Monthly Archives: May 2011

Canadian security geek jailed for taunting G20 security theatre; who lost everything – his marriage, his home, his livelihood – because he couldn’t figure out how to contain or express his disgust with the state’s increasing encroachment on personal liberty

open quoteThe current issue of Toronto Life’s cover story is the sad and perverse tale of Byron Sonne, a Toronto security researcher, hackspace stalwart, and anarcho-libertarian who decided to show up the security theatre at play in last year’s billion-dollar-plus G20 preparations. Sonne published extensive accounts of the vulnerabilities in the preparations, taunting the police and officials who were putting on a kind of repressive, city-wide puppet show about security, rather than securing much of anything. Sonne was arrested and spent more than just under a year in jail, being held without bail on a variety of charges, almost all of which have been dropped (his bail conditions are nothing short of Kafkaesque). Sonne’s actions seem, on their face, to be over-the-top and ill-considered (though we haven’t heard his side of things yet), but the Canadian judicial system’s response is so insanely paranoid that it makes Sonne look extremely reasonable by comparison.

Sonne’s story is the sad tale of a geek who lost everything — his marriage, his home, his livelihood — because he couldn’t figure out how to contain or express his disgust with the state’s increasing encroachment on personal liberty.close quote (Read more from boingboing.net)

Psychopathic Congressional leaders agree to continue violating freedom and the Constitution via Patriot Act

open quoteTop lawmakers in the House and Senate reached a deal to extend the Patriot Act for four years, a week before key provisions were set to expire.

The pieces of the law that allow the federal government to compel businesses to release records, issue roving wiretaps, and monitor so-called “lone wolf” terror suspects were set to run out on May 27. The outline of the deal between Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) still needs to pass both chambers in the next seven days to avoid a lapse in the law.close quote (Read more from politico.com)

Congressional Leadership Seeks Four-Year PATRIOT Act Extension

open quoteCongressional leadership from both houses and both parties today reached a deal on a long-term extension of the PATRIOT Act, exactly as worded and without any of the inconvenient civil rights provisions that the Obama Administration has been warning against. The deal would extend an additional four years.

Four years is quite a bit longer than most of the previous House versions of the extension but was quite a bit shorter that Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R – IA) call for the bill to be eternal as well as completely free of oversight.close quote (Read more from antiwar.com)

Southern Avenger on Gingrich

From the Southern Avenger via Facebook: open quoteI give props to Paul Ryan for going further than most Republicans in his budget proposal, though I agree with Rand Paul that Ryan’s cuts don’t go far enough (Ryan’s plan still leaves us with a $23 trillion debt). Newt Gingrich not only finds Ryan’s plan too radical but supports Obama’s health insurance mandate. I repeat: Gingrich is not, and never has been, a conservative.close quote

Gingrich Blasts House GOP’s Medicare Plan

IMF Chief Pulled from Plane in New York on Rape Charges

open quoteDominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF chief faces arraignment in New York on rape charges.

IMF leader and potential French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, was pulled from an airplane bound for Paris just before its departure Saturday in New York, the Associated Press reported.

The IMF chief was arrested after a 32-year-old maid told authorities Strauss-Kahn attacked her Saturday afternoon after she entered his suite at the luxury Sofitel hotel to clean the $3,000-a-night suite, which she had been told was empty, the AP reported.

According to an account given by the woman to police, Strauss-Kahn came out of a bathroom naked, pursued her down a hallway, and pulled her into a bedroom, where he started to sexually assault her. The woman said she fought him off, then he pulled her into the bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and attempted to remove her underwear. The woman once again broke free and alerted hotel staff, who called police, the authorities said.

Strauss-Kahn, considered a potential Socialist Party challenger to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012, was arrested on an Air France jet about to depart from John F. Kennedy International Airport.

close quote (Read more from globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com)

TSA Blog about Texas laws banning intrusive searches says plainly

open quoteWhat’s our take on the Texas House of Representatives voting to ban the current TSA pat-down? Well, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article. VI. Clause 2) prevents states from regulating the federal government.

We wish we lived in a world where you could just walk on a plane with no security screening, but that just isn’t the case unfortunately. Aviation security agencies worldwide have been using pat-downs long before TSA was created to prevent dangerous items from getting onto airplanes. close quote (Read more from blog.tsa.gov)

I wonder if they read the 4th Amendment.

“First Do No Harm”: Constitutional and Conservative Liberals

open quoteOne of the most fascinating things, for me as a Brit, about engaging with American politics is that all political issues are filtered in the media through an extraordinarily crass Left vs. Right paradigm.

Left and right are not the two paradigms of American politics. They are the two flavors of only one.

. . . .

The so-called “radicals” like Paul and Kucinich who appear through the old left-right filter to be so different, are more importantly defined by what they have in common — a principled attempt to protect American Constitutional rights that, while radical in 1776, should not even be up for discussion today.

Of the men I’ve mentioned, the darling of Constitutionalists today is Ron Paul. He has so far out-raised all of the potential GOP candidates for 2012, even while many of the MSM continue to conduct their polls (among likely Republican voters) often times without even including his name. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know it means something, and I like it. close quote (Read more from huffingtonpost.com)

Court: No right to resist illegal cop entry into home

open quoteOverturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”close quote (Read more from nwitimes.com)

Police Officer Summarily Executes a Deaf, Mentally Challenged Woodcarver.

open quoteWhy did you shoot that man? He didn’t do anything!”

The question was wrenched from a woman who had watched in horror as Police Officer Ian Birk pumped four shots into the body of John T. Williams on a Seattle street corner last August 30.

Birk claimed that he had been “threatened” by Williams, a 50-year-old alcoholic woodcarver who was carrying two closed knives at the time of the incident. The autopsy, however, documented that Williams wasn’t facing Birk when he was shot: The officer approached him from behind and to the right, and Williams was shot in the right side of his body from an estimated distance of about ten feet. A fifth shot that missed the target was never accounted for.

No reasonable person would have considered Williams a threat to Birk; in fact, since the victim was partially deaf, it’s likely he never clearly heard Birk’s demand that he drop his carving knife, and died before understanding what was going on. The entire lethal encounter lasted less than eight seconds.

There were several eyewitnesses to the homicide. None of them saw Williams display threatening behavior of any kind. Then again, none of them was a member of the State’s punitive caste, which means that they hadn’t been indoctrinated to perceive even a momentary lack of cooperation by a Mundane as a “pre-attack indicator.” During the January inquest into the shooting, Birk explained that he gunned down John T. Williams on a Seattle street corner because he didn’t like the way the 50-year-old chronic alcoholic looked at him.close quote (Read more from lewrockwell.com)