Zombies VS Pod People: Best. Birthday. Ever.

She's not the Mayor! She's a POD PERSON!

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. - Henry Louis Mencken

Happy Birthday To Me! The Reddit Politics Page, November 15, 2011.

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Robert Heinlein. Life-Line (1939)

Today is my birthday, a day I have loathed for most of my life.

It has always been associated with disappointed expectations, another year older and a lifetime's dour assurance that there's more of the same to come.


But today I saw the tipping point - the turn away from a baleful future I have been blogging against since the tragedy of  9/11 convinced me to get out of my own head and give a public damn.


I will go on record as saying that today, November 15, 2011 was the day everything changed. The day the future we need became obviously more probable than the future I had been predicting for more than ten years.

I am temperamentally a cynic and while I do know the better side of humankind, and have generally good reason to expect the best of individuals, I have come to have rather low expectations of them in their great masses. My general view of them is well summed up by my choices of intellectual heroes.


I've long considered myself an reflexive conservative; but it is the conservatism of H.L. Mencken and Robert Heinlein.  It is the conservatism of best practices. It is the conservatism that tells me that if I MUST jump from a perfectly good aircraft, I want to have packed both chutes myself.


As a Reflexive-Conservative, I prefer the company of people who embody the self-discipline required to be trusted with firearms and the wisdom to know why, by whom and to what end they are entrusted with my lack of concern.

Rick Perry - A Texan who reflects well on the intelligence of George Bush and the impulse control of LBJ.

This fool just failed the NRA safety course. See if you can count how many critical failures this picture represents. I'm genuinely surprised he's actually holding it by the right end. 


While I will uphold your natural right as a human being to bear arms in defence of your family and person against any forces you feel might threaten your person, your dignity and your way of life, I point out that every society exists in order to let you hoe a row of potatoes in some expectation of peace and the reasonable hope of not being trampled in your own field, and that no society that failed to do that most basic task lasted much longer than a second missed harvest. 


Now we don't mostly live and die by the whim of the weather - but when we are led by people who do not see widespread unemployment, poverty and homelessness to be a problem, well, that is a group of leaders that need to be replaced by those who understand what the point of a civilized society is - lest there become so many victims of Social Darwinism wandering the streets that civil society simply collapses in the face of being obviously pointless.

And yet we have people arguing in favour of Social Darwinism - as if history proved that people forced to the margins and subjected to increasing oppression and poverty simply and politely accepted their fate.

The right of self-defence is inalienable and of course, wandering hordes of wandering, hungry "zombies" are an obvious reason for having the means to defend yourself. But, when emergency planners speak of "the zombie apocolypse,"  they likely mean starving Black and Hispanic citizens deciding to eat the rich, braaaaains first.

When well educated, reasonable, prudent professionals feel a need to prepare the public for the potential breakdown of civil order of that degree, well, first, you should raise one eyebrow and say "indeed"... and you should do it on your way out the door to get any bits of kit you happen to be missing.

But what should first cross your mind (as you fill your shopping cart, mind you...) is how much better it would be to craft a society that was inherently zombie-proof. Because, well, there have been quite a few examples of what might as well have been  a zombie apcolypse, and the reason we lived through it amounted to a lot of people banding together to make sure that the zombies went away. And at some time, it occured to people that it would be A Good Thing to try and nip zombie infestations in the bud.

We call that development "civilization."

When you think of it that way, it becomes pretty obvious that any civilization that has brought the zombie apocalypse upon itself deserves to suffer such a fate.

 Now every single practical guide to survival will tell you that if you are alone in the face of the zombie apocolypse, the best use of your gun is to blow your own brains out before the zombies get to you. This is what europeans realized about the Huns, and that's part of what brought about the age of the Nation State. Not being flayed alive as part of the evening's entertainment is a significant incentive. With so much history to learn from, it should be obvious to the dullest that the only practical way to ensure personal security is in some co-operative way. You have to sleep sometime. This is why the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution is written the way it is.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

When you think of it that way, you also realize that it is very much to your advantage and my advantage to deal with the immediate concerns that we both share. Such as, say, not being shot by fools, rousted by thugs or eaten by zombies. With those matters dealt with, we can spend time on our divergent, individual concerns.

But within the last decade and a bit, pointing out such clearly obvious things to the typical Republican or Canadian Conservative brings accusations of being a "Socialist" and at the same time "a fascist who wants to take away our guns."

Does this look like a "well regulated militia" to you?



Those are citizen-taxpayers, and the children of citizen-taxpayers. Seems to me these guys are the people the 2nd Amendment was intended to deal with, not the people it was intended to empower.

But then, as I said, I'm a reflexive conservative. I expect the cops to uphold the law and protect citizens, not assault the citizenry and spit on the law.



But clearly they do - and clearly the people telling them to do it haven't the first idea why that's an amazingly, vibrantly, painfully stupid thing to do. Because you see, this is not the sort of thing that makes real conservatives happy. This is the sort of thing that made the Civil Rights Act possible, these are the optics that ended the British Empire. When decent people realized what was being done in their name, with their money, while they were being told there was no reason to pay attention to a few isolated malcontents.

Instead, the video shows that the Zombie apocolypse is upon us, and it's lead by men in riot gear, sent by the mayor of your home town. My, doesn't that just that just resonate with your cinematic memory?

The people entrusted with protecting our society are acting as if they were Pod People. And of course, the tide turns when people start to realize that external appearances and the reality of motivations are very much at odds.

As much as the average social conservative might giggle at the idea of hippies getting punched, the idea of a hippie chick getting punched by a cop for presenting a valid court order to an officer of the law... that is quite another thing.  That's not a cop. That's a POD PERSON! That's a ZOMBIE! The APOCOLYPSE is upon us! Jesse Kornbluth put it in this way, and set the twitterversre on fire.

"Many of us have knee-jerk reactions to cops beating citizens. Mine comes from George Orwell, the subject of my honors thesis. He wrote something like this: When I see a policeman with a club beating a man on the ground, I don't have to ask whose side I'm on. But with the exception of the great Colbert, you will look in vain for an intelligent conversation about any of this on television."

I would dryly ask why anyone would turn to their television to hear an intelligent "discussion" about a policeman beating a man on the ground. Perhaps liberals, pacifists and pansies might consider this a time to dialogue and raise conciousness, but a genuine conservative? What, I dryly ask, would John Wayne Do?

John Bernard Books (The Shootist):"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them." 

 There are some assertions and arguments that will be made in favor of such a thing, but there are some assertions for which the most logical and and appropriate response is a punch in the throat. And should that present the spectre of unreasonable paperwork unworthy of the affront - then turn away from the yammering of fools. I have. And if you are reading this - I suspect you haven't watched much television for the last five years, either.

The conversation IS happening between people who have realized they don't need Tom Brokaw's goddamn permission to have a serious fucking conversation about the moral imperatives expressed by a cop beating supine citizens. To the extent that such an idea needs much discussion, I shall refer you to american history for the sort of conversation required.

"Let us hang together, or we shall most assuredly all hang separtely."

and, of course, should it come to that;  "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes."

That is why I've been smiling all day. It's been my best birthday in literally decades, for today, I have genuine hope that I will see the beginning of something wonderful, instead of hoping I will die before seeing what I most dread.

There will be marching and shouting and yelling and beating and blood and pain for months, possibly years; there might be occasional terrorism and civil wars will continue - though I consider that far, FAR less likely within the US than I did just a week ago. But however it goes down, the only real question for the US Right wing and the Neo Conservative movement worldwide is how long they can postpone surrender, and under what terms they may negotiate a dignified reatreat.

Just in time for 2012, it's the end of the world as we knew it... and it's about time.

I am not Anonymous - but they have a point.

Our message is simple: Do not lie to the people and you won't have to worry about your lies being exposed. Do not make corrupt deals and you won't have to worry about your corruption being laid bare. Do not break the rules and you won't have to worry about getting in trouble for it."

It goes on to warn, "do not make the mistake of challenging Anonymous. Do not make the mistake of believing you can behead a headless snake. If you slice off one head of Hydra, ten more heads will grow in its place. If you cut down one Anon, ten more will join us purely out of anger at your trampling of dissent."

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/06/10/anonymous-warns-nato-this-is-not-your-world/#ixzz1Q1ysqLeN

This is the response of Anonomous to NATO's public musing of how to respond to this widespread network of electronic civil disobedience, which they are trying to represent as "cyber warfare."

The fact that their first response is to publicly muse (quoted below) as to who to shoot does not inspire me with confidence for the future of civilization; at least, not within the framework of the current order of things.

We are dealing with the consequences of a collision between the presumption of an entrenched and increasingly paranoid world leadership and the increasing ability for people worldwide to compare notes and perspectives, share data and network around them. Moreover, the same technology makes large concentrations of power less and less valuable, while being revealed as being less and less effective.

Consider the brutal lesson of Iraq; the great logistical, financial and military concentration of  power against a people who's conventional military was destroyed in days. Turned out that relying on a conventional military as a deterrence against US might was a waste of time. The humble roadside bomb has achieved more against the US than all of the Republican Guards.

This illustrates the problem we all face - the problems we face are ones that cannot be addressed by the institutions we have, and the institutions we have see any attempt to come up with better solutions as direct threats to their power. Now, history has shown what happens time and time again. The status quo, entrenched against an inarguable shift in the circumstances it was founded upon can never win. But it can play for a disasterous outcome, in which everyone loses.

The world is littered with the enigmatic ruins of civilizations in which what little we know is exactly that; faced with change enforced by inarguable circumstances, they chose to argue instead of doing anything useful.

Please consider that Anon has really done nothing more than embarrass governments with their own secrets and rather ineptly concealed crimes of commission and indifference. They have produced documentaries of the sausage-making that is realpolitic and what passes for rational allocation of increasingly scarce world resources. 

Now, I would bet money that many within the various hactivist collectives thought that a few little examples would in fact nudge the world's leadership onto a more rational path. But instead, we get this from NATO (same source)

NATO's report, issued last month, warned about the rising tide of politically-motivated cyberattacks, singling out Anonymous as the most sophisticated and high-profile of the known hacktivist groups:

"Today, the ad hoc international group of hackers and activists is said to have thousands of operatives and has no set rules or membership. It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths. The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted," the report read, also asking, "Can one invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty after a cyber attack? And what response mechanisms should the Alliance employ against the attacker? Should the retaliation be limited to cyber means only, or should conventional military strikes also be considered?"

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/06/10/anonymous-warns-nato-this-is-not-your-world/#ixzz1Q1sMPh2e

Boy, talk about bringing a gun to a knife fight. And if you think that's a silly reversal, that the gun will always win... you don't know enough about fighting with knives in the dark.

The only truly deadly ammunition Anon has is the truth, and their weapons upgrades come from Authoritarian responses to the truth, which is starting to convince the thoughtful, intelligent and wired people in the world that the people they work for in the trade of routing, storing and securing data really cannot handle the truth. 

They are in the position of not merely suspecting, but knowing for a fact that the people they report to are less qualified to make important decisions about the future of the world than they are themselves.

Now, all of this is as predictable as the night following the day and rocks rolling downhill. But NATO's reaction is stunningly out of touch. Oh, I'm not at all surprised that someone came up with a military response as an option - obviously, it's a military alliance. It should have been considered in order to be dismissed as a completely nonviable option.  But saying that out loud in public? It shows a complete failure to grasp what military force can possibly achieve.

Suggesting a co-ordinated world war against the ULTIMATE in diffuse targets, a transnational movement of largely independent activists armed with a technology they understand better than our "decision makers" demonstrates catastrophic cognitive failure. Or at least, it demonstrates the totally wishful hope that you, the reader, will remain wishfully complacent long enough for the decision-makers themselves to cash out.

The (rather short) article concludes:

Quite when Anonymous started modeling itself after fictional terrorist organizations is unclear, but the message is just the opposite: NATO is on warning. How they'll respond to this—if they'll respond—remains to be seen, but I doubt that I'm the only person hoping that any response will be far more measured than bringing up conventional military strikes again.

Measured? How about "rational" and "relevant?"

Ok, please folks, don't presume that this is written from any particular political viewpoint or bias. I'm going to leave that to you. Politics and ideology must work from a grounding in reality. You have to deal with "how things are" in order to get to where you can usefully dispute how you wish things to proceed.

Now, I cannot possibly overstate this. Anon is right. The fact that Anon, Wikileaks and LulzSec exist at all, much less scored as many obviously easy "victories" is an illustration of a new reality; the flipside to the erosion of individual rights and the spread of the national-security survaillance state.

Who shall guard the guardians?

Let me point out the painfully obvious.  Where, folks, do you think these leaks come from? Where, people, do you think the expertise was developed? How, dear people, do you think they knew your security was woefully inadequate? Perhaps, most importantly, why do you think they take such serious risks? Just for "Lulz?"

Anonomous hides - obviously - within it's targets. In all probablity, it knows how to evade security because it helped develop the protocols.

But worse, dear people, you have a lot of very, very intelligent people who are annoyed that they are forced to labor in the buggy-whip factories when it's time to make automobiles. 

Yes, this is about DRM, and Intellectual Property, and trans-nationalism. It's about the recognition that while there will be a New World Order, it will actually be entirely new, not all that orderly, and will not be a planetary nation-state, much less the theocratic feudalism that the Bachmans and Bin-Ladins of the world fantasize about. I can't even truly imagine what it will be, much less expect that it will suit my own fancies of how things ought to be - but I do know something must change.

Most people would probably put up with a religious theocracy if it were an otherwise fair, rational, sane and stable place, where people were mostly left alone if they didn't' rock the boat. But in return they would expect a degree of personal security for themselves and their children that people like Michelle Bachmann dismiss as outright parasitism, a communistic expectation of "entitlements" on the order of, you know, not starving alone in the dark.

You can't really dismiss the majority of the population as being "disposable assets" and "useless mouths" without some significant number of them deciding that that rationale may as well apply to you - and thinking that exiting this mortal coil with a loud bang as close to you as possible is as painless a death as they can ever hope to expect, should they loyally depend on you for continued leadership.

You see, this is not really about politics. It's about reality. It's about the fact that the people in charge of the world seem to be unable to grasp it, or are politically unable to come to grips with it.

ALL governments and societies exist because we consent to be governed, to participate and contribute. If we are forbidden our part, if our rights are denied for arbitrary reasons, if our security and dignity as persons are dismissed as unimportant, that consent will be increasingly conditional, even as the respect for the forces of law and order are eroded by the increasingly violent and intrusive flailings of our leaders.

There are a number of very real threats facing us; Climate Change, peak oil, a looming global shortage of water are three, just off the top of my head. Anyone who cares to know about these issues can study them and they can further compare what is known with the policies put in place to deal with these issues by those who are entrusted with the duty to plan ahead and prepare for matters of common concern. To say the match between data and policy created in reaction to data is "a loose fit" would be something of an understatement.

We really do not have the luxury of time - for that time has been squandered by those loudly shouting that reality is all some conspiracy intended to make them change their way of life.

Well, the change is necessary. And it is inevitable. Those who do change have a future, those who don't will join the Anasazi and the Aztecs and their works will one day be mentioned in the same breath with the fabled gardens of Babylon. Why?

Because "reality is what happens whether you believe in it or not." That phrase, coming P.K. Dick - someone known for dabbling in altered perceptions and belief structures - bears a good deal of freight. Standing in the way of that train of thought leads to pretty much the same thing as standing in the way of an actual train.

If you call a general agreement among people qualified to have an opinion that climate change a conspiracy, you are dangerously stupid, on the order of  "stupid enough to play Russian roulette with a semiautomatic pistol."   If you are out there calling on people to pray for rain - as the Governor of Texas did recently - rather than doing anything at all useful in terms of leadership, legislation or allocation of disaster relief funds - you deserve to be on the short list for inclusion in that great volume,  "Footnotes in History."

If you think the answer to peak oil is to drill for more oil - you really don't grasp the concept. And you can't be permitted to fuck up things you don't understand. Because we are all on this one planet. There is no escape for most of us. So those of us in a position to see the inevitable really have little choice in the matter.

Let me underline this, folks. The leaks come from within. They come from people who have access to the data, understand the data, tried to communicate the importance of the data to the organizations they were loyal to - only to be shushed or crushed.

That has been happening, not just for a few weeks or a few years, but for literally decades. 

But you see, it used to be possible to actually shut people up. It used to be possible to contain and manage the rate of leakage. It used to be possible to control communications.

But do you really think that the emergent powers are all that interested in supporting an obviously dysfunctional social order? The people you absolutely must trust to empower and enforce your vision of how you would wish the future to unfold are professionally and personally incapable of believing the bullshit.

They work at DARPA, and CERN; they are data analysts for the RCMP. They are the cryptographers at NSA, they are the hackers the Chinese and Indian governments are sure they have subverted, and they are the media figures the CIA thinks fondly are under their control. And they all talk to each other.

It used to be "we know where you live" was enough. But no longer - for the risk of actual detection is lower than it ever was, while the sheer volume of data that can be trafficked makes it worth the risk. Bradly Manning was ...um... not exactly a sterling example of competent trade-craft. And yet, even he managed to get the data out. Keeping him in a supermax isn't going to shut that barn door.

The IT managers you need to keep your websites up, the  social media consultants you rely on for your image management, the data security specialists and the political advisers, The ones who have to know your agendas and secrets so they can keep them hidden - They have to want to do that.  

It's hard to want to do that when you say things in public that show that you are either crazy, or pretending to be in order to be elected. 

They are the ones who deal with the numbers you need to make your decisions, and they know what the spreadsheets say, what the raw data means and they are increasingly able to speak to one another and make sure that proprietary, secure data that proves that you are full of shit gets into the right hands, without them losing their ability to continue leaking crucial data.

I fully expect the response to Anonymous to be something utterly idiotic, along the lines of Stalin shooting any general competant enough to lead a successful coup against him, while Hitler was on his doorstep.

We have already seen signs of this sort of nonsense in France, (the "civil internet" idea, where nobody is permitted to speak the obvious about the offensive idiocy of their leaders.) We've seen how utterly ineffective attempts to restrict the flow of information are, even in totally authoritarian regimes.

Consider just how much data can be compressed onto ONE tiny SD card. Consider the fact that truly robust encryption techniques are widely available. Consider that the people you most worry about know these things by heart. 

Again, I am not speaking politics here. I'm not speaking to the moraltity or ethics of Anon. I'm sure the membership has as many opportunists and idiots as any other group. But this is one of those points in history when you either get it or you don't. There came a time when it became obvious that Constantinople would fall - and that was clear long before it actually did. The smart people left. And they started leaving a generation before the fall.

There will be no NeoConservative New World Order, because it's got as much relevance to the future of humanity as Hadrian's Wall.  The current way of doing things doesn't work; it merely gets in the way of those able and willing to do something that's useful. Increasingly, manipulation and subversion are needful tactics for individuals to master worldwide, so why on earth should they respect any government or transnational interest group that must be bribed or simply avoided?

The real problem with NATO's response is the failure to understand the great truth of humanity. As a species, interested on a very visceral level in our personal and species survival, we demand of our "top ten percent" just one simple, basic decision:

"Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way."

That strange sound you just heard was Lousiana Atty. Gen James D. "Buddy" Caldwell crapping his pants.

There's an old saying: A Conservative is a liberal who's just been mugged - and a Liberal is a conservative who's just been mugged by a cop. Guess where I'm leading with this?

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is reportedly "outraged" after security guards at a New Orleans-area hospital were accused of punching and tasing his epileptic nephew, a news report states.

The Gawker reports a titbit of personal gossip they sourced from Raw Story that might turn out to have vast implications over the next few years. Seems "security" at a New Orleans hospital saw fit to tase Justice Clarance Thomas' nephew because he was gettin' all above himself at folks who knew better what was best for him, him bein' a crazy black man with dreadlocks and all.


As for my headline - well, lessee. Gov. Bobby Jindal has certainly asked his Atty. General to look into this, in that certain special tone that comes from a Republican with ambitions to a Democrat he's about to stick with the shitty end of a situation.

Buddy best have his ducks in a row, and have all the information at his fingertips, brought to him by his staff of crackerjack, apolitical investigators, all of which have passed their constitutional purity tests.

Oh, but wait. This is Kingfish Country.  These are the people that brought you the fourth ward evacuation plan.

So needless to say, Buddy is all too well aware that what happened is very likely something along this line: a rent-a-cop employed by a hospital saw him some black, dread-locked street trash and proceeded to deal with 'em as they usually would. That is to say, in the "Ah See we have uh Failure to ComMUNicate" sort of way."

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is reportedly "outraged" after security guards at a New Orleans-area hospital were accused of punching and tasing his epileptic nephew, a news report states.

Derek Thomas was admitted to West Jefferson Hospital in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Thursday, after a possible suicide attempt, reports ABC affiliate WGNO.

When the Supreme Court justice's nephew refused to put on a hospital gown and said he wanted to leave the hospital, doctors ordered security to restrain him.

Security guards "punched him in his lip, pulled out more than a fistful of his dreadlocks and tasered him to restrain him," a statement from Thomas' family said.

Shortly afterwards, family members say, Thomas suffered a "massive epileptic seizure."

The station reported that an "outraged" Justice Thomas is headed to Louisiana to look into his nephew's condition.

Members of Derek Thomas' family are trying to have him transferred to another hospital, but as of Friday afternoon, he was reportedly still a patient at West Jefferson.

The following video was broadcast by WGNO in New Orleans, July 9, 2010, and uploaded to the Web by the Chicago Tribune.

Hm... I foresee the possibility of a sudden US Supreme court shift in favour of the individual when confronted by police and security.

Erotic Truth: Gotopless.org - a new Raelan Revelation

Here's a rights and ethics blog post that I can't put here because it needs pictures of boobies to ... um... support my point.

So to speak.

Erotic Truth: Gotopless.org - a new Raelan Revelation

GoTopless We are a US organization, claiming that women have the same constitutional right to be bare chested in public places as men.

Maitreya, Rael, spiritual leader and founder of goTopless.org states: "as long as men can be topless, constitutionally women should have the same right, or men should also be forced to wear something hiding their chest."

I must give credit where credit is due; the Raelians have done something worth doing, and are taking heat for doing it. From where? Well, it's not from where you might expect... it's from Terribly Serious Nudists, who grump about how the Raeliens are causing people to take this issue less seriously than it should be taken.

Well, frankly, naked people who wish to be Taken Seriously should put some clothes on.

NSFW, for newsworthy boobs, breasts and nipples. There, that should ensure a freakin' stampede!

Who shall guard the Guardians

I can only speak for myself, to be sure, but it seems to me that anyone with any sense of history and the slightest degree of rational paranoia felt a distinct chill when Bush announced the formation of The Department of Homeland Security, with it's eerie resonance to the Fascist "Fatherland" and the Stalinist "Motherland."

Note that both Stalinist and Fascist states have one thing in common - a certain disdain for human rights and dignity when any particular person or idea is thought to be a threat to the state, for whatever reason, by whatever pinhead happens to be wearing the jackboots.

It was no real surprise to me that the response of Homeland Security was lackadaisical in response to Hurricane Katrina, or that in absorbing FEMA (which was arguably one of the two most competent agencies involved), they had effectively short-circuited it, in favor of not helping non-white and therefore non-deserving people.

But if you want, there are more recent examples of what the real meaning of "homeland security" is, in the words and deeds of those on the ground, wearing the jackboots. I've never been much of a believer in fine words when there are actual deeds to be seen and performance metrics to be evaluated.

It's even more telling that this story comes to us via the New York Times.

After federal border agents detained several Mexican immigrants in western New York in June, an article about the incident in a local newspaper drew an onslaught of vitriolic postings on its Web site. Some were racist. Others attacked farmers in the region, an apple-growing area east of Rochester, accusing them of harboring illegal workers. Still others made personal attacks about the reporter who wrote the article.

Most of the posts were made anonymously. But in reviewing the logs of its Internet server, the paper, The Wayne County Star in Wolcott, traced three of them to Internet protocol addresses at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border protection.

Homeland Security started an investigation into the posts this month, according to the reporter, Louise Hoffman-Broach, and Richard M. Healy, the Wayne County district attorney. A spokeswoman for the federal agency’s inspector general said she could neither confirm nor deny an investigation; department rules prohibit the use of office equipment for the personal transmission of material that could offend fellow employees or the public.

Coming on the eve of the apple harvest season, the Web posts and the investigation — first reported this week on The Star’s Web site — have ratcheted up longstanding tensions in Wayne County, where farmers and laborers have accused immigration officials of using heavy-handed tactics like racial profiling and arbitrary or unjustified detentions.

Such tactics, the farmers say, have scared Hispanic farm workers from the region just as growers are preparing for the harvest.

Representative Dan Maffei, who represents the area in Congress, said the allegations of overaggressive immigration enforcement, coming from a wide range of constituents, were “of extreme concern.”

Of course, the thugs that landowners employ to keep the workforces in line and content with whatever pittance they are given have, historically never been quite so tolerant of nuance as their employers. They aren't breaking heads in order to secure labor at an acceptable price, they are doing so because they hate Mexicans. They took the job because it would permit them to abuse "Illegals" with impunity - and as the article goes on to observe, they have a tendency to presume that even documented Mexicans are presumed illegal until long after they are abused, detained and no doubt subjected to whatever amuses such racist fuckheads.

But here's the bottom line, America. You have the cheapest food supply in the world PRECISELY because so much of the labor involved is performed by "illegals." So, put up or shut up. Pay producers enough so that they can afford LEGAL wages - and yeah, it's a fact of life that a farm that employs legals and pays union wages CANNOT compete with a farm that does not. That, or accept that you are willing and indeed cheerful eating burgers produced by slave labor kept docile by the friendly folks at ICE. Because, that's exactly what it is, why it's their and the end to which Bush and agrabiz agreed it to be.

All the talk about curbing "illegal" immigration was ginned up to gain support for the existence of said jackbooted thugs stomping around and "defending the nation." Selectively. When the occasion warrants. Say, when a farmer or a rancher says something deemed "inappropriate" by the local Rotary Club leadership.

You see, ICE only has about a thousand field agents. That's a ridiculously low number to deal with the actual problem that we are told exists. But it's just the right size for a flying goon squad. More than enough to turn a town or small city upside down. It's just the right size to punish the fuck out of people. Of course, to confirm your suspicion, you would also look to the institutional culture. What does the group itself think it's actual mandate is, whatever it's fine-sounding mission statement might be?

And for that - well, we have the words of the jackbooted thugs themselves.

The article about the arrests, posted on June 16, led to a torrent of angry Web postings. One, sent from a fake e-mail address, said, “watcha doing to mi wifey, no checky her papeles. she no legal, but she havey benifit card.”

A response, which carried a Homeland Security Internet protocol address, read: “That sounds like my boyfriend. Leave him alones and get your own. My boyfriend works sometimes but he is really good at getting FREE benefits from the Federal and State government.”

Another post, apparently sent from a separate computer linked to Homeland Security, read in part: “These farmers have a problem because the gravy train that they were riding for soooooo long is being brought to light.”

The newspaper removed the posts. It also reported that it had discovered others, dating to last year, that appeared to have come from computers affiliated with Homeland Security.

Who will guard you from such Guardians, eh? Can you PROVE your papers are not fake? Hell, I go by Papa Heinlein's dictate - whenever a government starts requiring you to carry identity papers, it's time to leave. This sort of thing, and the implicit threat that it makes against anyone, was one of my personal decision points. I did leave, so for me the answer is "The Crown, in the form of Canadian Customs and Immigration." But then, I'm a lucky sod. I was born here, so my support, as a dual citizen of the US constitution was always a matter of choice.

When Government Becomes Alarmed By The People

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Glenn Greenwald: The Ultimate Reaping of What One Sows: Right-Wing Edition:

It's certainly true that federal police efforts directed at domestic political movements -- even ones with a history of inspiring violence in both the distant and recent past -- require real vigilance and oversight, and it's also true that the DHS description of these groups seems excessively broad with the potential for mischief. But the political faction screeching about the dangers of the DHS is the same one that spent the last eight years vastly expanding the domestic Surveillance State and federal police powers in every area. DHS -- and the still-creepy phrase "homeland security" -- became George Bush's calling card. The Republicans won the 2002 election by demonizing those who opposed its creation. All of the enabling legislation underlying this Surveillance State -- from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act, from the various FISA "reforms" to massive increases in domestic "counter-Terrorism" programs -- are the spawns of the very right-wing movement that today is petrified that this is all being directed at them.

When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you. If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it's going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity. That's its nature.

See, here's where all that talk about "ethics in government" that neocons ignored and dismissed as being the speech of cowardly weaklings comes back to haunt them - exactly as I and many other people said, many times. I'd create links, but jeez, the very idea makes me tired. Search this blog and Google. Or you can just take my word for it. LOTS of people said that permitting these things to stand was a really dumb idea.

Well, could be worse. Hillary coulda won. Oh, wait, she figures rather prominently in the Cabinet, doesn't she?

Power corrupts. Etc. This is why it's a very good idea to sharply limit the power of government to interfere with individual people.

But having said that, there's another thing to be observed here. Greenwald observes in passing, without commenting - but I'm nowhere near so polite. I will observe - and then I will be blunt.

Greenwald cites a New York Times article from 2005 describing the sort of people that were being watched by the FBI, using the questionable powers granted by the Patriot Act.

F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored.

The F.B.I. had previously turned over a small number of documents on antiwar groups, showing the agency's interest in investigating possible anarchist or violent links in connection with antiwar protests and demonstrations in advance of the 2004 political conventions. And earlier this month, the A.C.L.U.'s Colorado chapter released similar documents involving, among other things, people protesting logging practices at a lumber industry gathering in 2002.

The latest batch of documents, parts of which the A.C.L.U. plans to release publicly on Tuesday, totals more than 2,300 pages and centers on references in internal files to a handful of groups, including PETA, the environmental group Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group, which promotes antipoverty efforts and social causes.

"It's clear that this administration has engaged every possible agency, from the Pentagon to N.S.A. to the F.B.I., to engage in spying on Americans," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U.

"You look at these documents," Ms. Beeson said, "and you think, wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when you see in F.B.I. files that they're talking about a group like the Catholic Workers league as having a communist ideology."

Hm. Just off the top of my head, these people don't sound all that dangerous - except, of course, to major Republican corporate sponsors. On the other claw, DHS is (finally) concerned (pdf) about the obvious fruits of radicalizing "the base" for eight years.

Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and
anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Prominent
antigovernment conspiracy theorists have incorporated aspects of an impending
economic collapse to intensify fear and paranoia among like-minded individuals and to
attract recruits during times of economic uncertainty. Conspiracy theories involving
declarations of martial law, impending civil strife or racial conflict, suspension of the
U.S. Constitution, and the creation of citizen detention camps often incorporate aspects of
a failed economy. Antigovernment conspiracy theories and “end times” prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons.These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.

That, and the growing "successionist movement," a matter of arguable concern for any government, regardless of your opinion on the matter. Considering that there has already been one civil war fought on similar ideological grounds and that it's being promoted again by similar idiots.

I happen to approve of a stricter interpretation of the US Tenth Amendment, in theory. In practice, though, I see it as being an issue being brought to the fore by power-mongering pipsqueaks who cannot abide calling a black man "Mr. President," or sending "tribute" to a government that values non-white, non-churchgoing, non-conservative citizens as much, or perhaps a teense more than them.

Photo: The Washington Independent

Scenes From the Real America

How about another excerpt from Rightwing Extremism:Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment (PDF)

(U//FOUO) Lone Wolves and Small Terrorist Cells
(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Informationfrom law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.
— (U//LES) DHS/I&A has concluded that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy—separate from any formalized group—which hampers warning efforts.
— (U//FOUO) Similarly, recent state and municipal law enforcement reporting has warned of the dangers of rightwing extremists embracing the tactics of “leaderless resistance” and of lone wolves carrying out acts of violence.
— (U//FOUO) Arrests in the past several years of radical militia members in Alabama, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania on firearms, explosives, and other related violations indicates the emergence of small, well-armed extremist groups in some rural areas.

Boy. And they get paid to write such blinding glimpses of the obvious? With such wide-ranging powers and insights, this mild and obvious set of observations is the product of the best and brightest paranoids available?

All this "intel" could have been cribbed from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Let us also observe that it's perfectly reasonable for sane people to be concerned about the sorts of people that the SPLC has been tracking for decades. Sane people can actually be concerned about flaming nutbars while still supporting the rights of gun owners, the Bill of Rights and the principles of individual liberty and personal responsibility. It's not at all evidence of "persecution" to be concerned about people like Tim McVeigh or the Christian Identity people who get all exercised about Race Wars and Religious Cleanings.

Quite aside from the motivations of ideology, people who take the Second Amendment to empower them to mix large batches of ANFO or stockpile large quantities of ammunition without regard to proper storage and handling doctrines. are a matter of legitimate concern for any person within several miles.

Oh, and let us remember, that "sovereignty" does not mean that each and every state would then be free to oppress and persecute whatever sort of people it disapproves of, or legislate whatever consensus morality it's elected officials happen to hold. The 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution of the United States is not about the sovereignty of mobs - it's about the inalienable rights of of free individuals. Even the queer black geeky over-edumacated atheist ones.

Bush's Secret Dictatorship

: "We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution."

read more | digg story

Digg This: Marriage is a civil right.

Ganked with Glee from Declarations of Pride.

...above all else, marriage is about protecting property and relationships. Marriage isn't about God. I doubt, in spite of what you may have heard, whether God cares one way or another about who is married to whom? Those are the petty worries of man, not the lofty contemplations of a Supreme Being. Marriage is now, and has always been...Even before Christ, about the claiming, protection, and definition of property. How can so many ignore this obvious fact when you consider the history of this supposedly "sacred" union. Have we collectively forgotten about so-called "arranged marriages?" Those were not about love, God, or anything else so noble...They were about the planned & protected consolidation of power, heredity, wealth and property. Marriages are about protecting wealth and allowing for its preservation from generation to generation through a legally defined family unit. It is a construct of legal necessity, not one of religious wrangling.

Marriage is once and for all, a civil construct.

In the United States of America, marriage is a manifested by a government issued license that defines and legally binds a couple. It confers, without respect to race, creed, and we hope someday, gender, approximately 1,038 federal rights. Rights; which in the United States are by definition to be given equally to all citizens under the law. That's the ideal.

This is the reality. In many states, there will be so-called "Marriage Protection Amendments" that will exist to blur the lines of faith and the lines of government with one another. They are faith-based initiatives designed to push an agenda of hate into the legal construct of marriage. If left unchecked, this blending of religious myth and the law has far reaching and devastating potential for America. The religious-right uses so many false arguments to defend the position of need for these amendments. They claim the need for "protection." From what? They claim marriage is sacred. Then why all the divorce? They (the ones demanding the amendment) say many things, yet offer no factual defense of their own positions.

As usual, this is a cultural divide created by Americans who don't understand something, and who are praying on the fears of others who are woefully ill informed. Whenever that happens in this great nation we get anger, hate, and a call for division or punishment. Instead of growth or living up to our stated ideal of "equality" we turn to hate, and sink to the ugliest of American traits: hateful ignorance. The kind of hate that results in men lashed naked to fences. A place in our history where it is OK to hang a man from a tree by his neck as a cross is lit aflame. A place where Americans can tie other Americans to the back of trucks and drag them to their deaths. Fear has always worked to create hate in America. Fear builds towering walls between reason and logic. Hate obliterates what we know in our hearts to be right, and covers all with ignorant rage. That is the path we are on in the name of God.

I see this ignorance as the ultimate sin.

Amen. Selah. Digg it here.

No Tragic Hipsters

Portly Dyke, writing at Shakespeare's Sister, fired off this letter to The Advocate in response to their "Gay is the New Black" Cover.

"_________ is the New Black" is a phrase meant to infer that something is new or cutting edge. News for you: Oppression is neither new nor cutting edge -- in fact, lateral oppression among and between disenfranchised groups is so old and status-quo that perhaps your cover would be better served with the following slogan: "Same Shit, Different Gays".

In your rush to construct a "clever" cover, perhaps it did not occur to you to completely think through the inferences in your choice of trendy phrase -- which is most commonly defined to mean this: "Blank is the New Black" is used "to indicate the sudden popularity or versatility of an idea at the expense of the popularity of a second idea". Get that?

Which I do. And yet, speaking from my perspective as an ethics blogger who dosen't really concern himself about specific niche groups, I really didn't have a handle on the issue.

For me, an image helps, something that focuses the idea for me. And I found it in the comments threads.

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  PortlyDyke Today 01:08 PM 1 point

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  I just use "Queer". I imagine that some will not be comfortable associating with that word, but if you're talking to me, that's what I call my community.
  
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  18 /people/PortlyDyke/ /people/PortlyDyke/follow/ http://portlytruestories.blogspot.com
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  Mustang Bobby Today 01:28 PM 1 point

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  Great post, PD, and I'm with you on the initial labels. I'm proud to be queer -- (and speaking as a Quaker, it's queer to be proud) -- and on my blog I label posts about LBGTIQ items as "Queer Issues." BTW, I'm not very good at acronyms... BTYFO :)
  
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  4 /people/MustangBobby/ /people/MustangBobby/follow/ http://www.barkbarkwoofwoof.com
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  aproustian Today 01:28 PM 1 point

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  Wow, PD, this is really well worded. I hope they listen to you.

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  Mustang Bobby Today 01:29 PM 1 point

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  AND... The Advocate seems to be more about being hip and cool than anything else, and that's not why I was converted to being gay. I stopped reading it in the 1980's when I found I wasn't tragically hip.

  PortlyDyke Today 01:32 PM 1 point

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  "I stopped reading it in the 1980's when I found I wasn't tragically hip. "
  
  Me too, Bobby.
  
  ETA: lol -- my Beloved has a button that says "Painfully Aware" -- I think I need one that says "Tragically Hip" with the red circle and slash through it.

This is where I got my "ahHA!," the point where I realized what was wrong with this picture.

My instinctive rresponse to the Advocate is "please; get OVER yourself." And I'll tell you where it comes from; it comes from the abuse community, various mental heath communities, the places where damaged and broken people come together to commensurate, whine a little, and then learn to get over themselves and cope. Not because there's some grand moral imperative to do so and certainly not at ALL because that's what people who watch Larry The Cable Guy think we SHOULD do, but because the alternate is being stuck, paralyzed and stupid, whining in public.

One of the greatest sins among those trying to cope with their crap is "abuse-sizing;" claiming that the nature and circumstances of their abuse or oppression is ever so much more significant than that of another person belonging to a different group that is oppressed for different reasons.

There is really no intelligent response to this that doesn't involve some mockery; and for two reasons. First, because stuck people need to be slapped out of the things that keep them stuck. And second, because it really doesn't matter what excuses people used to oppress you. After years of poking under rocks and teasing out motivations, I've come to a conclusion that would be clear to more folks if it weren't for precious stunts like this.

There is no difference. Oppressors and abusers do what they do to the people they can isolate, cut out from the herd and torment. They depend on behavior just like this to make it possible. The Advocate has "come out" as being a publication with no interest in actually dealing with the problem - rather, they have siezed upon "being oppressed" as being a means of creating a captive market, a dysfunctional closet filled with potential victims. And you would want to be in that closet, because one is surrounded by a better quality of victim?

Please.

We are in a culture war with the same exact peckerheads - peckerheads that collectively make up no more than 30% of the US population, and while I don't have figures, I'm betting that's ballpark for pretty much everywhere. Some places, they have more clout, some places less, but the thing to remember, they are all the same, everywhere, the world over.

However, they pick on three percent here, ten percent there, one in 150 one day, five in a hundred another. Oh, they all have their own pet hates - but the real, core motivation is the same.

They like hurting people. They like having power and abusing it. They like beating queers to death and bragging about it. They like calling autistic people "freaks." They like lynching black people. They like burning down and blowing up and shooting and torturing people who are different from them. They celebrate cutting the clitoris off a screaming eight year old to "keep her pure."

There are all kinds of reasons they give, many justifications and rationalizations - but it's all bullshit. The point is, the existence of a "them" is the only thing that defines them to themselves. Their entire culture depends on defining themselves as not black, not gay, not weird, not strange, not "defective," not sick, not twisted. They think of themselves as normal, and they prove that to themselves by doing their very best to make life as difficult and dangerous as possible for everyone else.

So let us stop enabling these people. I'm calling The Advocate on doing just that. This is not "The Last Great Civil Rights Struggle."

It is the EXACT SAME CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE.

Selma.

Stonewall.

Prop 8.

Roe.

"Conscience Clauses."

And then there is this immensely stupid, annoying distraction of a "War On Christmas." It's all about 30 percent of the population making war on the rest of us.

Well, we have a small, historic window of opportunity. And a very simple path to victory. All it takes is a loud, unifed, determined "no." An affront to one is an affront to all, and that the sort of person that thinks themselves entitled to abuse and persecute others in the name of Flag, of God, of Politics - that person is a danger to everyone.


If these last eight years have not been lesson enough to us to put an end to this, these thirty percenters will continue to drag us into the killing fields. For literally, there is no difference between prop eight and Krystalknacht, between the killing fields of Cambodia and the voting booths of Kansas. The people who did and would do these things are all the same. The only question is, how far do we let them go; how much do we tolerate? Because those examples show us just how far they WILL go, given the chance. And before there were thugs smashing glass and skulls - there were lots and lots of "minor" transgressions. Like, say, Prop 8. Like, say, Legislation to protect the "consciences" of bigoted busybodies.


I'm fed up right now. I don't need some pinhead pulling a plastic bag over my head in the name of Jeezuz to tell me that I should have paid attention earlier. What about you?


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Big Black No by webcarve
No Tragic Hipsters by webcarve