Shut Up Slave – Page 73 – A Geek With Guns

Minneapolis Police Unhappy with Gun Control… When it Applies to Them

Officers of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) are throwing a fit because the National Football League (NFL) prohibits anybody who isn’t an on-duty office from carrying a firearm into its stadiums. This policy means off-duty police officers must suffer the same treatment as us lowly serfs and view football games unarmed. Needless to say, they’re unhappy that they’re not being treated as privileged individuals:

The letter went out Sept. 11, 2013, telling all team owners and presidents that firearms are strictly prohibited within NFL facilities.

The crackdown on firearms concerns Minneapolis Police Federation President John Delmonico. He believes a call for off-duty officers to give up their weapons at the gate violates an officer’s rights, as determined by state law.

The Minneapolis Police Federation sites state law, Chapter 624, which gives police officers full police powers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In other words, they should be allowed to carry their weapons in any public place in the city.

“State law governs the facts that we can carry our guns off-duty in any public facility and any facility in the city of Minneapolis, which encompasses the dome,” Minneapolis Police Federation’s John Delmonico said.

I might be motivated to give a couple of fucks if the officers were arguing in favor of carry permit holders as well. But they’re not. The officers are just pissed off because they believe their badge should bestow them with special privileges. What’s the point of having the badge if it doesn’t allow one to break laws and rules without consequences?

Since the NFL is a private organization they should be able to make whatever rules it desires, right? Many libertarians have pointed out that the NFL should be able to declare what people can and cannot do on its property. I wouldn’t consider NFL stadiums private property. Stadiums are almost always financed with tax dollars. In my book receiving tax money makes me a part owner and I should be able to declare or ignore whatever rules I damn well please. If you want to be private property then you should have to pay for your facility yourself.

Of course this issue is unimportant to me, other than to demonstrate the fact that police want special privileges, because I don’t go to NFL games.

Watching the GOP Crash and Burn

When people ask me to describe the Republican Party I generally compare it to the villains of Saturday morning cartoons. Its plots tend to be rather harmless but are perceived as being extremely evil to the children watching Politics: The Reality Television Show for Suckers. Like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, nobody is actually afraid of the Republican Party because it’s always defeated at the end of the episode.

Besides impotency, the Republican Party has another problem: an alarming number of their members are very loud assholes. By loud assholes I mean they can’t keep their mouths shut when it comes to their moral indignation. I try to withhold moral judgements unless somebody is hurting other people. Your religious beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identify, drug of preference, etc. don’t harm anybody in any way. More and more the population of the United States is turning in this direction. Previous generations held a lot of hatred for members of minority religions, homosexuals, transgenders, and drug users. That attitude is dying. Publicly hating against any of those groups is a surefire way to achieve political suicide. When people see shit like this, they get angry:

.@papierhache There are people who respect transgender rights. And there are people who think you should all be put in a camp. That's me.

— Todd Kincannon (@ToddKincannon) October 14, 2013

Many people will correctly point out that Mr. Kincannon has the right to express his beliefs. I agree but I also have to point out that actions have consequences. When members of the Republican Party go around saying they want transgenders put into camps it turns people away from it. Let’s be honest, putting people into a camp is pretty severe. You don’t toss around such things in an official manner unless you’re trying to drum up bad publicity. So long as members of the Republican Party keep saying shit like this their party is going to burn like Rome.

Also, on a purely personal level as a person who respects almost everybody, Mr. Kincannon is a fucking asshole. I wouldn’t even wish my enemies to be rounded up and placed in camps.

Annihilating Third Parties

Following in the footsteps of Arizona, the government of Ohio is taking measure to eliminate the threat of third parties:

It’s in this environment that the Ohio State Senate has passed this bill which would essentially eliminate all third party candidates from ballots. In the bill, only candidates from parties which earned 3% or more of the vote in a presidential election would be placed on the ballot; all other candidates would be write-in options. Newly qualifying parties must also submit petitions with at least 55,809 valid signatures.

The bill would, in many ways, solidify the placement of the Democrat and Republican parties at the center of American politics. Voters must look up and remember the names – something which should be simple but many people simply vote party line, and this will create a discrepancy amongst parties – and write-in candidates must apply to be counted. Write-in votes are also counted much more slowly than others, if at all, meaning they will not be discussed in the initial analysis of election results.

Welcome to the reason third parties will never be allowed to gain prominence in American politics. The two ruling parties (which, for all intents and purposes, are one ruling party) already hold power. Because they already hold power they get to make the rules. When you get to make the rules you get to eliminate potential competition by erecting barriers to entry into your marketplace. If a third party in Ohio ever gets close to 3% of a presidential vote the required percentage will be raised to 5% or 10%. The percentage goal post will continue to be moved to ensure third parties remain in their place.

You can’t fix the political system through the political system.

The Only Pain Incurred by the Shutdown is Intentional

As this “shutdown” continues we see more demonstrations of its arbitrary nature. First of all, this isn’t a shutdown. A shutdown would imply a complete end to all government provided services. Instead, what we have, is an inconvenience. The only things being shutdown are ones that cause direct harm or inconvenience to the general public. In fact, as demonstrated by the blockage of a World War II memorial, the government has actually invest time and resources into this inconvenience. Many parks and memorials that are unmanned or maintain a minimal staff are now surrounded by police officers who are tasked with keeping everybody out.

If that didn’t make it apparent that this shutdown is a direct swipe at the general population this should:

The IRS is still collecting taxes during the government shutdown, but it isn’t sending refunds — and it also has stopped complying with a subpoena to turn over documents to members of Congress who are investigating the agency’s targeting of tea party groups.

The government will still pay people to rob you at gunpoint but it won’t pay people to send you refunds or documents that have been subpoenaed, which should slap the bigwigs in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with contempt of Congress.

Instead of referring to this “shutdown” as a shutdown we should call it what it really is: a giant dick waving competition. Right now the Republicans and Democrats are pulling out tape measures and seeing who has the longer dick. Because both sides are coming up short they’ve decided to take their anger out on all of us. The only question we should be asking is, why the fuck do we take these children seriously and allow them to run our lives?

More Dogs Shot by Police

We can’t even get through an entire week without a report of another dog shot by another police officer. This time around police officers stormed a home looking for a man who hasn’t lived there in six years. Upon seeing dogs at this address they had no business being at they opened fire:

Warrant officers stormed a home overnight waking up a family and nearly hitting their dog with a gunshot.

Bienvenido Gutierrez said he and his fiancé, Nina Castro, heard noises coming from the back of their row home on Ashmead Street in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia around 12:30 a.m.

Gutierrez told NBC10’s Jesse Gary that they then heard a knock on the front door and he let in about a half dozen First Judicial Warrant Unit officers who said they were looking for Gutierrez’s brother Joshua Gutierrez.

Gutierrez said he tried to explain to the officers that his brother moved out six years ago. He also said he warned the officers that there were two dogs in the home, including one pit bull sleeping in the same room as Gutierrez’s children — ages 7, 2, and 10 months.

So the National Security Agency (NSA) is spying on every phone call and e-mail message and the state still can’t figure out where people live? Also, why couldn’t the cops have walked up to the front door, knocked, and asked if the person they were looking for was there? It’s a pretty simple procedure and far less dangerous than trying to break into a home, especially when you’re not sure if the person you’re looking for is even there.

Never Call the Police

A lesson that bears repeating time and time again is that you should never call the police. Why? Because police forces are heavily populated with psychopaths who will make matters worse more often than not. Take this example. A woman called the police to investigate a car she and her roommate suspected was stolen. What did the police do when they arrive? Shot her dog, of course:

JONES COUNTY, GA — A woman says that her ten-month old puppy was shot in the head after asking officers not to shoot it — twice.

On September 22, Anna “Chrissy” Music-Peed, of Macon, GA, drove to the Jones County Sheriff’s Department to request an officer come to and investigate a vehicle that had been brought to her property by an acquaintance, that both she and her roommate strongly suspected to have been stolen. Music told policestateusa.com that it was a Nissan Xterra from Virginia Beach, VA. As Music wrote in a blog post, “I will not have that influence around my family,” saying she was trying to do the right thing by making a report. The acquaintance was still on the property and Music had not let on that she had gone to talk to the police.

Modern policing in the United States looks more like Judge Dredd than Andy Griffith. It seems as though one cannot call the police without somebody or something getting shot as a result. I believe part of this is due to the fact that police officers are seldom held accountable for misdeeds. Hell, in Minneapolis there have been 439 complaints filed against its police department and not a single disciplinary action has come of it. You can see how such an environment would attract psychopaths looking for a way to hurt people without getting punished.

Zero Common Sense Strike Again

Whoever came up with the idea of zero tolerance polices must have been a very poor prophesier. When you remove the ability to consider the context of situations you end up with a system that rules everybody guilty of something. Public schools, which are supposed to be bastions of tolerance and understanding, have numerous zero tolerance policies. These policies lead to idiocy like children being prohibited from taking over the counter medications. They also lead to students who play with Airsoft guns on their own property being suspended:

Like thousands of others in Hampton Roads, Khalid Caraballo plays with airsoft guns. Caraballo and his friend Aidan were suspended because they shot two other friends who were with them while playing with the guns as they waited for the school bus.

The two seventh graders say they never went to the bus stop; they fired the airsoft guns while on Caraballo’s private property.

[…]

Khalid and Aiden aren’t only suspended, they were recommended to be expelled for a year for “possession, handling and use of a firearm.”

The case revolves around whether the students were on private property or at the bus stop. Let’s assume, for a moment, that the school administrators who weren’t at the bus stop when the incident happened somehow were correct when they declared where the student were standing. Even if the students were at the bus stop they weren’t on the bus nor were they at school. How can the school administrators claim jurisdiction over the bus stop and private property in such an absolute way that they feel suspending, and possibly expelling, those students is within their power? How does it make sense to suspend and possibly expel students for playing with toys? There is no victim and therefore no crime. The only “crime” is a violation of the school’s zero tolerance policy, which must state the mere thought of a firearm constitutes a violation and can lead to expulsion.

The school administrators are threatening to ruin the students’ lives without having any proof of wrongdoing, let alone wrongdoing on school governed property. This is insanity is the inevitable result of zero tolerance policies.

Sharing Your Data with Everybody

Glenn Greenwald has become one of my favorite journalists. His scathing stories about the National Security Agency (NSA) are almost a daily thing now. The latest one has to be one of the best though. As it turns out, the NSA isn’t simply collecting information on every man, woman, and child in the United States. They’re also sharing that information with Israel:

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process “minimization”, but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.

Why not? We share everything with Israel including fighter jets and palettes of money. At this point we might as well share private information about the people living here as well. I’m sure it makes Israel’s interrogation of American citizens entering their country easier.

This story does go to show how quickly information can circulate. As soon as you tell one other person a secret that secret can spread infinitely. Anonymity is important because it disconnects you from circulating data. You may not be able to control how quickly a secret spreads but, if you are able to initially share that secret anonymously, you may be able to prevent it from being tied to you. Once again I find myself stressing the need to use cryptographic and anonymizing tools. It’s not just the United States government that has access to your information. The NSA is sharing its information with at least one foreign country and it’s highly probably that we’ll learn that it’s sharing its information with other foreign governments.

The Vietnamese Government Doesn’t Understand How the Internet Works

I’m a fan of saying that statism is synonymous with halting progress. Statists always attempt to curtail advancements by forcing them into preconceived notions. A classic example of this mentality can be found in stories involving Japanese Samurai. Many works note that the Samurai believed firearms to be dishonorable weapons. Such a mentality made sense to an individual who spent decades learning the art of swordsmanship. All of the time spent mastering the sword became irrelevant when some peasant with little training could strike from many yards away. Instead of realizing that technology had advanced to a point where the importance of the sword was diminished, a master swordsman would be apt to argue that firearms aren’t honorable. Why change yourself when you can force everybody else to change to suit your desires?

Today we’re seeing this with the emergence of the Internet. Statists are trying to confine the Internet to their preconceived notions. They don’t believe anybody with a blog can be a journalist because journalists have traditionally been individuals who work for centralized state-recognized news organization. They don’t want to acknowledge that crypto-currencies are real currencies because it goes against their belief that money must be centrally issued paper notes. This is what leads governments around the world to implement stupid laws like this:

A controversial law banning Vietnamese online users from discussing current affairs has come into effect.

The decree, known as Decree 72, says blogs and social websites should not be used to share news articles, but only personal information.

The law also requires foreign internet companies to keep their local servers inside Vietnam.

A government could only issue such a decree if it lacked an understanding of how the Internet works. Enforcing laws requires that you can identify offenders. The beauty of the Internet is that one can maintain anonymity if they desire. How can the Vietnamese government enforce laws regulating blogs if those blogs are created on a computer that is connected to a random wireless network under a pseudonym and hosted on a location hidden service? Statists can pass whatever laws they want but reality isn’t going to reform itself to make enforcement of those laws possible.

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