Tag: Shut Up Slave

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.

Down the Memory Hole

In the book 1984 the Party uses a device called a memory hold to dispose of information that it wants censored. A little known fact is that the United States government (and probably every other government) also have memory holes in the form of classified information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently got to see this wonderful eraser of information as the National Security Agency (NSA) attempted to rewrite the history of a court transcript:

On June 6, the court held a long hearing in Jewel in a crowded, open courtroom, widely covered by the press. We were even on the local TV news on two stations. At the end, the Judge ordered both sides to request a transcript since he ordered us to do additional briefing. But when it was over, the government secretly, and surprisingly sought permission to “remove” classified information from the transcript, and even indicated that it wanted to do so secretly, so the public could never even know that they had done so.

Read the story, it’s an eye opener if you’re one of those poor unfortunate souls who still trusts the state. What’s more worrisome is that an unknown number of court case transcripts may have been altered in the past. In other words even the reliability of the judicial system is in question in this country. It’s pretty hard to set precedents when the information regarding a case is classified.

They Grow Up So Fast

It was only 66 years ago that Israel was born. But is has grown up so fast! Since its inception it has basically condensed the progress of most westernized nations into less than a single century. Israel is now catching up to its family members such as the United States and Britain by moving to severely restrict the freedom of speech and association:

The bill proposed by MK Pnina Tamnu-Shata (Yesh Atid) would forbid discrimination in providing a product or service or in entering a public place against soldiers and members of other security and rescue forces such as the police, firefighters, prison guards and Magen David Adom staff.

Tamnu-Shata presented the bill to the Knesset, saying that in recent years, discrimination against people in uniform has become a growing phenomenon.

[…]

“Unfortunately, we all saw the demonstrations in which people held signs with hollow slogans against IDF soldiers or articles by people like [farleft Haaretz columnist] Gideon Levy [who wrote that all IAF pilots are war criminals],” Tamnu-Shata said. According to the lawmaker, there is “wild incitement” against soldiers that could turn into actions.

“We must set limits for words of incitement against soldiers.

Military worship? Check. Restrictions on the freedom of association? Check. Stomping on the freedom of speech? Check. And it’s all compressed into a single piece of legislation! That’s the type of government efficiency you don’t see anymore.

Privileges of Position

Several episodes of Dan Carlin’s excellent Hardcore History podcast covered the fall of the Roman Empire. In it one of the facts that I found interesting was that Roman politicians were immune from lawsuits for acts they performed until they left office. Because of this politicians often sought to remain in office simply to avoid the slew of lawsuits that they knew awaited them upon exiting. Our country isn’t that dissimilar except members of the government are usually immune from lawsuits for acts performed in office for the entirety of their lives. Which leads to some rather interesting situations:

Judge Wade McCree first made headlines when he sexted a shirtless selfie to a female bailiff back in 2012. Then, McCree had a sexual relationship with Geniene La’Shay Mott while overseeing her child support case.

McCree sexted Mott from the bench and had sex with her in his chambers. During this time, he ordered Robert King, the father of Mott’s child, to pay child support and to wear an electronic tether.

King sued McCree, but a court ruled that he could not be sued because of the immunity doctrine, which says that in order for judges to remain impartial, they must be immune from lawsuits.

A judge must be immune from lawsuits to remain impartial but he’s totally remaining impartial in a divorce hearing when he’s banging one of the divorcees. It really is good to be in the service of the king. Perhaps it’s time I sold out, gave up this whole anarchism thing, and got a sweet job with the state that allowed me to abuse my power without consequence. That pay and benefits are usually pretty stellar as well (especially when you consider you don’t actually have to do anything useful).

Be Careful in Constitution Free Zones

According to the United States government everything within 100 miles of this country’s imaginary lines (often mistakenly referred to as a border) is a “Constitution free zone”. What this means is that the government can’t even be bothered to pretend to abide by the very document it created when it gave itself absolute power. So anybody living within 100 miles of this country’s imaginary lines, which is approximately two thirds of the country’s population, has fewer privileges than normal. For example, photographing Border Patrol agents inside of the “Constitution free zone” will result in your staring at the business end of a gun held by a Border Patrol agent:

About 10 days into the trip, an innocent action by one of the nearly two dozen Scouts at the Canadian border into Alaska set off a chain of events that lead to a U.S. border official pointing a gun at a scout’s head.

[…]

Fox said one of the Scouts took a picture of a border official, which spurred agents to detain everyone in that van and search them and their belongings.

“The agent immediately confiscated his camera, informed him he would be arrested, fined possibly $10,000 and 10 years in prison,” Fox said.

Just another day living under the most transparent government in history! This story should be a lesson though. Being a good citizen means doing what you’re told and not questioning authority. Good citizens are rewarded by being allowed to live, bad citizens get put down. So be a good citizen. Don’t question police actions, do rat out any of your friends who are committing acts of wrongthink, and don’t photograph the police. Failure to abide by the rules of good citizenry may result in your immediate termination.

It’s Good to Be the King

As Mel Brooks told us in History of the World: Part I, it’s good to be the king:

When you’re the king you get to enjoy a lot of benefits that mere serfs do not. For example, you don’t have to deal with traffic because you can just shutdown entire stretches of highway that you want to drive on. It doesn’t matter if you’re traveling on it during the weekend or rush hour because you get to tell all of the little people to get the fuck off of your road. And if a woman is apparently in labor that’s just too fucking bad for her:

A pregnant woman in labor Wednesday afternoon reportedly was not allowed to cross the street to get to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by authorities in Los Angeles because President Obama’s motorcade was going to come through the area.

I guess she should have went into labor after the king left. Hopefully she learned her lesson and will plan accordingly next time!

Federal Government Gave Local Gangs Military Equipment

Fellow denizens of Minnesota, and me neighbors in North Dakota, we are facing a major problem. The federal government has been caught providing military equipment to local gangs:

The department got the 3-ton Humvee about three years ago through a federal program that provides local police departments and state agencies with military weapons and equipment no longer needed or used in the global war on terror.

A total of 1,549 weapons or other equipment — with an estimated value of about $3 million — has been distributed in North Dakota over the past decade by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Logistics Agency. More than 8,500 items have gone to law enforcement agencies in Minnesota.

The equipment ranges from night vision goggles and gun silencers to mine-resistant ambush-protected armored vehicles, better known as MRAPs.

I’m not sure what the federal government’s thinking here. Arming violent gangs who are eight times more likely to kill you than terrorists is not an effective method to fight terror. It is however a good way of perpetuating terror. Having a bunch of thugs roll up to your house in a Humvee at two in the morning, kick in your door, shoot your dog, and kidnap you is certainly a terrorizing situation and one that happens far more frequently than attacks by foreign terrorists.

Also, as a side note, when the fuck will I legally be allowed to buy a suppressor in this forsaken state? If people with a history of performing violent acts can have them then why can’t nonviolent people like me have them?

The Government is Even Incompetent at Things It Used to Do Well

Governments are good at much but there are a few things they excel at. Killing people is one of those things. You only have to look at the number of people killed in democides to see how ruthlessly efficient government are at killing people. But the government seems to be slipping as it can’t even execute a man properly:

US death row inmate Joseph Wood has died after an execution in Arizona took nearly two hours to kill him.

[…]

The execution should have taken 10 minutes, his lawyers said, but Wood, 55, gasped more than 600 times before he died.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened in recent memory. No wonder it’s approval rating is in the shitter, it can’t even do the one job it’s supposed to be good at effectively!

You’re a Terrorist and You’re a Terrorist and You’re a Terrorist; We’re All Terrorists

Since it’s existence was confirmed people have been wondering exactly a person had to meet to be added to one of the government’s terrorist watchlists. The most transparent government in history has remained tight lipped about the criteria claiming it would be a threat to national security. So we’ve been left to guess and ponder. That is until now:

The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place “entire categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.

The Intercept managed to get a hold on a complete copy of the guidebook and release it in its entirety to the public [PDF]. It’s a sizable document and I haven’t read through the entire thing. What I have read indicates that it’s a legalese justification for basically putting anybody on the terrorist watchlist without worrying about pesky things like due process or evidence. In fact it’s an easy list to get onto but not an easy list to get off of:

The difficulty of getting off the list is highlighted by a passage in the guidelines stating that an individual can be kept on the watchlist, or even placed onto the watchlist, despite being acquitted of a terrorism-related crime. The rulebook justifies this by noting that conviction in U.S. courts requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas watchlisting requires only a reasonable suspicion. Once suspicion is raised, even a jury’s verdict cannot erase it.

The only way you’re leaving this list is in a box. Just kidding, even being dead isn’t a good enough reason to be removed from the list:

Not even death provides a guarantee of getting off the list. The guidelines say the names of dead people will stay on the list if there is reason to believe the deceased’s identity may be used by a suspected terrorist–which the National Counterterrorism Center calls a “demonstrated terrorist tactic.” In fact, for the same reason, the rules permit the deceased spouses of suspected terrorists to be placed onto the list after they have died.

What this leak does is confirm most of the suspicions us crazy libertarians have had for a while now: the United States is without a shadow of a doubt a police state. Secret lists of people of interest that require no due process to get on and are practically impossible to get off of (after all, the government wouldn’t suspect you of wrongdoing if you weren’t doing something wrong) have been a favorite tool of especially tyrannical states since, most likely, the beginning of states.