A Geek With Guns

People often believe we live in a free country where the freedom of speech is respected. It’s not true, the United States censors people all of the time but isn’t as blatant about it as some states. Instead of outright censoring political dissidence the United States uses various laws and procedures claimed to be in place for safety reasons to determine who can and can’t speak as on blogger found out:

The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is threatening to send a blogger to jail for recounting publicly his battle against diabetes and encouraging others to follow his lifestyle.

Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”

Steve Cooksey has learned that the definition, at least in the eyes of the state board, is expansive.

When he was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.

But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey’s blog — Diabetes-Warrior.net — violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to “practicing nutrition,” the board’s director says, and in North Carolina that’s something you need a license to do.

Isn’t that a nice little scam to censor speech? First you require anybody practicing dietetics or nutrition to be licensed and then you make the act of providing nutritional “counseling” without said license illegal. Since counseling is a pretty good catch-all term that can be applied to any advocacy you can effectively prevent individuals from speaking about a topic unless they’re approved by the state.

If the state loves one thing it’s scare mongering. Agents of the state realize regular individuals wouldn’t be willing to put up with many of the more draconian measures used to beat down the citizenry so they package them up as solutions to fight terrorists. Since the United States hasn’t suffered a terrorist attack in some time the state periodically tries to remind the citizenry that certain death is just around the corned and if we don’t comply with the state we won’t survive. That’s all this little stunt is, an attempt at fear mongering:

Nearly 40,000 Twin Cities residents will go to their mailboxes on Sunday, May 6, to find an unusual delivery: An empty pill bottle representing a powerful antibiotic that would be delivered in the event of a bioterrorism attack in Minnesota.

The exercise, dubbed “Operation Medicine Delivery,” has united the Minnesota Department of Health with the U.S. Postal Service to answer questions that have plagued public health officials since the terror attacks of 9/11. What if an airborne anthrax attack struck the Twin Cities? How would millions of Minnesotans get the medicine to survive?

More than 300 mail carriers will participate in the test, fanning out across four neighborhoods in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Robbinsdale and Golden Valley. They plan to reach 37,000 households in four ZIP codes: 55101, 55102, 55411 and 55422.

The overall goal of the exercise would be to deliver preventive doses of medication to most people within the first 48 hours of a bioterror attack, though much of that would happen through local medicine dispensing sites run by area public health organizations. During an actual bioterror crisis, the couriers would be alerted through an automated phone message.

Let me get this straight, in case of a biological attack on the Twin Cities medication will be delivered through standard mail delivery? So you will have to wait 48 hours (unless it’s a weekend, the Post Office doesn’t do Sundays and they don’t want to do Saturdays either) until you get medication necessary to save your life? That’s not even a solution. You know what a better idea would be? Getting the hell out of the Twin Cities if it comes under attack. Fortunately I live and work in the suburbs so if Minneapolis or St. Paul are attacked I’m on the outer edge already and therefore can make a rapid escape. Of course attacking the Twin Cities would be a complete waste of time since nobody else in the Union gives a crap about Minnesota.

I love those rare occasions where politicians are actually honest. Usually they try to keep the appearance of the people holding power but once in a great while a politician comes out and simply says, “Shut up slave, you do what we tell you to!” “Representative” Mike Rogers just had one of these moments:

It appears that Congress still doesn’t get it. Rep. Mike Rogers, the sponsor of the bad CISPA bill that puts your privacy at risk, really doesn’t seem particularly concerned about the protests that have been happening online this week. He referred to them as being “like turbulence on the way down to landing” for the bill. He also said that he fully expects the bill to easily pass next week when its brought to the floor.

For those of you unaware, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA is basically the return of SOPA/PROTECT-IP. Politicians are crafty individuals with a great deal of patients. If a bill one of their constituents (who are the major donors to their campaign funds, not you or me) wants passed is meeting with resistance they pull it back, rename it, and introduce it against later hoping nobody will notice. Politicians know they can get any bill passed so long as it’s named property, introduced at the right time, and the opponents to the bill are demonized thoroughly.

It’s nice to see Rogers stated that these protests are nothing more than turbulence during landing, which indicates this bill is mostly a done deal and it will happen.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is following in the footsteps of every government agency before it by continually expanding its power:

A new program in Houston will place undercover TSA agents and police officers on buses whose job it will be to perform bag searches, watch for “suspicious activity” and interrogate passengers in order to ‘curb crime and terrorism’.

Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee unveiled the program, labeled Bus Safe, during a press conference on Friday. According to a Metropolitan Transit Authority of Houston (METRO) press release, agencies involved in the scheme will, “ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior.”

If you still don’t believe the United States has become a police state you’re not paying attention. It seems you can use any mode of transportation without worrying about some government goon treating you like a potential criminal.

We hear numerous stories about police officers who are gunned down but what we don’t hear much about is this disturbing trend:

Ten times more civilians were killed by cops than cops were killed by civilians in 2008, but you won’t find that information in Tuesday’s New York Times story on the “disturbing trend” of officers killed by perps.

[...]

There’s arguably an even bigger problem with the Times’ story, and that’s the absence of any data about how many civilians the cops have killed, even though that information is widely available, as demonstrated by the Advocacy Center for Equality and Democracy:

• From 2003 to 2009, 4,813 people died in relation to an arrest in “all manners of deaths.” Each year ranged from 627 (2003) to 745 (2007). Source – Andrea M. Burch, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics,Arrest-Related Deaths, 2003-2009 – Statistical Tables, November 2011.
• Of those, 2,913 (about 6 in 10) were reported as “homicide by law enforcement.” Each year ranged from 375 (2004) to 497 (2009). See Burch.
• In the only year in which the NYT article and the Bureau of Justice Statistics report overlap, 2008, law enforcement killed roughly 10 times the number of people during arrests (404) than officers killed (41). See Burch.
• Since 2001, at least 500 people have been killed as a result of being tasered by officers in the United States alone.

To serve and protect…

The hardest part about implementing a police state is getting the people to fully submit to it. Sure we see mindless submission to the state left and right but if the state inconveniences the populace too much the populace will eventually give the state a jolly old send off. What you really need to do is get people used to the police state while they’re still young, which is what Texas has been doing:

He is looking down on a courtroom full of teenagers and their parents who are facing “Class C” misdemeanour offences for skipping school.

At the truancy courts of Dallas in Texas, absence from class or repeated late arrivals are punishable with fines of up to $500 (£316).

“A Class C misdemeanour is the lowest level of all the criminal offences, it would be the equivalent of a traffic ticket or not abiding by a stop sign on the street,” says Judge Sholden, who can also hand out sanctions like essays and book reports in his sentence.

The use of the court system to correct student behaviour is a popular policy used in schools across Texas.

A recent study put the number of Class C tickets issued to young people at around 300,000 per year.

Using the judicial system to punish students for skipping class? If that doesn’t scream police state what does? But wait, there’s more:

“I ran into a mother recently whose daughter wrote her name on a school desk in highlighter and she was given a felony conviction for that.

Felony. Conviction. Because a girl wrote here name on her desk with a highlighter she is barred the right to own firearms and vote (unless Texas expunges juvenile convictions, including felonies, when a kid becomes and adult but that is becoming rare). Back in my day (now I’m sounding old) we were merely made to clean off the graffiti and sent on our way. Instead of ruining the life of a student for nothing more than easily washed off graffiti we simply had to correct our wrong, which is how it should be.

Of course this kind of school disciplinary system has two benefits to the state; it gets students used to the police state and raises money. If skipping class can net you a fine of $500, how much money do you think is brought in through fines in the Texas school system? I’m guessing it’s quite a bit. After all, fines exist for the sole purpose of raising money for the state.

I’m guessing this method of dealing with transgressions by school kids will spread beyond Texas, it’s just too authoritarian not to.

Unemployment statistics, like everything else political, is entirely deceptive. When you see unemployment statistics released by the state you should know they are being manipulated to make the situation look better or worse, depending on what the state goons need. One of the most interesting massages to the unemployment numbers made by the state is taking anybody who has been unemployed for more than six months off of the statistics as they’re considered bums and no longer looking for work. Shadow Stats has a nice graph that shows the publicly announced unemployment numbers, the unemployment numbers according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the actual unemployment numbers.

Well color me skeptical but I’m guessing there is some kind of ulterior motive to the sudden claim of honesty being made:

A Republican lawmaker is intensifying his push for legislation that would change how the government measures the unemployment rate.

Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.) intends to press GOP leaders to move his bill to include the number of individuals who gave up looking for work in the percentage of jobless claims.

Should the government measure unemployment with Hunter’s figure, the unemployment rate would be higher than the current rate of approximately 8 percent– a potentially devastating assessment for the White House, especially in an election year.

And I believe the actual ulterior motive was actively denied by Hunter himself:

The San Diego-based lawmaker contends that he did not introduce his bill to make the president look bad, since the number would reflect poorly on all individuals in charge of government.

On a recent interview with Fox News Channel’s Martha MacCallum, Hunter said, “it makes me look bad too when unemployment is sliding … it makes the Republican Congress, the president and the Democratic Senate – anybody who is an elected representative and in charge look bad. I don’t think it goes one way.”

Hunter isn’t an idiot, he realizes that all problems in the United States are blamed on the president. For example, people are currently blaming Obama for high gas prices even though the president has nothing to do with setting those prices. Whatever major crisis is being faced by the nation is blamed on the guy in the Oval Office, and if the unemployment numbers suddenly “spike” it to will be blamed on Obama.

Politics is a dirty business and any underhanded trick goes. While Hunter claims his move isn’t meant to make Obama look bad it really is, and it could pave the way for a Republican victory in November. Don’t be me wrong though, I’m all for most honesty coming out of the state, but I also realize such honesty only happens when it benefits agents of the state in some manner. What this bill pass, the news report about the sudden “spike” in unemployment, Romney get a narrow presidential victory, and a new bill changing the way unemployment is tracked back to the way it is today. It’s all a big shell game.

I often use the term serf as an example of how the state thinks of the people under it’s rule. It appears that my statement may be more literal than I thought:

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA, signed into law by Hope/Change enthusiast Barack Obama on December 31, 2011, potentially ends right to due process and habeas corpus for US citizens. You can now be detained by military forces and imprisoned, without trial or charges, for as long as the government deems necessary.

The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, or Trespass Bill, signed into law by Barack Obama on March 9, 2012, “potentially makes peaceable protest anywhere in the U.S. a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.” Nice. More specifically, peaceful protest within proximity to those protected by the Secret Service, including presidential candidates and the President, may be a federal felony now. So much for that First Amendment, huh? (Source.)

The Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, or H.R. 1981, is the brainchild of SOPA author Rep. Lamar Smith. The bill, according to VentureBeat and others, “would alter U.S. code Chapter 18 section 2703 ‘Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records’ so that all Internet service providers would need to store your IP address for at least 12 months, along with any highly sensitive personal information such as credit card data.” Keep in mind, this would be used on ALL Americans who use the Internet, including you and I. Just in case, you know, we are harming children. Police state surveillance: it’s all for the kids!

[...]

The National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order, or NDRP, was released by Barack Obama’s administration on March 16, 2012 — it received very little broadcast media attention. According to a columnist at The Washington Times, “It states that, in case of a war or national emergency, the federal government has the authority to take over almost every aspect of American society. Food, livestock, farming equipment, manufacturing, industry, energy, transportation, hospitals, health care facilities, water resources, defense and construction…

In short, the order gives Mr. Obama the ability to impose martial law. He now possesses the potential powers of a dictator. The order is a direct assault on individual liberties, private property rights and the rule of law. It is blatantly unconstitutional.”

The United States, land of the formerly free.

It’s nice to know I’m not the only person being gouged by cell phone providers:

But at least one document also details the day-to-day business of telecoms’ handing over of data to law enforcement, including a breakdown of every major carrier’s fees for every sort of data request from targeted wiretaps to so-called “tower dumps” that provide information on every user of certain cell tower. The guide, as provided by the Tucson, Arizona police department to the ACLU, is dated July 2009, and the fees it lists may be somewhat outdated. But representatives I reached by email at Verizon and AT&T both declined to detail any changes to the numbers.

Here are a few of the highlights from the fee data.

• Wiretaps cost hundreds of dollars per target every month, generally paid at daily or monthly rates. To wiretap a customer’s phone, T-Mobile charges law enforcement a flat fee of $500 per target. Sprint’s wireless carrier Sprint Nextel requires police pay $400 per “market area” and per “technology” as well as a $10 per day fee, capped at $2,000. AT&T charges a $325 activation fee, plus $5 per day for data and $10 for audio. Verizon charges a $50 administrative fee plus $700 per month, per target.
• Data requests for voicemail or text messages cost extra. AT&T demands $150 for access to a target’s voicemail, while Verizon charges $50 for access to text messages. Sprint offers the most detailed breakdown of fees for various kinds of data on a phone, asking $120 for pictures or video, $60 for email, $60 for voice mail and $30 for text messages.
• All four telecom firms also offer so-called “tower dumps” that allow police to see the numbers of every user accessing a certain cell tower over a certain time at an hourly rate. AT&T charges $75 per tower per hour, with a minimum of two hours. Verizon charges between $30 and $60 per hour for each cell tower. T-Mobile demands $150 per cell tower per hour, and Sprint charges $50 per tower, seemingly without an hourly rate.
• For location data, the carrier firms offer automated tools that let police track suspects in real time. Sprint charges $30 per month per target to use its L-Site program for location tracking. AT&T’s E911 tool costs $100 to activate and then $25 a day. T-Mobile charges a much pricier $100 per day.

Here I was thinking my bill was high, the state’s bill must be insane considering the cost of obtaining customer data and the frequency in which they attempt to buy it. Just remember, when you carry a cell phone you’re carrying a personal state spy around in your pocket.

You know what the United Kingdom (UK) doesn’t have enough of? Orwellian surveillance. Realizing this sever deficiency the governing body of the UK has moved to increase surveillance:

The government will be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK under new legislation set to be announced soon.

Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time.

The Home Office says the move is key to tackling crime and terrorism, but civil liberties groups have criticised it.

When you redefine crime and terrorism to mean any anti-state advocacy this move makes sense. In the UK one can go to prison for merely owning a firearm and protesting is seen as a terrorist activity, so I’m not surprised the government is moving to monitor all individuals instead of those who are suspected of wrongdoing. After all everybody is a potential terrorist because everybody, at some point, criticizes the government.