“The Normal State Of Business”

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

Snowden uses the phrase, “the normal state of business.” It’s not in the text, it’s in the video at the above link.

And now this …

D-Day Was For Nothing

June 6th, 1941 — sixty-nine years ago today — the Allied Expeditionary Force crossed the English Channel to liberate a conquered and enslaved Europe from under the heel of the Nazi boot.

They needn’t have bothered.

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

NSA taps in to internet giants’ systems to mine user data, secret files reveal

Seriously: MYOFB

Family’s Home Raided over Facebook Photo of Child’s Rifle

New Jersey police and Dept. of Children and Families officials raided the home of a firearms instructor and demanded to see his guns after he posted a Facebook photo of his 11-year-old son holding a rifle.

“Someone called family services about the photo,” said Evan Nappen, an attorney representing Shawn Moore. “It led to an incredible, heavy-handed raid on his house. They wanted to see his gun safe, his guns and search his house. They even threatened to take his kids.”

Don’t you have better things — any damn thing — to do with your life than to stick your nose into someone else’s life?

You can question the judgment of the guy for posting such a photo, but some exchange of emails could have led to some public clarification on his post that could have prevented the Iron Fist of the State from barging into his life.

Quote Of The Day

iPad Hack Statement Of Responsibility

The beast is so monstrous it will devour us all. None will be spared.

Occupy Wall Street: Live Arrest

Screensnap of arrest live from @Timcast‘s Ustream.

Some people have been singled out specifically by the NYPD for arrest.

They’ve been building dossiers about Occupy.

Has anyone in Occupy been doing the same about NYPD?

For prior posts:

Protest category

NYPD To Set Up Occupy Wall Street Checkpoints

Via Twitter from @YourAnonNews (click to enlarge):

Original link

I still don’t know if I will be in lower Manhattan on the 17th.

But the NYPD can go to hell if they think they’re turning that area into something out of Nazi Germany and expect me to show papers!

For prior posts:

Protest category

It’s The Fourth Of July. England Doesn’t Own Us. Neither Do YOU!

US Marshalls told me to delete this photo of them. I said "no" http://t.co/klxGkhC2—
Tim Pool (@Timcast) July 04, 2012

Reposting that is my bit of patriotic defiance.

Happy Fourth of July.

Now go clean your guns and inventory your ammo.

It Burns Books For Fuel

First Look: New High-Tech NYPD Helicopter Takes The Fight To The Terrorists

The helicopter, a Bell 412EP, was funded with federal port security money and can carry up to 10 people, including a pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, NYPD SCUBA divers or Emergency Services Unit officers. It weighs 7,000 pounds, can travel 150 mph and costs $9.8 million, plus it carries another $4 million worth of sensitive equipment.

What’s not being told: How much fuel does that eat every day?

… the counter-terrorism patrol executed several times a day by the NYPD takes them off the beaten path.

While our bastard Mayor slowly strangles the budget of the New York Public Library, the NYPD gets a new toy to play with and children have access to fewer books.

Damn right it burns books for fuel!

What the hell is going to be left to protect in New York City when all of the budget is going to “protecting” it?

American Degeneration

Photo taken today Saturday May 26, 2012. Resized and resampled to VGA, click to enlarge.

Can you believe it?

What’s next? Outlawing hats and sunglasses so the facial recognition cameras of the Police State can database all of us as we pass them on the public streets?

How about requiring licenses for hoodies? You think the Orthodox Jews will like being told to shave off their facial hair for a good clean face-rec shot?

This shit has to stop.

Occupy Wall Street: The Lawsuit, Part Two

In the movie Miracle on 34th Street, there is this classic scene of jurisprudence:

The Judge is buried under a mountain of proof declaring Defendant Kris Kringle is Santa Claus.

I bring up that image as a metaphor of the Federal lawsuit filed by Occupy Wall Street against a variety of State and private Defendants.

If the Judge in this case were to be given every bit of evidence, every bit of proof, of the case against the Defendants — all of the photos, all of the videos, all of the eyewitness accounts, all of the contemporaneous tweets — the Judge would never be able to dig out.

That is how our world has changed due to the Internet.

It is no longer possible for public acts by public — or private — officials to go unnoticed or unpublished.