September 2015 – The Burning Platform

Justice Without State

You always know you’re venturing into interesting territory when you arouse defenses like “Because!,” “You’re an idiot,” or “Everyone knows…”

Such are the defenses that pop up when touching the concept of justice separate from the state. It was, in my experience, something of a verboten subject, considered ridiculous and rude at the same time. It was – again in my personal experience – something that everyone just “knew” was impossible and which they also knew was dangerous.

And yet, they had no real reasons upholding their opinions. Certainly they struggled to assemble reasons once I said, “I don’t think so” (humans are really good at that), but it was very clear that the decision was made first and the facts assembled second.

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I was thrust into this subject quite a few years ago, as cypherpunk projects ran into the reality that humans are unfinished creatures and sometimes end up in disputes with each other. Once cyberspace appeared, quite a few of us realized that it was a kind of terra nova, the first new continent opening since 1492. (1606 for Australia.) We wanted to do something good with it, something better than the territorial overlords were doing to humanity.

To give you some feel for the moment, here is a passage from J.P. Barlow’s A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, published in 1996:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

So, with a separation imperative in mind, we were confronted with the fact that some kind of law or justice service was necessary. And so, I began digging into the subject.

What I Found

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OBAMA & THE POPE WOULD CONSIDER THIS A HUGE SUCCESS

The pictures below are what Obama and Pope Francis would consider a huge success in the never ending fight against man made global warming. North Korea is doing their part. That Kim Jung Whatever is a real conservationist. No lights on in the country after 8:00 pm except for his palace where he is watching South Korean porn. If the climate nazis have their way, the whole world will look like North Korea.

Via Marketwatch

In 1980, there wasn’t a significant gap in electricity use between the two Koreas with electricity consumption in North Korea hitting 20.2 billion kilowatt hours versus 32.06 billion kilowatt hours in South Korea, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

By 2012, North Korea was using only 15.72 billion kilowatt hours while South Korea’s consumption had surged to 482.38 billion kilowatt hours.

‏@StationCDRKelly

The #Korean Peninsula. #Pyongyang the capitol the lone spot of light in an otherwise dark #NorthKorea. #YearInSpace

‏@StationCDRKelly

Feel bad for the people of #NorthKorea when I see with my own eyes they live without electricity. #YearInSpace

TURNING

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

We spent the better part of the day chopping corn on the north slope of my neighbor’s farm. He drives the tractor with the old John Deere 35 and I drive beside him in my truck pulling the dump trailer behind me. The fields are set on a north facing slope with a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains. The trees are giving off the first color of the season and from a distance the russet tones have overtaken the deep greens of only a week ago. Each pass between rows requires that the truck maintain a distance of less than two feet between the chopper and the trailer that catches the silage as it flies out of the blower. We installed two pieces of plywood standing on end to catch the spray of shredded material, but to hit it precisely the speed and the interval must be maintained to within a tolerance of inches at a speed of five miles an hour on a fifteen degree incline across a field filled with buried boulders and hidden declivities.

I have learned to use the passenger side mirror as a my sight and the model number of the tractor as the target. The chute that serves as the ejection port can be operated by hand to adjust for height while the tractor is in motion, but only if my neighbor looks back over his shoulder while driving. To avoid colliding requires a constant state of intense concentration on both our parts; to do the job properly, to catch every bit of the corn in the trailer requires something more, a complete trust in the abilities of each operator to do exactly what is needed, what is necessary. This is our third year working together on this project and each year we refine the chore based on the conditions of the field and the weight of the corn at harvest. In the end we clear his field for tilling and I am able to put seven acres of high protein feed away for Winter, both of us better for our combined efforts.

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Question of the Day, Sep 30

Today’s question comes from Rise Up…If the government fell and you could raid the files/pictures/items of 2 agencies, which would they be? SSS gets to answer twice.

PS I know the picture is too big, there’s too damn many to fit on the screen!

WTF OBSERVATION OF THE WEEK

It was bad enough when my local Wal-Mart had aisle upon aisle of Halloween candy available in early August. How many bags of Halloween candy purchased in August or September will really make it to Halloween night? With the land whales roaming the countryside today, I’d reckon NONE. The desperation of American retailers to siphon every ounce of possible profit from the ignorant masses is palpable as you observe retail outlets today. Kohl’s sends out 30% coupons on a weekly basis and when you go to the store, it is virtually empty with dozens and dozens of overstock racks with clothes 60%, 70% and 80% off, before even using the 30% coupon. You can smell the decay.

On Sunday morning while doing my weekly 7:00 am (before the People of Wal-Mart awake and remove their sleep apnea machines) trek to Wal-Mart for paper goods, prepping supplies, and a few other miscellaneous items, I turned my head toward the outdoor department and to my utter amazement saw Christmas trees, decorations, and other assorted Christmas crap already overflowing from that department. I thought to myself WTF!!! It is still 80 degrees outside. I was wearing shorts and flip flops. Halloween is still over a month away. Sure signs of desperation from the biggest retailer in the world.

The retail pain has only just begun. As this recession gathers strength, job losses build, and the stock market crashes, the number of retail outlets that will close will be beyond comprehension. Retail CEOs have been living in a delusional world where they think the consumer will be coming back. That delusion is going to be shattered into a million pieces. Wal-Mart might as well sell their Chinese made Christmas crap all year long. It won’t do a bit of good.

‘Minority Report’ Is 40 Years Ahead of Schedule: The Fictional World Has Become Reality

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we’re part of the medium. The scary thing is, we’ll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.”—Director Steven Spielberg, Minority Report

We are a scant 40 years away from the futuristic world that science fiction author Philip K. Dick envisioned for Minority Report in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control.

Unfortunately, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we may have already arrived at the year 2054.

Increasingly, the world around us resembles Dick’s dystopian police state in which the police combine widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining and precognitive technology to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage. In other words, the government’s goal is to prevent crimes before they happen: precrime.

For John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise), Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime in Washington, DC, the technology that he relies on for his predictive policing proves to be fallible, identifying him as the next would-be criminal and targeting him for preemptive measures. Consequently, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens.

Seemingly taking its cue from science fiction, technology has moved so fast in the short time since Minority Report premiered in 2002 that what once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction. Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, Spielberg’s unnerving vision of the future is fast becoming our reality.

Examples abound.

Continue reading “‘Minority Report’ Is 40 Years Ahead of Schedule: The Fictional World Has Become Reality”

State Makes It Legal to Shoot Cops in Self-Defense If They Violate Your Rights

Via Anti-Media.org

(CCN) Is it ever legal to shoot cops? A growing number of states are passing laws that say that yes, in fact, sometimes it is well within a citizen’s rights to shoot a police officer.

Other states have already ruled in favor of citizens shooting police officers in self-defense, (even hip-hop legend Tupac walked after shooting two cops in self-defense) now, in the state of Indiana, if a police officer initiates aggression without cause in someone’s home, violence can be used against them in self-defense – including using lethal force.

The new law was drafted to “recognize the unique character of a citizen’s home and to ensure that a citizen feels secure in his or her own home against unlawful intrusion by another individual or a public servant.”

This should hardly be seen as profound. In the past, self-defense was viewed as a human right. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the citizenry of the United States, it recognizes natural rights. One of those rights — a veritable law of Nature — is the right to resist.

No matter what one does, or takes from you, nothing can stop the innate right to follow our natural impulses of resistance. That does not mean all will exercise that right. But the right itself is natural, primordial, inborn.

The new amendment in Indiana recognizes this. It makes it clear that badges do not grant special rights to break into someone’s house and commit acts of violent aggression. If they do, the resident has the right to resist those illegal actions and defend themselves.

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