Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Things are Different When You Have a Badge

If you’ve ever been the victim of online harassment and have tried to get the police to intervene you’ve probably been told that, “There’s nothing we can do.” It seems that police departments are entirely powerless when it comes to tracking down online miscreants. Except when somebody online criticizes the police. When that happens they seem to have no problem tracking the person down and sending heavily armed men to kick in their door at oh dark thirty:

AFTER A WATCHDOG BLOG repeatedly linked him and other local officials to corruption and fraud, the Sheriff of Terrebone Parish in Louisiana on Tuesday sent six deputies to raid a police officer’s home to seize computers and other electronic devices.

Sheriff Jerry Larpenter’s deputies submitted affidavits alleging criminal defamation against the anonymous author of the ExposeDAT blog, and obtained search warrants to seize evidence in the officer’s house and from Facebook.

Isn’t it funny how the police are more than capable of identifying anonymous bloggers when they’re the ones being criticized? Things are a bit different for people in the big club.

This is another example of the legal system being used to punish dissent. The First Amendment supposedly covers the right to protest. If your police department is corrupt you’re supposed to have the right to point that out. If you simply don’t like what your police department does you’re supposed to have the right to protest them. But here in the United Police States of America such activity can get your home raided, your computers stolen, and put you in a position where you have to spend money on a lawyer.

It should be noted that this incident isn’t unique:

This isn’t the first time that Louisiana law enforcement officers have challenged those who criticize them. In 2012, Bobby Simmons, a former police officer, was arrested and jailed on a charge of criminal defamation for a letter he wrote to a newspaper regarding another police officer. The charge was later dropped, and Simmons filed a civil suit alleging that his civil rights were violated.

If you’re harassing people online the police will leave you alone. If you’re exercising your supposed First Amendment right to protest the police they will find you and they will use the court system to punish you for being an uppity slave.

Silencing the Opposition

While the court system is used from time to time to settle legitimate disputes between individuals, it’s becoming more and more common for the court system to be used to silence dissenting voices. That’s what’s happening in Waller Country, Texas:

A Texas county sued a gun-rights activist who has complained that county officials were unlawfully barring firearms from being brought into a public building.

[…]

Holcomb has sent letters to more than 75 local governments and other public entities across the state complaining of restrictions placed on license-holders from bringing a firearm into a public arena. Others have filed complaints with the Texas attorney general’s office accusing Austin City Hall, the Dallas Zoo, a nature preserve, a suburban Houston convention center and other places with unlawfully banning firearms. Those complaints are on top of regular fights that rage in Texas over guns, most recently with lawmakers approving the concealed carry of firearms on college campuses.

Texas Carry, the organization Mr. Holcomb is an executive director of, has been notifying a lot of locations that their firearm prohibitions are unlawful. What was the response they received? In the case of Waller County they filed a lawsuit against Mr. Holcomb:

Holcomb argues that the “heavy-handed” decision by Waller County to sue him makes his case much more than a Second Amendment matter.

“We can agree or disagree on the gun issue but this is different than that,” he said, contending that the county’s suit is frivolous and “borderline official oppression.”

There’s nothing borderline about it. Filing a lawsuit against somebody for brining up the fact that your prohibition may be unlawful is outright official oppression. The county, of course, is claiming that Mr. Holcomb misunderstands the intention of the lawsuit and that the fact the lawsuit is seeking $100,000 in damages was a clerical error. But the supposed goals of the county, to received an official court ruling on the matter of whether or not an entire courthouse facility can prohibit firearms, could have been easily accomplished without suing Mr. Holcomb.

What seems more likely is that the lawsuit was filed to punished Mr. Holcomb. Even if he managed to win the lawsuit he would face notable legal expenses that could likely only be recouped by filing a countersuit. Lawsuits send a clear message to the public, which is that anybody causing trouble for the State will be legally harassed at a minimum.

I hope this lawsuit is dismissed for what it is, a thinly veiled attempt to punish Mr. Holcomb for not being a good little slave.

The Armed Robbery Epidemic in Minnesota

Did you know there was a rash of armed robberies in Minnesota last month? You wouldn’t have known it from the headlines since the media seemed more interesting in covering the dumpster fires that are the presidential campaigns. But during the month of July over 13,000 Minnesotans were victimized of armed robbers:

ST. PAUL, Minn. – More than 13,000 motorists are a few bucks poorer after being ticketed during a recent statewide speed enforcement crackdown.

The Department of Public Safety (DPS) says officers, deputies and state troopers wrote 13,214 citations for unsafe speeds during the crackdown, that was carried out by more than 300 law enforcement agencies between July 8 and July 22. That compares with 16,410 speeding tickets issued during last year’s campaign.

There were also 1,543 seat belt citations compared with 2,101 in 2015, which suggests a bit of progress in the campaign to improve driving and road safety in Minnesota.

Oh, I guess I was mistaken. Since the men with guns who were robbing people had magic suits and badges these incidents weren’t labeled armed robbery but “traffic citations.” We truly live in a world of Orwellian doublespeak.

I think an important question must be asked now, why were these officers sitting on the highways looking for prey instead of solving crimes? I’ve been told by many statists that there aren’t enough police officers to deal with all of the crime. If that’s the case why are they sitting in their cars instead of finding muggers, rapists, murderers, and thieves?

This is why I roll my eyes whenever some boot licker tells me that I’m only free to criticize cops because the cops are keeping me safe from criminals. The police don’t seem very interested in dealing with criminals. Most of their time seems to be invested in harassing motorists exceeding an arbitrarily chosen speed, kidnaping people using recreational chemicals, and shooting the neighbors of people selling those recreational chemicals (apparently the officers can afford to fuel a BearCat but can’t afford somebody to double-check addresses before a raid).

Rocket Surgery

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) has released a report that nobody will find surprising:

It’s not just your brakelight-riddled imagination: Freeway congestion in and around Minneapolis and St. Paul was the worst on record last year, according to a new report from Minnesota Department of Transportation.

The agency’s annual report on freeway congestion said congestion was up from 21.1 percent in 2014 to 23.4 percent last year. That’s the highest number since the agency started collecting data in 1993.

Anybody who lives in the Twin Cities knows that traffic congestion is terrible. But it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to know why congestion is so bad. The blame is entirely on MnDOT. The brilliant men and women at MnDOT thought it would be a jolly good idea to tear up most of the major traffic arteries simultaneously. When you tear up a major traffic artery more traffic is forced onto the remaining arteries. If you tear up all but a few arteries the few remaining ones quickly exceed capacity and nobody can go anywhere quickly.

Not only did MnDOT decide to tear up all of the major arteries but it also seems entirely unconcerned with finishing any of the projects in a timely manner. Highway 100, for example, has been torn up all summer and still isn’t finished.

MnDOT’s report illustrates what everybody living in the Twin Cities already knows: whoever is in charge of planning road construction projects is a sadist who gets off on inflicting pain on motorists.

Guilty by Association

The State of Texas is preparing to execute a man (I know, what else is new). His crime? Being acquainted with a murderer:

They were there to call for Gov. Greg Abbott to halt the impending execution of Been’s uncle, Jeff Wood, who is scheduled to die on August 24, just five days after his 43rd birthday, for a crime that everyone, including prosecutors, admits he did not commit.

[…]

Wood was sitting in a truck outside the Texaco when Danny Reneau went inside and shot Keeran dead. Wood has said he had no idea that Reneau even had a gun or that Reneau would shoot his friend. Yet under the law of parties, prosecutors were allowed to impute to Wood the same level of responsibility for Keeran’s death as Reneau, the triggerman.

An extension of the theory of accomplice liability, the law holds that if two or more conspirators agree to commit one crime — say, a robbery — but instead, one of them commits another crime — say, murder — each party can be held responsible for the murder, regardless of individual intent, based on the notion that the conspirators should have anticipated that the crime committed would actually happen.

Guilt by association isn’t a crime. While Jeff Woods may have been friends with the murderer and in the vehicle with the murderer he wasn’t the murderer and therefore isn’t at fault for the murder. But in the magical Neighborhood of Statist Make-Believe the rules are made up and logic doesn’t matter. Things like having victims or causing damage aren’t necessary for putting a man to death. All that is needed are some arbitrary words written on a piece of paper and voted on by suit-clad mother fuckers in a marble building and suddenly a person can be executed for simply being acquainted with a criminal.

The fact that the State is willing to murder somebody for a murder he didn’t commit should be enough to illustrate the fact that the State doesn’t dispense justice.

An Upcoming Source of Cheap Guns

Are you a Minnesotan looking to buy a gun but don’t have a lot of money? I have good news for you! On August 27th Pillsbury United Communities and the City of Minneapolis will be operating a gun buyback. Here are the prices you’ll need to beat:

People turning in firearms can do so anonymously, and will receive $25 to $300 Visa gift cards, depending on the type of firearm. Authorities from Minneapolis Fire Department and the Minneapolis African American Professional Firefighter Association will be on hand to accept the surrendered weapons at two local fire stations.

If you’re looking for some cheap guns bring cash to either of the two fire stations and beat the government’s offer. You might not even have to beat the government’s offer since cash is more valuable than gift cards. Minnesota still allows private transfers so you won’t even have to drag the person you’re buying from to a federally licensed dealer.

Another thing you might consider doing is heading over to your local hardware store and buying up supplies to build cheap zip guns. For $7 you can build a little 12 gauge shotgun:

That’s a potential $18 of profit in your pocket. Since the buyback is anonymous you and your friends can keep coming back with more zip guns to trade up for gift cards. Then you can use your profits to buy yourself a decent gun.

Buying Guns on the Black and Grey Markets

Gun rights activists are riled up since it looks like we’ll be under a Hillary regime for the next four years (strangely enough, they don’t seem to be worried about Trump even though he has historically been a friend of gun control). As a service I like to provide practical solutions to problems. The Conscious Resistance is putting together a three part guide on buying weapons on the black and grey markets:

Buying firearms is a potentially risky endeavor. If you are reading this article at the original source, you probably already understand that there is a defacto registration system in place on the federal level. This is not supposed to be the case, but most people wouldn’t doubt the inability of the federal government to let go of a voluntary data collection system that by law requires a purge after 24 hours, especially regarding something as potentially dangerous to their power structure as firearms in the hands of ordinary citizens.

The first part, which is the only part posted so far, just explains some of the things to avoid when privately purchasing a firearm. But guides like this will likely become more valuable as the State continues to tighten its grip on society. While the laws may shift more against gun owners at some point that doesn’t mean gun owners will actually be restricted. Laws are only shackles insomuch as you allow them to be. A prohibition against buying a firearms is meaningless on the black market.

Politically there is no way for gun owners to win this election. Both presidential nominees have a history of opposing gun rights. But there are still things gun owners can do to protect their right to self-defense. Focusing on those efforts will offer far greater returns in the long run than getting the slightly less anti-gun president elected.

You Ought to Trust the Government with the Master Key

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) director, James Comey, has been waging a war against effective cryptography. Although he can’t beat math he’s hellbent on trying. To that end, he and his ilk have proposed schemes that would allow the government to break consumer cryptography. One of those schemes is call key escrow, which requires anything encrypted by a consumer device be decipherable with a master key held by the government. It’s a terrible scheme because any actor that obtains the government’s master key will also be able to decrypt anything encrypted on a consumer device. The government promises that such a key wouldn’t be compromised but history shows that there are leaks in every organziation:

A FBI electronics technician pleaded guilty on Monday to having illegally acted as an agent of China, admitting that he on several occasions passed sensitive information to a Chinese official.

Kun Shan Chun, also known as Joey Chun, was employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 1997. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to one count of having illegally acted as an agent of a foreign government.

Chun, who was arrested in March on a set of charges made public only on Monday, admitted in court that from 2011 to 2016 he acted at the direction of a Chinese official, to whom he passed the sensitive information.

If the FBI can’t even keep moles out of its organization how are we supposed to trust it to guard a master key that would likely be worth billions of dollars? Hell, the government couldn’t even keep information about the most destructive weapons on Earth from leaking to its opponents. Considering its history, especially where stories like this involving government agents being paid informants to other governments, there is no way to reasonably believe that a master key to all consumer encryption wouldn’t get leaked to unauthorized parties.

To the Gulags, Slaves

The centrally planned paradise of Venezuela is falling apart. People are starving. Animals are starving. And President Maduro keeps making the situation worse by ordering even more central planning. His latest decree, a socialist favorite, is to allow the government to force people to work in the fields:

International human rights activists are complaining that new laws have introduced forced labour in Venezuela.

“A new decree establishing that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work in the country’s fields as a way to fight the current food crisis is unlawful and effectively amounts to forced labor,” Amnesty International said in a statement released on Thursday.

President Nicolás Maduro signed a decree at the end of last week that gives powers to the labor ministry to order “all workers from the public and private sector with enough physical capabilities and technical know-how” to join a government drive aimed at increasing food production.

They can be required to work in the agricultural sector for a 60-day period that can be extended for another 60 days “if the circumstances require it.”

I’m sure mandatory field work can be extended for an infinite number of 60-day periods.

President Maduro is either ignorant of history or a sadistic son of a bitch. The Soviet Union tried collectivizing agriculture and forcing people to work fields and the country never fully recovered from it. Bread lines were the norm until they were replaced by starvation. If you’re a student of history you know that making people slaves does not motivate them to work harder. Instead they work as little as possible to avoid being beaten too severely because they’re not getting anything for their efforts. I guarantee that the poor Venezuelans that are forced to work in the fields will produce very little foodstuff. And why should they? They don’t want to be there, they’re not knowledgable in the skills of agriculture, and they have every right to resist since they’re being coerced.

Venezuela is fucked. It should go down in the history books as yet another demonstration of the futility of central planning.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Chelsea Manning did the American people a service by leaking a great deal of information concerning the government’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. For her efforts she was subjected to a military trail and tossed in a cage. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the prospects of being in a cage for the remainder of her life got to her and she attempted suicide. In response the State decided to do what the State does and indulge its sadism:

These new charges, which Army employees verbally informed Chelsea were related to the July 5th incident, include, “resisting the force cell move team;” “prohibited property;” and “conduct which threatens.” If convicted, Chelsea could face punishment including indefinite solitary confinement, reclassification into maximum security, and an additional nine years in medium custody. They may negate any chances of parole.

Instead of providing Manning the psychological help she needs, the State is planning on making her torment even worse but subjecting her to solitary confinement (which they did to her when she was being held while awaiting trail). This isn’t about justice, it’s about a sick desire for revenge. She disobeyed the State and now the State doesn’t merely want to punish her, it wasn’t to torture her for the rest of her life. It really is akin to the Room 101 scene from Nineteen Eighty-Four.