Category Archives: Police State

Drug war idiocy, Tennessesee edition.

A couple driving through Tennessee on their way home from a funeral in Ohio were stopped by police. According to the Columbus Dispatch:

They were in the westbound lanes of I-40, a few miles east of Memphis, when a black police SUV with flashing lights pulled them over, [Mrs] Jonas-Boggioni said.A second black SUV soon pulled up behind the first one.

[…]

“They were very serious,” she said. “They had the body armor and the guns.”

Black SUVs are becoming the vehicle of choice for official government business these days sort of like white Toyota pickup trucks have become a favorite of the Taliban.

“What are you doing with a marijuana sticker on your bumper?” he asked her.

She explained that it is actually a Buckeye leaf decal, just like the ones that Ohio State players are given to put on their helmets to mark good plays.

“He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language,” she said.

buckeyes-pot

Marijuana has seven leaflets, which should be required knowledge for anyone charged with the task of destroying the lives of people caught with it.

Ideally, the 65 year old woman should have said,“It’s not a marijuana sticker you dumbass moron and even if it were, how does that justify your pulling me over?  This was once referred to as ‘The Land of the Free’ until you idiot drug nazis turned it into a police state.”   At that point, ideally, the cops would have apologized profusely for being dunbasses and promised to never do something so stupid again.  But, it’s not an ideal world, so cops are completely free to harass people with essentially zero probable cause and if you get angry about it, they will arrest you, make your life miserable, and the entire law enforcement and judicial apparatus will back them up when they do so.

Before they let her go on her way, the officers advised Jonas-Boggioni to remove the decal from her car.

“I said, ‘You mean in Tennessee?’ and he said, ‘No, permanently.’

“I didn’t take it off. . . . This little old lady is no drug dealer.”

Cops inevitably compound their ignorance with even more displays of ignorance.  They mistake the citizen’s self control in the face of such harassment as a sign of respect when all the citizen is doing is desperately trying not to bruise the fragile ego of today’s neanderthal drag warriors which would almost certainly result in immediate arrest, if not a beating.

Where, oh where, would we be if not for the gallant front line troops protecting our safety, heritage, and freedom by relentlessly pursuing marijuana monsters (real or imagined)?  Well, we’d all be a lot better off, that’s for damn sure.

 

North Carolina considers criminalizing nipple exposure

There is probably no better example of the utter irrationality of the political class than laws banning mere nudity. Allow me to put this in the simplest possible terms.  Requiring that someone wear clothes that meet a particular set of rules is called a dress code.  Many cities (probably most) in the so-called “land of the free” will arrest you for not following their dress code.  Even San Francisco recently outlawed nudity.

North Carolina state representative Rayne Brown has introduced a bill that would make nipple exposure a felony.  Existing North Carolina law already outlaws nudity, but uses the laughably juvenile term “private parts” leading to some confusion about whether nipples are included under that heading.

[Brown] told members of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that her constituents are concerned about topless rallies promoting women’s equality held the past two years in Asheville, which is located about 130 miles west of Brown’s district.

That reminds me of Sarah Palin’s Tina Fey’s comment about being able to see Russia from her back door.

Many cities have local ordinances barring women from going topless, but Asheville does not.

Brown said a blanket solution is needed to give law enforcement officers statewide the clear authority to make arrests when nipples are exposed.

Maybe it’s time to start a Reality Thinking Hall of Shame for busy body morons like Brown.

It gets worse.  According to the Naturist Action Committee:

In thirteen U.S. states, however, lawmakers have decreed that those convicted of mere nudity must register as sex offenders.

When we include strip clubs and brothels, state governments claim the power to outlaw nudity among consenting adults even on private property behind closed doors.  Nudity for entertainment purposes is far worse than ordinary nudity.  Heaven forbid that anyone anywhere should be having a good time.

And the absolute worst part of it?  Most of your neighbors think throwing someone in prison for nudity is just fine.  Most of your neighbors think that children are traumatized by mere sight of the naked adult body.  Protecting children from harm, real or imagined, always trumps freedom.  And most of your neighbors think that this is a completely healthy rational attitude.  Think about that next time you bump into them when you’re out mowing the lawn.

When you think about it, what’s surprising is not that “the land of the free” throws more of its citizens in prison than any other country.  No.  What’s really surprising, given the willingness of Americans to criminalize everything,  is that there are still so many people not in prison.

Morning Links

  • President Obama condemned a third nuclear test by North Korea calling it a “highly provocative act” that demands “swift and credible action by the international community” against North Korea. Countries that already have nuclear weapons always strongly condemn other countries getting them.
  • Glenn Greenwald asks whether drones should be used to kill Christopher Dorner, the ex-police  officer who is accused of waging war on the LAPD.  Whether drones are or are not being used is in dispute.
  • The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in the 6,656 death of military personnel.  Of course, U.S. Presidents are always wiling to pay the cost of war with other people’s lives.  But, you rarely hear about the other “sacrifices” Presidents have been  willing to commit American soldiers to: 1700 limb amputations, 50,000 combat wounds, 130,000 cases of PTSD, and 253,330 cases of traumatic brain injury (6500 of which are severe).
  • The identity of Israel’s most secret prisoner has been uncovered,  I know it’s Kind of hard to imagine a democratic country secretly imprisoning a citizen without trial and then forcing the press to keep quiet about it.   Hahaha!   Just kidding about that last part.  Nothing is hard to imagine about democratic countries anymore.

  • Knut, the polar bear that became a sensation in 2007 and then unexpectedly died in 2011 will soon have a new home at the Berlin’s natural history museum.

 

 

 

[Updated below with a couple items from The Agitator]

  • Ohio Attorney General releases a report and animation (below) of a Cleveland incident where 13 cops fired 137 rounds at a suspect vehicle killing the occupants.  Police insist someone shot at them from the car and took off in pursuit of it.  The chase involved “nearly 60 vehicles”, but no gun or shell casings were ever found in the car.  The state attorney general condemned the actions as a systemic failure, but the police chief and city council insist that existing polices and procedures work fine.

Raytheon is watching you

Raytheon has developed software that mines information from social networks to track what  you’re been doing and what you might do in the future.

The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can be transformed into a “Google for spies” and tapped as a means of monitoring and control.

Ratheon doesn’t have a customer yet, but it has shared the technology with the U.S. government.  Luckily, we don’t need to worry about that because the U.S. government are the good guys.  If you don’t believe me, just ask them.

Afternoon links

  • Greenwald dissects the Obama administration’s latest rationalization for its power to act as judge, jury, and executioner of any American citizen it deems to maybe possibly pose an imminent threat to some U.S. interest somewhere, sometime, with absolutely no oversight or checks and balances by the other two branches of government (which probably suits those other two branches just fine).  Reason.com also weighs in.
  • Argentina still thinks they’re going to get the Falkland Islands back.  I think they’re right.  I expect it to happen about the same time as Israel reverts back to Palestine.  Both cases represent instabilities maintained by force of arms that will eventually be unsustainable.

Compliance

I just finished watching the 2012 movie called Compliance.  It’s based on an incident at a Kentucky fast food restaurant where the assistant store manager received a call from someone posing as a police officer.  The caller then talked the assistant manager into holding and strip searching another employee under the pretext under the pretext of a theft investigation.  By the time the incident ended hours later, the female employee had been, not only thoroughly humiliated, but  sexually assaulted by the assistant manager’s fiancé. Compliance_Movie_Poster

To me, the name of the movie as well as the story itself deliver a single message.  Our culture, education, and statist political environment impart an attitude of near total subservience to authority, especially police authority.  Most people just assume cops know what they’re doing, abide by the law, and are there to help us.  That’s why websites like The Agitator, PINAC, and Cop Block which expose the utter fallacy of such beliefs are so important.

The movie, Compliance, is remarkably true to the actual events in Kentucky, but as the movie points out, the Kentucky incident was the culmination of a series of more than seventy similar events across thirty states over more than a decade.   The man they finally charged for the crimes was employed by a private security firm, Corrections Corporation of America, but was an avid consumer of police magazines and had filled out applications for numerous law enforcement jobs.  While the incidents ceased after his arrest, Stewart was acquitted of the charges in 2006.

It’s a chilling movie and I found it uncomfortable to watch.  What disturbed me the most was wondering how I would respond if faced with a similar situation.  After the fact it’s easy to say I would have seen right through it or at least questioned it.  After years of reading The Agitator and becoming highly skeptical of law enforcement in general, I doubt that I would have fallen for it, but back when I was 30 or 40, I’m not so sure…

DEA wants warrantless access to prescription records

From The Agitator’s Morning Links:

The ACLU is challenging a claim by the DEA that it can access confidential prescription drug records in Oregon without a warrant.  Basically, the DEA wants access to information already collected under Oregon state law.

In 2009, the Oregon legislature created the Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), which tracks prescriptions for certain drugs dispensed by Oregon pharmacies, including all of the medications listed above. The program was intended to help physicians prevent drug overdoses by their patients and more easily recognize signs of drug abuse.

Yeah, right.  The government is always watching out for “the folks” (a term coined by right wing statist icon Bill Reilly).

The State of Oregon sued the DEA in federal court to defend its right to require law enforcement, including federal agencies, to obtain the warrants required by state law.

Interesting that the Oregon government argues that the DEA should get a warrant to access personal information that the state collects without a warrant.

Today, the ACLU filed a motion to intervenein the case on behalf of several patients and a doctor whose prescription records are contained in the PDMP. Our clients are concerned that the privacy of their medical information will be violated if the DEA is allowed to search through prescription records without a warrant..

Sorry, ACLU, but that ship has already sailed.  The privacy of their medical information was violated a long long time ago with programs like Medicare and the Drug War.  Where were you then?

And for all you gun rights advocates, it’s probably inevitable that prescription drug information mining will eventually be used to identify people who have been treated with psychiatric medications as means to block them from buying a gun.   According to Yahoo, even the NRA suggests people under mental health treatment are fair game for more gun restrictions:

[NRA President David] Keene said officials should focus more attention on a “devastatingly broken mental health system in this country,” if they genuinely want to end gun violence.

The internet: Soon to be part of the military industrial complex

This piece by Glenn Greenwald explores how the government is taking over the internet using the same tactics it used to grow the U.S. military into the largest and most aggressive force on the planet.

What Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex has been feeding itself on fear campaigns since it was born. A never-ending carousel of Menacing Enemies – Communists, Terrorists, Latin American Tyrants, Saddam’s chemical weapons, Iranian mullahs – has sustained it, and Cyber-Threats are but the latest.

Step 1 is fear mongering. This has been in full swing since 2010 and continuously ramping up.

Step 2 is for the government  to saturate the media with reports about how the U.S. must defend itself from the cyber warfare programs of other states even though the U.S. is easily the biggest cyber warfare aggressor.

Step 3 is to get legislation passed that grants the executive branch the powers it needs to exert command control.

Step 4 is to grow the budget for the divisions within the NSA and Pentagon in charge of cyber warfare.

Step 5 is to make sure the government methods, rules, and involvement are secret so it cannot be challenged.

Step 6 is to bring in private sector partners, who have already proven their willingness to sell out their customers for the promise of a big government contract.

All of these steps are already in full swing, ensuring that the kind of popular uprisings we’re seeing in other police states will never happen in this one.