Where a government deploys its soldiers will always be politics by other means. – Brandon del Pozo
Fallen Idol (#1305)
A strange, anticlimactic ending to this saga:
The judge overseeing the Ron Jeremy criminal case has granted the defense’s motion to dismiss the case after expert findings that the former performer is “not presently dangerous”…At a Nov. 31 mental health hearing…Judge Robert Harrison granted a petition by Jeremy’s conservator to release him from the county jail system and place him in a private residence to receive around-the-clock medical care…[while] “barred from leaving the premises…The judge said he could not keep Jeremy in jail any longer as he is incapable of being restored to competency and has not been convicted of a crime”…Jeremy’s sister, Susan Billotte, [previously had] attorney Ellen Finkelberg [appointed] as conservator…[with] authority to make decisions regarding [Jeremy’s] finances and health care…
Panopticon (#1344)
Safetyism is the police state’s most powerful fuel:
Gavin Newsom…announced the installation of hundreds of surveillance cameras in Oakland to [take advantage of] public [hysteria] about crime…and…you can bet those cameras will remain in place long after everybody has forgotten the reason for their existence…Flock Safety [will] install a network of approximately 480 high-tech cameras in…Oakland and on state freeways in the East Bay to “combat criminal activity and freeway violence [committed by people who aren’t cops]”…Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao…[applauded] the announcement [like a trained seal, barking out moralistic pap about] “hold[ing] more suspects accountable“…
Spotlight (#1375) 
While I’m always glad to see “sex trafficking” profiteers fall, it’s a particular pleasure to watch it happen to Asstoon:
The intensifying sex-trafficking probe into Sean “Diddy” Combs has thrown a fresh spotlight on the rapper’s longtime friendship with Ashton Kutcher…the feds raided two of the rap mogul’s homes last week…but a source…claim[s]…that Kutcher and his wife, Mila Kunis, would stay quiet on Combs’ legal troubles following the blowup over the letters they wrote in support of Danny Masterson…
Though cops and media have repeatedly referred to the charges against Combs as “sex trafficking”, they appear to actually involve rape, assault, and related crimes rather than anything most people would conceive of as “sex trafficking”. But given Kutcher’s misuse of the term to attack sex workers for the past 15 years, I find the irony very satisfying.
Thought Control (#1415)
No matter how awful the legislative fad, Louisiana politicians can think of a way to make it worse:
Louisiana…politicians…[have] introduced…a…bill [that] would criminalize library workers and libraries for joining the American Library Association…the largest and oldest professional organization for library workers in the nation…the ALA has been at the receiving end of criticism from [pro-censorship] politicians and organizations…[who hope] to undermine…librarianship as a profession…and…dismantle public and school libraries [as bastions of intellectual freedom]…The bill would also potentially kill one of the largest graduate school programs in the state of Louisiana, Louisiana State University’s Masters of Library and Information Science program…[which] is accredited by the ALA…
As an alumna of the LSU MLIS program, I am fully qualified to say that the politicians who are backing this are absolutely bat-shit insane.
Censorship Ascendant (#1424)
Goodness, who could have ever predicted this?
Neo-Nazi and [white nationalist] agitators are [us]ing Scotland’s new hate crime law to make vexatious complaints en masse in an attempt to “overwhelm” police systems…The leader of…one of several fringe organisations being assessed by the UK government under its new extremism definition…promoted…a “call to action” urging members to “mass report”…cases of…“anti-white” hate…“At the very least, we want to overwhelm them with reports to waste their time [so that] they eventually give up the whole system,” they wrote, adding that people could report without using their name and even if they didn’t live in Scotland…
Panopticon (#1427)
The program which first recruited kids as spies and snitches was enabled by useful idiots who swallowed drug-war propaganda:
Starting in 1983, [D.A.R.E.] sent [cops] into classrooms to [indoctrinate] fifth- and sixth-graders [in propaganda] about the dangers of drugs…it…embraced an abstinence-only model in which any use of alcohol or drugs qualified as abuse and the only acceptable tactic was to abstain…At its height, over 75 percent of American schools participated in the program, costing taxpayers as much as $750 million per year. Historian Max Felker-Kantor revisits DARE and its legacy in DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools, a new history of the program…By 1994…studies clearly indicated that [it] had little to no effect on rates of youth drug use…But while DARE didn’t “work” in the sense of keeping many kids from using drugs, Felker-Kantor argues the program was wildly successful at normalizing the presence of police, and the war on drugs,
in people’s everyday lives…
To Molest and Rape (#1427)
Cops should not be allowed anywhere near legal minors:
[A] Maryland [cop named]…Jason Dyott [has been charged with molesting two]…high school…girl[s after grooming them via the internet and intimidating them with his being a cop, then molesting them]…inside his p[igmobile]…
This one apparently took advantage of a runaway:
A [typical and representative]…Kansas [cop named]…Michael Tennyson…was [arrested on March 29th [for raping]…a 15-year-old female runaway who had been missing since March 22…Tennyson…[had apparently been allowing her to hide out at his] residence…
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Busybody control freaks…don’t give a damn about women’s dignity, but are happy to use it as an excuse for oppression.
