes you wonder why anybody expects the state to protect them. This also shows that the state will sink to some really goddamn awful levels to dodge responsibilities for its failures.

Proving Once Again Police Are Better Than Us

Tony Cornish is a busy man. Last week he was helping introduce legislation that would classify any police body camera footage not being used to prosecute a prole, which would help ensure bad police officers continue to be shielded from the consequences of their misdeeds. This week he’s proposing a special emergency system just for the police officers:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) — Minnesota lawmakers are debating a statewide alert system that would be used by law enforcement and broadcasters when a police officer is hurt.

The Blue Alert system would help get the word out quicker to the public to help identify and locate a suspect who seriously hurts or kills a law enforcement officer. This would apply to local, state and federal police in Minnesota.

Rep. Tony Cornish, who introduced the bill, says the system would use the same format already in place that issues Amber Alerts.

Police officers are like you and me only better! You have to love the fact that this would help get the word out to the public when a perpetrator has hurt a law enforcer but won’t do squat if a perpetrator rapes, murders, or assaults anybody else. I can’t wait to see Cornish’s next attempt to hoist the police further above the general public. Maybe his next bill can require all emergency services be diverted from whatever they are doing to respond to any incident where a cop is injured. That would forsake any lowly prole who is having a heart attack but sometimes we have to make sacrifices to ensure our oppressors are safe.

Nipping the Sauron Problem in The Bud

Zero tolerance police in schools have lead to some very interesting suspensions. One student was famously suspended for eating a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. Another student was suspended for drawing a firearm. And we all probably remember the student who was suspended for making a gun with his fingers. But it seems these zero tolerance policies have reached a new absurdity. A student in Texas was just suspended for claiming to have the One Ring:

Tolkien lore led a Texas boy to suspension after he brought his “one ring” to school.

Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth’s Mount Doom.

We’ll have none of your shenanigans little Sauron! At this point I can only guess what the next zero tolerance suspension will be. Perhaps a student will be suspended for bringing Mjölnir to class. Or maybe a student will get suspended for bringing a cardboard Excalibur. Now that students are being suspended for mythical weapons the options are limitless!

Tag: Shut Up Slave