Lately I’ve been see­ing lots of adver­tise­ments on tele­vi­sion plug­ging four bal­lot ini­tia­tives hav­ing to do with casi­nos on Indian reser­va­tions. They ads are almost iden­ti­cal, and they’re basi­cally say­ing (almost in so many words) “vote for these propo­si­tions to steal more money from Indi­ans.” And this is sup­posed to encour­age “yes” votes!

Appar­ently the peo­ple push­ing this gen­uinely believe that the major­ity of Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers will respond to this bla­tant 19^th-century appeal to greed and big­otry. I’m sur­prised they didn’t throw in “vote yes to get revenge for Custer.” Cer­tainly the “vote yes” cam­paign has done an excel­lent job of ensur­ing that I will go to the polls specif­i­cally to vote no on all four ini­tia­tives, and I cer­tainly hope they fail overwhelmingly.

Geor­gia Sher­iff Pat­tons Up for the War on Drugs.

Just in case you thought talk about how the drug war has “mil­i­ta­rized” our police depart­ments was exaggerated:

Offi­cials in Clay­ton County have inten­si­fied their efforts in the war on drugs. Sher­iff Vic­tor Hill announced he is plan­ning an inva­sion into drug-infested communities.

The ACLU said the ques­tion of whether or not the so-called inva­sion is legal, is a trou­bling one for them.

[…]

Deputies have iden­ti­fied five known drug houses, that they want to inves­ti­gate. Thurs­day night, deputies set up a road block, and checked each car com­ing into or out of the street in ques­tion for drugs.

The oper­a­tion has been dubbed Oper­a­tion Jeri­cho. Mobile police check­points have been set up out­side sus­pected drug houses in the neigh­bor­hood. Clay­ton County Sher­iff Vic­tor Hill said the plan is to occupy sus­pected drug ter­ri­to­ries with deputies — one house, one loca­tion at a time.

[…]

Hill said the con­ven­tional method of war­rants and arrests are not work­ing, and that military-like occu­pa­tion of deputies is necessary.

[…]

“The war on drugs in Clay­ton County, as in most juris­dic­tions, I liken it to the Viet­nam War,” Hill said. “Hit and miss, there is no clear win — we don’t know if we’re gain­ing ground or not. What we want to do is we want to change our strat­egy. We want to make this more like a Nor­mandy invasion.”

And of course when you’re fight­ing a war, you can’t really con­cern your­self with col­lat­eral dam­age.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, the 2006 pop­u­la­tion esti­mate for Clay­ton County was 271,240. The low end esti­mate of civil­ian casu­al­ties in the Viet­nam War is 2,000,000. Well, that’s one way for Sher­iff Hitler Hill to get his “clear win”–if he exter­mi­nates the entire pop­u­la­tion of the county in his Viet­nam War reen­act­ment, there won’t be any­one left to use drugs.

Out of con­trol. Heard on NPR this morn­ing that 60% of the movers and the shak­ers at Davos believe that cen­tral bankers can’t control/manage the global econ­omy any­more. Impli­ca­tion: it’s too big, com­plex, and fast for these orga­ni­za­tions to man­age. This is a big shift in think­ing that puts them in line with the global guer­rilla think­ing re: the decline of the nation-state, more fre­quent black swans, etc. [John Robb’s Weblog]

If it’s really taken 86 years for just 60% of “the movers and the shak­ers” to notice that cen­tral plan­ning of the econ­omy doesn’t work, we prob­a­bly can’t expect them to rec­og­nize the ben­e­fits of cap­i­tal­ism any time soon.

The Effects of Mass Depor­ta­tion Would Ruin Us. To say this would be a messy affair would be an under­state­ment of mag­nif­i­cent pro­por­tion. SWAT-style assaults and home inva­sions would be the order of the day. Today’s ruth­less, tyran­ni­cal drug raids would actu­ally look tame in com­par­i­son as gov­ern­ment thugs went door to door seek­ing out sus­pected ille­gal aliens. The right to pri­vacy of cit­i­zens and non-citizens alike would con­se­quently evap­o­rate as prop­erty rights became a thing of the past. Chaos would ensue. Racial ten­sions would inten­sify as pri­mar­ily brown tar­gets would be ensnared by their pri­mar­ily white cap­tors. Protests and riots would erupt, the mer­its of which would be hard to dispute.

Chil­dren born as Amer­i­can cit­i­zens would be seized from their par­ents, auto­mat­i­cally ren­dered home­less and con­verted into wards of the state as a result of such total­i­tar­ian behav­ior (Huck­abee once seemed to under­stand the demer­its of such atro­cious behav­ior). Human beings who have come to this coun­try to make a bet­ter life for them­selves and their fam­i­lies would be treated like ani­mals as they were hunted, cap­tured, incar­cer­ated, and even­tu­ally deported. And this would merely be the fate of those who complied.

Those who resisted, on the other hand, would not fare nearly as well. They would end up beaten, maimed, tor­tured, and even killed. If Amer­i­cans can be elec­tro­cuted and shot by the road­side sim­ply for argu­ing with the police nowa­days, just what type of treat­ment would befall the ille­gal immi­grant sud­denly ren­dered per­sona non grata via this new Soviet-style dik­tat? [LewRockwell.com]

I’m glad to see some­one else writ­ing on the inevitable con­se­quences of anti-immigration poli­cies. If the big­ots got their way, it would be the worst act of eth­nic cleans­ing in recorded his­tory. And while it might not actu­ally cause a civil war, I can pretty much guar­an­tee that there would be at least some Amer­i­can cit­i­zens vot­ing “no” with rifles when the Gestapo came into their neigh­bor­hoods to kick their neighbor’s doors down and drag them away.

The author of the arti­cle also has a follow-up post on his blog.

Vir­ginia Cop Killed in Drug Raid; Sus­pect Says He Was Defend­ing His Home.

Offi­cer Jar­rod Shiv­ers was shot and killed while exe­cut­ing a search war­rant in Chesea­peake, Vir­ginia Thurs­day night.

The sus­pect had no crim­i­nal record (at least in the state of Vir­ginia). And he says in an inter­view from jail he had no idea the under­cover cops break­ing into his home were police. The sus­pect, 28-year-old Ryan David Fred­er­ick, also says a bur­glar had bro­ken into his home ear­lier this week.

Thought the raid was appar­ently part of a drug inves­ti­ga­tion, police aren’t say­ing what if any drugs were found. They won’t even con­firm that police had the cor­rect address. But they have arrested Fred­er­ick and charged him with first-degree murder.

More to come, I’m sure.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

Given the way cops invari­ably trum­pet any­thing they can find to jus­tify their actions in such cases, it’s pretty obvi­ous that they guy didn’t have any drugs. Fur­ther, since this was a drug war­rant, it seems like a clear case of the cop get­ting what he deserved.

And how we burned in the camps after, think­ing: What would things have been like if every Secu­rity oper­a­tive, when he went out at night to make his arrest, had been uncer­tain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Alek­sandr Solzhen­it­syn, The Gulag Archipelago

Par­adise always has a lousy gov­ern­ment, because peo­ple will live there any­way. Hell­holes have to be more cir­cum­spect about their poli­cies, since no one is going to live there for the intangibles.

Joshua Holmes

RODERICK T. LONG: Why They Fight.

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

Great quote from Tom Woods today:

In the 1980s, the Aya­tol­lah Khome­ini called for a jihad against Amer­ica, on the grounds that we were degen­er­ate, had filthy movies, our women didn’t know their place – all the rea­sons that we’ve been told are the causes of the cur­rent attacks. The result was absolutely noth­ing. No one blew him­self up. No one did any­thing. Khome­ini issued the call and there was no inter­est. It was a total flop – no one wanted to sac­ri­fice him­self on those grounds.

Then the 1990s come along, and we have Osama bin Laden. He does not make that fun­da­men­tal cul­tural cri­tique – obvi­ously, he doesn’t like those aspects of Amer­i­can cul­ture, but that wasn’t his main critique.

His crit­i­cism is actu­ally very spe­cific. He says the U.S. is respon­si­ble for prop­ping up police states around the Arab world; exer­cis­ing undue influ­ence over oil mar­kets; show­ing undue favoritism toward Israel; sup­port­ing coun­tries that oppress their Mus­lim minori­ties; bas­ing Amer­i­can troops on the Ara­bian penin­sula, and on and on.

This is the sort of thing he offers as a ratio­nale. So while there may cer­tainly be the poten­tial for Islam to be vio­lent, what sparks that fire? It’s the com­bi­na­tion of prac­ti­cal griev­ances and the Islamist ide­ol­ogy. Some peo­ple will do bat­tle on behalf of an abstract phi­los­o­phy, but most peo­ple will only fight and die for a spe­cific griev­ance. For exam­ple, when you look at the Al Qaida recruit­ment tapes, they don’t sim­ply quote from the Koran. They actu­ally show images of peo­ple killed by U.S. weapons.

Why are they mak­ing those tapes if there’s no con­nec­tion between U.S. for­eign pol­icy and what the ter­ror­ists are doing? It just doesn’t make sense.

Read the rest.

[Lib­erty & Power: Group Blog]

Indeed. I think it’s sig­nif­i­cant that the Neo­cons didn’t invent all that “islam­o­fas­cism” and “they hate us for our free­dom” non­sense until after 9/11 when they were fran­ti­cally look­ing for a way to avoid the real answer to the ques­tion of why it happened.

Another Dumb Poker Raid.

Police in San Mateo County, Cal­i­for­nia appar­ently first spent months inves­ti­gat­ing the small-stakes poker game. From this first­hand account, it looks like a cou­ple of the offi­cers were play­ing reg­u­larly for sev­eral weeks before send­ing in the SWAT team, guns drawn, last week. If Cal­i­for­nia is like most states (and I believe it is), a poker game is only ille­gal if the house is tak­ing a rake off the top. In this case, it looks like that “rake” was the $5 the extra the hosts asked from each buy-in to pay for pizza and beer.

Police also took a 13-year-old girl out of the home, away from her par­ents, and turned her over to child pro­tec­tive ser­vices. In addi­tion to the charge of run­ning an ille­gal gam­bling oper­a­tion, the hosts are also charged with con­tribut­ing to the delin­quency of a minor. Good thing the poor girl was saved before slouch­ing toward an inevitable life of crime.

I’m not quite sure I under­stand this part, either:

A back­ground check on the house’s res­i­dents led offi­cers to a Web site adver­tis­ing weekly poker games. The Web site was used to lure “unwit­ting” par­tic­i­pants to the tour­na­ments, which required a $25 to $55 buy-in with an extra $5 “refresh­ment” fee, accord­ing to the report.

How does an adver­tise­ment for a small-stakes poker game “unwit­tingly lure” some­one? Did they think the game was free? If they did, was there some­thing pre­vent­ing them from sim­ply leav­ing if they didn’t want to pay the buy-in?

This account sug­gests the police hinted to indi­vid­ual play­ers that the hosts may have been cheat­ing or defraud­ing them, though that’s not appar­ent in the news accounts. First­hand accounts on poker sites have only good things to say about the hosts. Of course, even if the hosts were cheat­ing, it wouldn’t jus­tify a full-on raid, par­tic­u­larly in mid-tournament. The SWAT tac­tics seem more like intim­i­da­tion. Raid­ing in mid-tournament also ensures there’s a $1,300 pot to seize for the sher­iff department’s gen­eral fund.

Finally, the San Mateo Daily Jour­nal includes this help­ful note:

The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office encour­ages cit­i­zens to report instances of heavy foot traf­fic, fre­quent vis­i­tors and ille­gal park­ing in res­i­den­tial areas by call­ing its anony­mous tip line…

Mustn’t be much crime in San Mateo.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

On the con­trary, there’s clearly a great deal of crime in San Mateo. Just this story iden­ti­fies break­ing and enter­ing, assault with a deadly weapon, assault and bat­tery, kid­nap­ping, child abuse, and grand theft. And there’s prob­a­bly more that a lawyer would spot.

But of course they were all com­mit­ted by cops, and cops are above the law.

Young IT Work­ers Dis­il­lu­sioned, Hard to Retain. bed­narz writes to men­tion that Net­work­World has an inter­est­ing exam­i­na­tion of young IT pro­fes­sion­als and why many make unrea­son­able demands for their ser­vices. “‘The issue man­agers are fac­ing is with reten­tion, not hir­ing. That means the work envi­ron­ment is not liv­ing up to the employee’s expec­ta­tion,’ he says. For instance, many younger work­ers expect to get an office imme­di­ately or be paid at a rate higher than entry level.“

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Slash­dot]

“Expect to get an office imme­di­ately?” Syman­tec employ­ees would be happy to get an office ever. I’ve worked there for nine years, and didn’t get an “office” until I started work­ing from home, and there are senior devel­op­ers who have been there even longer who are still stuck in mis­er­able lit­tle cubicles.

I came across a site, Elec­toral Com­pass USA, which asks a series of ques­tions on var­i­ous issues and com­pares your posi­tion to the var­i­ous pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. As is often the case with such sites, I had to answer “no opin­ion” on some of the ques­tions because my actual opin­ion is one that most Amer­i­cans are appar­ently unable to con­ceive of. Some examples:

Peo­ple with higher incomes should receive less Medicare benefits

Since there was no option for “nobody should receive any Medicare ben­e­fits,” I set­tled for no opinion.

The death penalty helps deter crime

I left this one neu­tral, as I’m not con­vinced one way or the other. How­ever, of greater impor­tance (to me) is the fact that it’s been abun­dantly demon­strated by the advent of DNA test­ing that a great many peo­ple con­victed of crimes (even those who con­fessed) weren’t actu­ally guilty, which makes the death penalty a very bad idea.

The gov­ern­ment should spend money on keep­ing drugs off the streets, not on treat­ing drug addicts

Again, I chose no opin­ion because there was no option for “the gov­ern­ment doesn’t have any busi­ness doing either.”