Tag: Shut Up Slave

Orwellian Interrogation

It appears that the suspect in the Aurora, Colorado shooting it going to be drugged up in order to determine whether or not he’s sane:

The defendant in the deadly Colorado theater shooting could be given “truth serum” under a court order issued Monday to help determine whether he is insane if he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.

Suspect James Holmes could be required to submit to a “narcoanalytic interview” as part of an evaluation to determine if he was legally insane at the time of the July 20 shootings, Arpahoe County District Judge William Sylvester said.

A narcoanalylitic interview is a decades-old process in which patients are given drugs to lower their inhibition. Academic studies have shown that the technique has involved the use of sodium amytal and pentothal, sometimes called truth serum.

If administering the drug will lower the suspect’s inhibitions wouldn’t it put any statements made by the suspect into question? Have we really reached a point in our society where people are willing to accept statements from a drugged up suspect? What’s to stop interrogators from telling the suspect what to say and record those statements as evidence? I don’t like where this is going, I don’t like it at all.

Judge Blocks New York City’s Ban on Large Sugary Drinks

A judge has blocked Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on large sugary drinks. That in of itself isn’t overly interesting in my opinion, Bloomberg’s reaction is:

Mayor Bloomberg responded to the ruling by telling a news conference: “We think the judge is totally in error in the way he interpreted the law and we are very confident that we will win on appeal.

“One of the cases we will make is that people are dying every day. This is not a joke. Five thousand people die of obesity every day in America,” he added.

The ban would prohibit places like restaurants and movie theaters from selling soda containers exceeding 16oz. of capacity. Bloomberg claims that obesity kills over 5,000 people a day and his proposal to prevent it is to make patrons of movie theaters and restaurants buy two smaller drinks instead of one large drink. Making the situation more laughable is the fact that two 16oz. drinks will contain more sugar than one 20oz. drink. It seems that Bloomberg hasn’t thought his master plan all the way through.

Kill ‘Em All

Poor Obama, it seems that he’s killed so many people with his beloved drones that he’s running out of people to kill. But worry not! He’s found a way to create new targets:

According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration is reconsidering its opposition to a new Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, the foundational legal basis of the so-called war on terrorism. That short document, passed overwhelmingly by Congress days after the 9/11 attacks, tethered a U.S. military response to anyone who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” Nearly all of those people are dead or detained.

There are two ways to view that circumstance. One is to say the United States won the war on terrorism. The other is to expand the definition of the adversary to what an ex-official quoted by the Post called “associates of associates” of al-Qaida.

And that’s the one the administration is mooting. “Administration officials acknowledged that they could be forced to seek new legal cover if the president decides that strikes are necessary against nascent groups that don’t have direct al-Qaeda links,” the Post reports. Examples of the targets under consideration include the extreme Islamist faction of the Syrian rebellion; the Ansar al-Sharia organization suspected of involvement in September’s Benghazi assault; and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed terrorist who broke with al-Qaida but is believed to be behind the January seizure of an Algerian oil field.

Remember the halcyon days when Obama and his supporters spoke in opposition to Bush’s wars? I miss those days. Even though I knew Obama would turn out to be a war monger I had some hope that his supporters would continue to carry the anti-war flag after the election. Here was are four years later and Obama’s supporters are mostly quite when it comes to war. As it turns out the war protests were never about oppose war, they were just demonstrations made by people who were angry that their guy wasn’t the one ordering the slaughter.

Eric Holder Says It’s Legal to Murder Americans in the United States with Drones

The day I’ve been expecting has finally arrive, the United States Attorney General, Eric Holder, has openly stated that he believes it is legal to use drones to murder United States citizens in the United State:

Holder’s March 4 letter was disclosed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had asked whether the Justice Department believed President Barack Obama had the legal authority to order a targeted strike against an American citizen located within the United States.

The Obama administration, Holder said, rejected the use of military force where “well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat.” But in theory, it’d be legal for the president to order such an attack under certain circumstances, Holder said.

“The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” Holder wrote.

In other words, “Shut the fuck up slave or we’re going to kill you.”

This statement doesn’t surprise me as the current administration has already set a precedence for murdering United States citizens when it used a drone strike to kill Anwar al-Awalki and his 16 year-old son. After those murders the only question remaining is whether or not the current administration believed it was legal to murder United States citizens if they were currently in the United States.

With all of that said, it’s nice to hear a state agent say something honest for a change. Honesty from a state agent is rarer that Pope resignations and we’ve experienced both this year. Two extremely rare occurrences happening in the same year must be a sign but I’m not sure if it’s a good sign or a bad sign. What I do know is that things will continue to deteriorate in the United States.

Who Didn’t See This Coming

I would think a nation composed primarily of Jews would be as adverse to persecuting groups of individuals based on religion and race as a vampire is to sunlight. That’s not the case. In a rather incredible act of irony Israel began segregating Palestinians onto separate, and I’m sure equal, buses. Needless to say most people knew what was going to come next, the Palestinian-only buses would be targeted for attack:

Two Israeli buses that were part of a controversial “Palestinian-only” bus line launched earlier this week were torched on Monday night.

It’s much easier to lash out at groups when they’re conveniently segregated from other populations.

Dissents Will not be Tolerated

A tyrannical regime has a vested interest in ensuring the general populace remain ignorant of its atrocities. This is likely why the United States government has been pursuing Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, so veraciously and why they have been making the life of Bradly Manning a living hell. Manning has plead guilty to “aiding the enemy” (I’m guessing his other option was to face execution) but releasing information about atrocities being committed to the United States government. When you read Manning’s justification for leaking the information it makes you wonder who the United States government considers to be an enemy:

Manning said: “We were obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and ignoring goals and missions. I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general [that] might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter-terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day.”

It appears as though the United States government considers the people living in the United States to be enemies as they have been fighting the release of any information that makes their actions look less than honorable. I believe it’s important for the people living under a war happy state to understand the true costs of war, which involves death and destruction on both sides of a conflict. When people are punished for revealing atrocities committed by a government you know that government is worried about the ramifications of its actions.

A Glimpse of Things to Come in the United States

Some time ago the federal government was trying to legally obtain the power to strip and American citizen of their citizenship. At the time it seemed obvious that the reason the politicians in Washington DC were going for that power was to give Obama a means of getting around his promise not to indefinably detain American citizens under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The United Kingdom may just demonstrated another benefit of stripping citizenship, the government can blow a former citizen up with a drone and claim they haven’t killed any citizens:

The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.

Governmental protections are more mythological than unicorns. Any supposed legal protection put into place is easily bypassed with the stroke of a pen.

Demonstrating the Importance of Tor

I’ve discussed the importance of Tor in fighting erroneous legislation but haven’t had any excellent demonstrations of Tor’s effectiveness in fighting the state’s continuous Internet power grabs. Russia has given me a perfect demonstration of the importance Tor holds:

A Russian law passed in November 2012 aimed at blacklisting sites promoting drug use has apparently just blocked the popular drug education website Erowid.org for certain users in the country according to a post on Reddit. A Russian government site listing prohibited sites shows that Erowid was added to the register earlier this month and was blocked on February 23. Russian user GreatfulListener says it is only “a matter of time” before the block affects more Russian internet service providers.

Erowid remains available in Russia via the Tor network. In fact, the Russian Tor community has undergone significant growth over the last year. RAMP, the Russian Anonymous MarketPlace, is now providing a leading Russian alternative to the English-speaking Silk Road.

Russia has begun blocking websites related to drug use. If history teaches us anything it’s that Russia will likely increase its censorship powers in the coming years. Fortunately the blocked site, Erowid, can still be accessed by Russians through Tor. Although I primarily discuss hidden services Tor is also very important in bypassing censorship of websites outside of the Tor network. Many countries block access to websites deemed undesirable but Tor works by sending traffic through exit nodes that are located in different countries, countries where the site being access may not be blocked.

The remainder of the article discusses the Russian Anonymous Marketplace (RAMP), a hidden service where Russians can perform anonymous transactions with Bitcoins. It’s akin to Silk Road, which I’ve discussed before. RAMP, like Silk Road, demonstrate that markets cannot be suppressed and that people will always find ways around state prohibitions. Today Tor and Bitcoins are integral tools for individuals wanting to avoid state prohibitions and censorship, which is why I believe it’s important to ensure these technologies become more widespread.

Issuing Prison Sentences to Justify Charges

Aaron Swartz was facing 35 years in prison for the “crime” of making copies of academic works. These charges were likely a factor in his decision to end his own life. A life was basically destroyed to uphold intellectual property laws, which are destined to die sooner or later. What makes this case even more absurd is that it appears as though the prosecutors wanted to cage Swartz, not because of his actions but, to justify the charges:

Some congressional staffers left the briefing with the impression that prosecutors believed they needed to convict Swartz of a felony that would put him in jail for a short sentence in order to justify bringing the charges in the first place, according to two aides with knowledge of the briefing.

I think this demonstrates one of the biggest issues with the United States so-called justice system, it’s not based on justice. Justice would have required waiting for Swartz to commit a crime but the prosecutors used previous writings by Swartz to claim he intended to commit a crime:

A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.

Swartz’s 2008 manifesto said sharing information was a “moral imperative” and advocated for “civil disobedience” against copyright laws pushed by corporations “blinded by greed” that led to the “privatization of knowledge.”

“We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive,” Swartz wrote in the manifesto. “We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.”

Effectively the Department of Justice (DoJ) (talk about Orwellian doublespeak) brought their charges against Swartz because of something he wrote in 2008 and insisted on prison time because they felt it was necessary to justify the charges. This admittance by the DoJ also shows that censorship exists in this country, it’s just not overt. If you write something that the state disagrees with you will generally not be shutdown, blacklisted, or otherwise punished. What will happen is the state will bide its time until you do something that it believes is a prosecutable offense or usable to bully you into a plea bargain. At that point the state will use your previous works to generate more severe charges in which to hang you with. By using Swartz’s previous writings as justification for charging him the DoJ has sent a message that political dissidents can and will be punished. It’s an ultimatum. Either keep silent and avoid speaking out against the state or face the state’s wrath when it decides to finally descend upon you. In other words, shut up, slave.

A tip of the hat goes to TarenSK for this information.

Woman Being Threatened with Expulsion for Publicly Discussing Being Raped

What happens when a woman gets raped at a university, the university fails to pursue any serious action, and the woman finds herself having to appeal to public opinion to get justice? She gets threatened with expulsion:

A University of North Carolina student says she faces possible expulsion for “intimidating” her alleged rapist by speaking publicly about her assault and how the school has handled it.

Landen Gambill, a sophomore at UNC, was part of a group that filed a complaint in January with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, alleging the university has routinely violated the rights of sexual assault survivors and failed to assist them in recovery after the reported abuse. Ten days after they filed their complaint, the graduate student attorney general sent a warning to Gambill that she may have violated the school’s Honor Code, Jezebel reports.

On Friday, Gambill got an email informing her that she was being formally charged with an Honor Code violation for “disruptive or intimidating behavior” against her alleged rapist, although she has never publicly named him. If the UNC Honor Court finds Gambill guilty, the punishment could be expulsion, suspension, community service or grade penalty, among other options.

In other words the University of North Carolina wants sexual assault victims to shut up because they’re making the university look bad. Their chosen method of dealing with this “inconvenience” is to issue threats of expulsion, suspension, coerced community service, or a reduction of grades against those who were victims of sexual assault.

Why would a university pursue such actions? Perhaps it’s because the University of North Carolina is operated by the government of North Carolina and feels its monopoly on force has been threatened by the persons who committed sexual assault. By threatening the victims the University may be trying to make a public statement that the sexual assaulters will not be allowed to encroach on the state’s monopoly on force unchallenged. Or, more likely, the University staff are morally bankrupt and more concerned about their public image than ensuring justice is served.