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Month: September 2012

Thursday links

Technological crime-solving marvel! Police cameras save us from the dreaded threat of … erm … cannabis residue on some guy’s teeth. (H/T JG) Seven myths about the police. (Civil-liberties left perspective, some f-bomb, good article.) “Did the great financial crisis start with the end of the gold standard?” Uh, yeah. Maybe it’s not what some of us would call simplifying. But for those still in the little rat-wheel it’s a fine start. (Tip o’ hat to Jim Bovard) Ah, it was nice, being an official part of “the lunatic fringe of the libertarian movement.” (One correction, though. Loompanics didn’t go…

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Dog dilemma

One of my dogs … the beautiful Nadja … … is, to put it nakedly, mad as a hatter. Always has been. She came to me as a foster seven years ago. She was probably about a year old then, and in her short life she’d already had a litter of puppies, been in an accident that damaged a leg, and finally been abandoned in her backyard when her family moved away. (A neighbor noticed after she’d been untended for a week.) The first day I had her she busted out of a crate and tried to chew her way…

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How persistent the taboos …

Mindset. So important. So nebulous. So full of surprises. I’m working on illustrations today that use a portion of a dollar bill as a frame (e.g. where George’s stuffy head usually is, someone else’s will be). Easiest way to begin was to take a big .jpg of a George, erase parts and alter parts. Later I’ll add my own drawings on top. The whole time I was messing with the file, my reactive monkey-brain was shouting, “No! No! You can’t deface currency!” Or alternatively: “You can’t depict a dollar bill! They’ll think you’re counterfeiting!” Total nonsense, of course. But a…

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“The Throwaways”

The New Yorker excoriates cops in a long (must read) article about how they treat their snitches. The title says it all: “The Throwaways.” Informants are the foot soldiers in the government’s war on drugs. By some estimates, up to eighty per cent of all drug cases in America involve them, often in active roles like [dead young snitch, Rachel] Hoffman’s. For police departments facing budget woes, untrained C.I.s provide an inexpensive way to outsource the work of undercover officers. “The system makes it cheap and easy to use informants, as opposed to other, less risky but more cumbersome approaches,”…

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Monday links

There are so many dogs being shot by cops that they now have a Facebook page. (H/T MLS) But this about takes the cake for puppycides. Gun-rights advocates outbid cops in a gun buyback. Joel already covered this better than I, but you’ll be glad shocked furious to know the ATF has been granted one more power to abuse. They can now steal your stuff in drug crimes. The ATF? Drug crimes? But you see, it’s okay, because as usual in these cases, there don’t actually have to be any drugs or any crimes. So it’s not like they’re exceeding…

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The mind of an enforcer

I’ve been saving this for a weekend because it’s long. But if you want to know the mindset of a government enforcer or occupier, it’s important: “The Checkpoint.” This piece happens to explore the thinking of Israeli Defense Forces manning a checkpoint to control Palestinians. But … well, it goes way beyond that as you’ll see. These are people we increasingly meet in Police State America. (H/T JG)

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