The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a Lord of the Rings marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to. – Seattle PD press release
Wednesday was the 79th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition; even regular readers may be impressed (to put it kindly) to hear that I’ve already scheduled a column on the subject for the 80th anniversary next year. In honor of the occasion Reason did a profile of “The Man in the Green Hat”, semi-official bootlegger to Congress, whose exposure of hypocrisy in those simpler days helped to bring Prohibition down; it’s the first video below, and every link before it was provided by this week’s champ, Jesse Walker. The first and fourth links between the videos came from Radley Balko, the second from Mike Siegel, the third from Marc Randazza, the fifth from Cthulhuchick, the sixth from Feminist Whore and the last two from Grace. The second video (which is a cute, funny little satire) was contributed by Furrygirl.
- NYPD uses Orwellian surveillance tactics to find and arrest artist who produced posters criticizing NYPD’s Orwellian surveillance tactics.
- The real story here is a “privacy pragmatist’s” easy acceptance of trust violations, intrusive surveillance and extracurricular FBI spying.
- Synthetic kid-band sings sickening propaganda intended to promote mindless obedience to authority.
- Read and remember: all prohibitionism is the same.
- The Calvin and Hobbes search engine.
- Deranged cop shoots puppy, then issues owners parking ticket. Owners sue city, go to media. Cop officials return to house, give them another ticket and threaten them for going to media.
- Milwaukee Police Commission rules that the law does not apply to cops, and that they can disobey superiors without consequences.
- Cops murder man, then steal his daughter’s cell phone on which she had recorded the shooting.
- Military officials announce new target in Afghanistan: “children with potential hostile intent.”
- Reporter’s Pearl Harbor story published for the first time after 71 years.
- Amsterdam to establish concentration camps for “anti-social” residents.
- The truth about cancer scares.
- What DNA actually looks like.
- Hazmat crew dispatched to “protect children” from exposure to “dangerous chemicals”: A mercury thermometer at a high school.
- Cop admits he plants drugs on random cars in hotel parking lots to “train” drug-sniffing dogs.
- A community college bans construction work over “men working” signs.
- Even the smallest horse bite can be harmful to newborn babies.
- A new prohibitionist scheme: licensing of smokers.
Do those kids realize that their lord and savior was crucified by the authorities of the time because he was opposing them?
I sincerely doubt it; they only know what they’re told, because if “authorities” want to keep them in ignorance it’s obviously for their own good.
There’s a comment/description directly below the video that was uploaded with it. In it they say authorities are there to “help” you. (scare quotes in original, seriously, go look.) I am holding out hope that this video is satire.
As if kids in warfare were something new?
Please.
One of my uncles, who entered WWII late (after the Battle of the Bulge) … was haunted for decades by the images in his mind of German kids he HAD to kill. You can thank Hitler for that – for putting kids into fox holes, pill boxes, sewers and bell towers to oppose the allied advance. You can also thank the Mothers and Fathers of those children – who sat by and did nothing while fanaticism took over their nation.
Fanatics … do not need an “excuse” to “blow shit up”. The Islamo-fascist government of Iran sent THOUSANDS of it’s children to their deaths in primitively-armed “human waves” against Sadaam’s Iraqi Army. They also sentenced young girls to their deaths … raping them before murdering them to ensure they were “unpure” and would be guaranteed a life in hell. Don’t take my word for it though …
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Betray-Astonishing-Double-Revolutionary/dp/143918903X
There’s really two choices …
1. Leave Afghanistan – and prepare for the next 9-11. When it comes, we simply nuke someone – kids and all.
2. Fight in Afghanistan for a thousand years if necessary.
I’m good with either option – but just know that leaving the place is not as simple and clean as it sounds. Leaving Vietnam left MILLIONS to die in the reign of Pol Pot – something that the modern media and “peaceniks” of the time don’t seem to want to acknowledge. Leaving Afghanistan would be just as bloody for the people there.
Correct. So? We aren’t their parents. It is THEIR country, and THEY have to overthrow dictators if that’s what they want. Our only intervention in any tyranny should be A) keeping it from attacking us or our allies; and B) helping INDIVIDUALS who want to escape it to do so. Period. End of story. Countries are like organisms; “helping” them as we do is like feeding wild animals or giving humans makework jobs that teach them nothing. As E.M. Forster put it, “Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
Pol Pot was in Cambodia, not Vietnam. Heck, it was communist Vietnam who overthrow him and ended the genocide.
Wait, you mean the peaceniks didn’t kill millions, and that destroying the village to save it wasn’t going to save them?
Next you’ll be telling me Saddam Hussein wasn’t behind 9/11.
Funnily enough this actually gives Vietnam just as a good a record against genocidal states as the US, one.
Well, I’d actually give the US a “2” score on that front. The Japanese were sure enough trying for Chinese genocide even if they weren’t as thorough as the Germans or as precise in their target selections. The Nanking Massacre is an indication of the troops mentality in that regard and for the policy aspect of genocide, I think that the infamous Unit 731 establishes that it would have been enacted, if they could have managed it.
It’s a little known fact that the Vietnam War stopped when the troops simply stopped obeying orders. Little known, because the “authorities” consigned that fact to the Memory Hole.
Unlike today’s troops, Vietnam era troops were drafted, meaning, they were citizens, and you can only get a citizen army to fight if it has something to fight for. Which is why, today, we have a strictly “volunteer” mercenary army, which does need any reason to fight other than for pay. (When I say “mercenary”, I’m not being disrespectful. If somebody wants to fight for pay, they have that right. I’m just telling the truth–we have a mercenary army.)
Acting as the worlds police force isn’t getting us anywhere. Keep in mind that many empires have tried to rule afghanistan. Ours is only the latest few entries in the list. (I’m counting the installation of the Taliban an al-queda by the CIA as a failure, But you could argue that was a success, after all they really thrived afterward)
>”You can thank Hitler for that – for putting kids into fox holes, pill boxes, sewers and bell towers to oppose the allied advance.”
>”The Islamo-fascist government of Iran sent THOUSANDS of it’s children to their deaths in primitively-armed “human waves” against Sadaam’s Iraqi Army. ”
And this, really, is what I’ve never understood- The propensity of people to follow leaders into situations that they can see will be very, very bad for them. Maybe I lack some cooperation gene, but I’ve never had a tendency to do that, and have a difficult time understanding why others do.
Same, I’m not a “joiner” by any stretch of the imagination. I’m actively unnerved by the human capacity to suppress the ‘self’ and form borderline suicidal (or homicidal) mobs. It’s why I tend to be a bit skittish around large groups of worked-up people (e.g., political rallies); I can’t read them very well and tend to think of them as dangerous.
Damn, I could’ve written that myself! When I was a teenager I had trouble going to Mardi Gras parades or crowded shopping malls for exactly that reason.
That reminds me of the line Tommy Lee Jones gave to Will Smith’s character in the first Men in Black movie about an individual having the capacity for rationality and sense but people (the group) being panicky and stupid. I stopped being a fan of crowds after working one too many Christmas seasons in large shopping malls. It just makes me homicidal.
I loved that quote.
Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.
That’s the best part of the quote there. I really like that movie in general. Why did they mess it up with sequels? *shakes head*
I went to the first sequel. I shoulda just been satisfied with the previews – all the funny parts, none of the cringe, cheaper by far and much less time wasted! I didn’t even contemplate the next one, though.
It’s almost like film makers think that they’ve suckered you in once so they don’t have to work so hard for the next installment.
Including a complete lack of accountability when their dire predictions fail.
It’s been a few day since this appeared so somebody probably has already notified you:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/12/mapping-demand-side-prostitution/4073/#
As usual the comments are more intelligent than the original article.
So… that kid band isn’t a case of Poe’s Law? I make it about thirty seconds in. Had to quit; I’d just eaten.
“He was just supplying the market.”
Oh, then I guess it’s all OK.
Yes, when we get to the point when we’re discussing which children it’s OK to kill, perhaps it’s time to get out of the war.
So basically, she was our Tokyo Rose, our Hanoi Hannah, our Baghdad Betty. It may have been justified, but I don’t find it a damn bit funny, and I wish they’d quit with the damned chuckling.
This.
He thinks DNA is pretty,
CGI makes him giddy,
He’ll only listens to the mono version of “Surf City.”
He smells like Hai Karate,
Says Mulder wasn’t dotty,
I wanna rip the clothes right off his ectomorphic body!
– “Nerdy Boys,” Candypants
The manic pixie is acting. Well, yeah.
Well, shows me. I guess we really have won the War on Drugs, if so few people are doing drugs that cops have to plant them so that the poor dog has something to do.
Too many lawmakers themselves smoke for a “smoking license” to happen. This is, yet again, some goofy suggestion by one guy, not a serious proposal for new laws.