Tag: You’re Doing it Right

Civil Disobedience is Beautiful

I have to hand it to Colorado gun owners, they aren’t going quietly into the night. Magpul was giving away magazines and gun owners decided to hold a magazine swap at the Colorado Capital:

DENVER – Gun rights advocates held an ammunition magazine swap at the state Capitol in Denver on Monday to defy a new state law.

During the “Magazine Swap at the Capitol,” activists urged people from Colorado and surrounding areas to buy, sell and swap magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

[…]

More than 50 people attended the protest event at the Capitol with many passing ammunition magazines around a circle of people.

Civil disobedience is a wonderful thing. From what I can find it appears that no arrests were made during the event, which really goes to show just how toothless the new prohibition is. More swaps like this should be held and people from surrounding states that can still purchase standard capacity magazines should attend in droves.

Ecuador Gives the United States a Giant Middle Finger

Mr. Obama gave a speech where he said he was unwilling to wheel and deal for Mr. Snowden:

He told a news conference in the Senegalese capital Dakar: “I’m not going to have one case of a suspect who we’re trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I’ve got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues.”

What he really meant to say is that the United States has nothing Russia wants and Ecuador told the United Stats to go pound sand:

Ecuador said on Thursday it was waiving preferential rights under a U.S. trade agreement to demonstrate its principled approach to the asylum request of former American spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.

This was in response to the United Stats underhanded threat:

In Washington, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has threatened to lead the effort to remove preferential trade treatment for Ecuadorian goods if the country decides to offer asylum to Snowden.

As it turns out, Ecuador doesn’t negotiate with terrorists:

Ecuador “does not accept threats from anybody, and does not trade in principles, or submit to mercantile interests, as important as they may be,” Alvarez said, according to the AP.

That’s a pretty big fuck you coming from Ecuador. But the bitch slapping didn’t end there:

“What’s more, Ecuador offers the United States economic aid of $23 million annually, similar to what we received with the trade benefits, with the intention of providing education about human rights,” Alvarado added.

As far as political bitch slaps go this one is pretty spectacular. A tiny South American country just told the United States that it doesn’t give a damn about tariffs and that it supports human rights more vigorously than the nation that likes to refer to itself as “the freest nation on Earth.” I believe Ecuador just remove the United States’ balls and put them in its purse.

It’s refreshing to see a nation that is willing to stand up to the United States and protect the freedom of a man who did the right thing.

When Bureaucracies Collide

Bureaucracies tend to be monstrous abominations that force us to fill out needless paperwork in triplicate just to gain the privilege of filling out more needless paperwork in triplicate. Joy can seldom be found through bureaucracies but when two of them collide they can be very entertaining. When Snowden fled to Hong Kong the United States attempted to extradite him. The Hong Kong government had little interest in sending Snowden back so it looked over the extradition paperwork to find an error that would allow Hong Kong to reject the request. As it turns out, a minor error existed and it may be the thing that allowed Snowden to flee:

According to multiple reports, it was in large part Beijing’s decision to let Snowden leave Hong Kong. But at the very least the US middle-name mix-up provides Hong Kong with a solid diplomatic excuse.

The red tap of bureaucracy has its advantages once in a while.

Magpul Demonstrates How it’s Done

Since Colorado passed its recent ban on standard capacity magazine Magpul has been demonstrating how to fight for gun rights. With the ban taking effect on July 1st, Magpul has decided to have a little shindig on June 29th:

ATTENTION COLORADO!

Come on out and join the festivities at Infinity Park in Glendale, CO, this Saturday, June 29, celebrating FREEDOM on the last weekend before the unconstitutional mag ban takes effect, and get your last shot at purchasing PMAGs. We’ll be there, and we’ve ponied up a LOT of PMAGs. First 1500 through the gate get a Boulder Airlift or Free CO PMAG FREE! Food, live music, and a helo-borne aerial delivery of PMAGs. Proceeds from mag sales go towards the legislative and legal fight for 2A rights in CO. Get tickets and pre-purchase PMAGs at:

www.freecolorado.net

“GLENDALE— Saturday, June 29th, Free Colorado, a non-profit organization advocating for the rights of gun owners, will host “A Farewell to Arms” Freedom Festival. This event marks Coloradan’s last chance to celebrate the ability to own standard capacity magazines prior to new Colorado laws taking effect on July 1st.

The first 1500 attendees through the gate over the age of 18 will receive a free Magpul Gen M2 MOE 30rd magazine featuring either the Free Colorado or Boulder Airlift design, courtesy of Magpul Industries Corp. Tickets for attendees and magazines can be pre-purchased online at www.freecolorado.net.”

I’m glad to see Magpul is doing what it can to ensure as many standard capacity magazines are distributed in Colorado before the ban becomes enforceable. After July 1st it will be up to us gun owners living outside of Colorado to ensure our friends inside of Colorado can still get access to standard capacity magazines. Together we can render this ban irrelevant.

Rebellion Exists Everywhere

New York City, which is ruled be the despotic dictator Michael Bloomberg, is generally ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing a complete police state. To paraphrase a Star Wars quote, the more you tighten your grip, the more people will slip through your fingers. While New York City has a prohibition against gatherings larger than 50 people, unless the group buys a permit, people have decided to give the oligarchy of that city a giant middle finger and hold massive illegal gatherings underground:

In the distance, beyond the bend in the trackbed, a weird chanting began to ripple out and echo through the space. I saw the glow of candles, and as I approached I saw that everyone had been drawn to the end of the line. On what would have been part of a subway platform, a few people were leading the group in some sort of wild incantation. By the time I got there it reached a euphoric crescendo, and one of the performers overlooking the crowd yelled something like, “Bring your candles to the Echo Vault!”

By the time I drifted back to the vault with the others, a woman on “stage” (Jessica Delfino) was singing a hypnotic a cappella ballad about New York. Then a drummer, Joel Saladino, joined her, bashing away at the kit in a series of increasingly ferocious drum solos.

I climbed the stairs up another two stories and carefully tiptoed across one of the crossbeams extending the width of the Vault, trying not to think about how I’d probably break an ankle or worse if I fell. The view from back there was incredible, and when the stage at the opposite end filled with the Extra Action Marching Band, I could see the party was really getting started. It was like the Zion dance party in Matrix Reloaded, but with fewer douchebags. The music was thunderous and suddenly the mood was exultant—everyone danced, because that was the only way to deal with the inexplicable joy that was exploding down there.

If we’d gotten caught, the organizers would no doubt have faced some serious criminal charges. But if it was up to me, I’d give them the keys to the city for raising such an audacious middle finger to the notion that New York City’s underground is dead and gone.

What Stark and Austin and the musicians managed to create, almost miraculously, was a Temporary Autonomous Zone to remind us that this is still a city worth living in, despite the creeping feeling that New York’s being bled dry by an ever-expanding corporate vampire real estate army.

No matter how tight the rulers of New York City, or anywhere else, clamp down the people will always find a way to bypass the authorities. This is why human progress, which is only possible thanks to anarchy, can continue. The state tries to prevent change from occurring by passing laws but laws are meaningless when they can’t be enforced.

Knowing that illegal underground gatherings like the one mentioned in the story, albeit on a much smaller scale, occur here in the Twin Cities puts a smile on my face. Rebellion is everywhere and it’s a beautiful thing.

The Netherlands Closing Prisons Due to Lack of Prisoners

Here’s a headline you’ll never read in the United States:

The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Unlike the Netherlands, the United States is heavily dependent on slave labor. Between Federal Prison Industries, better known as UNICOR, the organization that all federal government agencies, excluding the Department of Defense, must source supplies from first and Corrections Corporation of America, a private industry that sells slave prison labor to interested companies, the United States is dependent on the prison-industrial complex. Because of this dependency the United States will continue to create more prisons and prisoners to fill those prisons.

While the situation may suck here in my home country I’m glad to see the prison-industrial complex isn’t as pervasive in other countries.

Most People Seem to Be Comfortable with Firearms

Apparently there’s a very slight uproar because gun rights activists here in the Twin Cities are planning to openly carry their firearms at the Open Streets event. For those of you unfamiliar with the event it’s a day where several major streets in Minneapolis are shutdown to motorized vehicles so bikers, skaters, and pedestrians can traverse them unopposed. As a biker and a gun rights activists this story intersects two of my interests. While a few people have been rather hysterical about the fact that there will be people openly carrying guns at the event, the president of the Minneapolis Bike Coalition demonstrates the general response I’ve noticed to open carry:

The idea that the events were being turned into a gun-toting event came as a surprise Tuesday to Ethan Fawley, president of the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition, which first hosted Open Streets two years ago. This year, Open Streets joined with the city for the series of events.

“It’s an open event,” he said. “It’s a family friendly, fun, kid-oriented event and we want healthy, active living to be the focus of the event. We don’t want sideshows. We want people to be out enjoying their neighbors and playing in the streets.

“My initial reaction to this is that it’s a distraction and it’s unfortunate from that perspective. We hope people will come out and be safe and have fun.”

“We’re expecting thousands of people at each event,” he said. “We had 10,000 people on Lyndale last year.”

Priem said Open Street organizers will not ask the gun owners not to attend. “Everyone is welcome at Open Streets,” she said.

People openly carrying firearms should be a non-issue and Mr. Fawley seems to be treating it as such. I open carry whenever I ride my bike, not because I’m trying to be a gun rights activist on the trails but because concealing a firearm while riding a bicycle is an exercise in futility. My act of openly carrying a firearm on bike trails has been met with no negative interactions. Nobody has screamed in terror, ran off the trail, or otherwise acted in an irrational manner. Some people have asked me for directions and made small talk with me while we waited for cars to pass at street intersections. Most people ignore my existence just as they ignore everybody else.

Open carry, at least in the Twin Cities area, seems to be becoming a non-issue for most people, which is great in my opinion. Since Minnesota created a legal means for individuals to carry firearms no notable incidents have arisen involving permit holders using their firearm in a violent manner. Minnesotans are learning a lesson that was well-known in history, just because somebody is armed doesn’t mean they’re violent.

I think this general acceptance of, or at least willingness to ignore, armed individuals is due, at least in part, to years of open carry activism. Some gun rights activists like to bitch about open carrying harming gun rights in general but, based on what I’ve seen, the opposite appears to be true. People are paying far less attention to armed individuals and that was the goal from the start.

Gun Rights Advocacy I Can Get Behind

Longtime readers of this blog know that I’ve given up on the political means to defend gun rights. The state has too many reasons to disarm the people to be reliable upon to uphold the right to keep and bear arms. Instead of begging politicians to carve out a few exceptions in their plan to leave the people defenseless I advocate the people perform acts of civil disobedience. When the Colorado politicians passed several restrictive gun control measures, including a prohibition against standard capacity magazines, I advocated the people of Colorado to start manufacturing standard capacity magazines and buying them from surrounding states. As it turns out, I’m not the only person following this line of thinking:

At least two formal events have popped up on Facebook that are encouraging Colorado gun owners to engage in civil disobedience and break the recent law that prohibits the sale or transfer of gun magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds.

The events encourage participants from Colorado and other surrounding states to buy, sell and swap magazines that can hold more than 15 rounds in disobedience of the law.

Actions like this stand a far better chance of rendering Colorado’s magazine ban irrelevant than any political activism. First, buying standard capacity magazines from another state means you’ll have standard capacity magazines immediately whereas relying on political activism means you may not have standard capacity magazines for years or ever. Second, thumbing your nose at the law demonstrates how impotent the state really is. The state may catch one or two people to make an example out of but, as with any law, the state will be unable to catch a vast majority of offenders. Demonstrating the state’s impotency is the best way to encourage more people to ignore its decrees.

As they say, Rosa Parks didn’t vote her way to the front of the bus. In the same way gun owners aren’t going to vote their way to more freedom. When you want freedom you must take it.

The Difference Between Libertarianism and Authoritarianism

A lot can be said about social and political philosophies by looking at the solutions proposed by their advocates. Authoritarians tend to advocate violent revolution so the existing power structure can be replaced with a new power structure. Libertarians tend to advocate for nonviolent solutions, often seeing flight as a better solution than fight. Consider seasteading, the idea of building a libertarian city in international water. Ephemerisle, a floating celebration where participants create a small floating village, was recently the subject of story on n+1.

Seasteading really epitomizes libertarianism in my opinion. Seasteaders are so desperate to find liberty, and so unwilling to use violent tactics, that they’re willing to invest the tremendous resources required to build a floating city. While the authoritarians are discussing revolution to force everybody to submit to their will the libertarians are moving to the frontier to found a new society that people can come to voluntarily. The difference speaks volumes in my opinion.

A Hero Emerges

When the news of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) widespread surveillance operations broke many people were wondering who leaked the information. As it turns out the person who leaked the information decided to come forward (which means he’ll probably be dead soon):

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Some people will call for Mr. Snowden’s head while others, those who actually oppose government snooping, will see him as a hero. Sadly members of the United States government have already begun demanding Snowden be extradited from his hideout in Hong Kong to the United States so he can be disappeared, err, tried:

There was no immediate reaction from the White House but Peter King, the chairman of the House homeland security subcommittee, called for Snowden’s extradition from Hong Kong. Snowden flew there 10 days ago to disclose top-secret documents and to give interviews to the Guardian.

“If Edward Snowden did in fact leak the NSA data as he claims, the United States government must prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law and begin extradition proceedings at the earliest date,” King, a New York Republican, said in a written statement. “The United States must make it clear that no country should be granting this individual asylum. This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”

You have to love the double standard Mr. King is espousing. The NSA was caught spying on American citizens, an act that Congress was briefed on and approved, and King is after Snowden’s head for committing a heinous act. Apparently Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the United States but makes an exception for political targets, which means Snowden may be able to fight his extradition for some time.

Mr. Snowden should be treated as a hero for leaking details of the NSA’s spying operations. So long as the state refuses to recognized the people’s privacy the people should refuse to recognized the state’s privacy.