Tag: law

Checkmate, Putin

The ICC has issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin.

The Pre-trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants on Friday for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the presidential commissioner for children’s rights. The ICC alleged that Putin and Lvova-Belova engaged in the “unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

This is a perfect example of how Clown World’s inability to understand the difference between influence and power is leading directly to its destruction. Unless, of course, we’re entirely wrong about this. In which case, it’s terrible to think of how many lives could have been spared if only a judge had issued a warrant for the arrest of Adolf Hitler.

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You Had One Job

And you didn’t do it. Ursule K. Le Guin’s son and literary executor explains why he is revising her work in order to bring it more in line with modern social justice sensibilities:

My job is to bring my mother’s work to new generations of readers, not to revise it. People who adore a book are often eager to transform it, through screen adaptation, fan fiction or critical reinterpretation. Sometimes this works well; often it doesn’t. I tend to start from the position that Ursula’s words are sacred, so my initial reaction to the editor’s request was that of a strict constructivist.

After deep breaths, and with Ursula’s own revisionism in mind, I contacted a disability rights attorney, a youth literature consultant, a racial educator, and some kids. My advisory group leaned toward change but was not in consensus. I genuinely didn’t know what my mother would have decided. But she left me a clue: a note over her desk asking, “Is it true? Is it necessary or at least useful? Is it compassionate or at least unharmful?”

I like to think that truth and compassion are immutable even as the language we use to express them changes. But cultural constructs of harm are mutable; we frequently revise our definition of what’s harmful to whom, how it is spoken of, and who gets to do the speaking. My mother’s note tipped me toward changing her words. I found substitutes that would retain the original meaning and cadence, and stipulated to the publisher that the new editions would note that the text had been revised.

Criticism of changes to Dahl’s books can just as well be leveled at my own decision. Closest to my anxiety is the reaction of Susanne Nossel, of PEN America, who counsels us to “consider how the power to rewrite books might be used in the hands of those who do not share their values and sensibilities.” Although this haunts me, people who don’t share my sensibilities about artistic freedom seem to prefer to ban or burn books, usually without having read them.

In other words, literature must be defaced in order to make it acceptable to the lowest-common denominator, thereby turning books, which preserve human knowledge, into a form of ephemeral entertainment akin to television.

We really do need to see about getting that Castalia History subscription going before it’s too late.

This is why successful authors are well-advised to formally place their work into the public domain rather than trust their children, and especially, their grandchildren, to be faithful to their work and to protect their historical words. With the exception of a few loyal souls like Christopher Tolkien, most literary heirs are far more concerned with how their predecessor’s works are perceived by their friends and acquaintances than they are with doing their one job of preserving the family literary legacy.

I’ve personally witnessed this myself, where the literary heirs would rather see their predecessor’s work continue vanishing unread into history than risk embarrassing them with a revival of its historical appeal.

This is another reason why current copyright law is downright evil; it tends to destroy an author’s legacy rather than preserve it. Life of the author is a sufficient period for copyright, with an additional 10-year period to benefit the heirs and provide a foundation for providing a literary legacy for those heirs genuinely interested in doing so.

And it is, of course, amusing that he attempts to justify his decision to modify his mother’s works by appealing to the belief that others won’t take similar liberties. But once one accepts the principle that texts can be deemed unacceptable to the public in their original state, one has already justified their burning. And it’s just a matter of time before someone who doesn’t approve of that work for one reason or another comes to power.

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The Persecution of Ricky Vaughn

The US federal government is shattering the Constitution and inadvertently revealing the existence of the surveillance state in its persecution of a memelord.

Last month, Revolver profiled the Biden Administration’s persecution of former Twitter anon Doug Mackey, who was a famous pro-Trump voice back in 2016 under the moniker of Ricky Vaughn…

In its latest filings, the DOJ reveals that one of the group chats it is currently using as evidence against Mackey contained a person who is now working with the FBI as a federal informant. According to the government, the “Confidential Witness” (or CW) was a pro-Trump, “alt right” leader who pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy to deprive civil rights charges that Mackey faces, and is now collaborating with the government.

In its filings, the government declines to say what CW’s current role with the government is, except that he is “presently engaged in proactive investigations, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and may engage in additional investigations in the future.” Based on that statement, the government is asking that CW’s identity be kept secret, and that Mackey’s defense team be barred from asking any questions about CW’s current work.

This is a much bolder request than it might seem to the legally uninitiated. The Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees the right of any criminal defendant to “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” Like most constitutional rights, this law is not absolute, but limitations to it have historically been very limited. Courts have long disallowed anonymous witnesses due to the Sixth Amendment, except in extreme circumstances involving violent, organized criminal organizations with the capacity to retaliate against witnesses and their families. And even then, courts have restricted the right to testify anonymously. For instance, in 2014, the U.S. 10th Circuit said this, about the possible danger of retaliation from the ruthless Salvadoran street gang MS-13.

“…a generalized statement about danger — such as anyone who testifies against one of [MS 13’s] members faces danger from [MS-13] — would be insufficient to show that a threat against a witness was actual and not a result of conjecture.” [United States v. Gutierrez de Lopez, 761 F.3d 1123, 1140 (10th Cir. 2014)]

But now, in the Mackey case, the Biden DOJ asserts that its witness’s identity must be hidden, because if not, he might face, wait for it… harassment on the Internet!

CW through the CW’s internet moniker(s) occupied a prominent position within the online, alt-right community. In that capacity, the CW participated in, among other things, the online harassment of individuals with whom the CW maintained political disagreements, including by encouraging the CW’s followers on Twitter and other social media to amplify the harassment. In this case, the government anticipates that the CW will provide inculpatory evidence against the defendant and other individuals who, like the CW, had engaged in such harassing behavior. As such, the government anticipates that, if the CW’s true identity were to become known, then those with whom the CW associated online would likely engage in such behavior towards the CW. Revealing the CW’s true identity would also likely lead to the public exposure of the CW’s physical whereabouts. This could in turn subject the CW to more than simply online harassment and could very easily jeopardize the CW’s safety.

Mackey has never been convicted or even accused of a single violent crime, or of threatening violence online. There is no evidence at all of any kind of organized or predictable effort by the online “alt right” to physically target witnesses. Yet now, the government claims that Mackey’s Sixth Amendment rights can be nullified because of the vague possibility a witness against him might face “harassing behavior.”

This particular federal informant is widely rumored to be none other than “Baked Alaska”. But that’s not what is interesting, at least to me. What I believe to be more significant is this observation from AC:

Notice, Ricky had an informant before he had any hint of anything prosecutors might try to charge him with, going on around him. He was just a a squeaky clean, preppy guy, posting funny memes on Twitter. With an informant sent in. Which means an FBI/intelligence agent assigned to him.

So one guy posting on Twitter had an informant sent in and an intelligence operation dedicated to him on nothing more than the basis of his rhetorically-effective memes. What this means is that literally everyone with more than 200+ followers on any social media platform is being targeted, tracked, and infiltrated.

Given my family background and my national press syndication dating back to 1994, I’ve been aware of being on the radar for at least three decades, if not four. It comes with the territory and it’s understandable; no society will tolerate its iconoclastic outliers going too far astray. But it is nevertheless a little startling to see confirmation that the surveillance state in the USA is at least as prevalent and comprehensive as it was in East Germany during the Soviet years.

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Hence the Library II

You don’t even own your own ebooks anymore.

Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race.

This is one of the strongest arguments against copyright that I can imagine. What prevents Amazon or any other entity with access to your files from completely changing what was previously a copyright-protected text?

And how can the same copyright protect two entirely different texts?

It’s also why we’re providing the ebooks to those who buy our print editions from the direct store.

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She Has to Go Back

Nimrata Randhawa aka “Nikki Haley” doesn’t even understand the laws of the United States of America well enough to realize that she is not eligible for the office of President for which she is presently running, not being a “natural born citizen”.

Ann Coulter’s comments are not only sensible, they are characteristically biting.

“Why don’t you go back to your own country?” Coulter said. “Her candidacy did remind me that I need to immigrate to India so I can demand they start taking down parts of their history,” she said. “What’s with the worshipping of the cows? They’re all starving over there. Did you know they have a rat temple, where they worship rats?”

Coulter also called Haley a “bimbo” and a “preposterous creature,” criticizing her for having advocated removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse in the wake of the 2015 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.

“This is my country, lady,” she said. “I’m not an American Indian, and I don’t like them taking down all the monuments.”

Coulter is absolutely right. I am an American Indian and I don’t like invasive species like homo punjabiens taking down American monuments either. The speed with which the invaders have already managed to seize leadership over international corporations and national governments alike, much to the detriment of the native populations of the USA, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, is remarkable, thereby testifying once more to the short-sighted foolishness of empire.

Empire is the decision to enrich yourself at the expense of foreigners who will rule over your great-grandchildren. Consider the case of Great Britain. The British Raj was established on August 2, 1858, when the British Parliament passed the Government of India Act that formally transferred British power over India from the East India company to the crown. On October 25, 2022, the Punjabi Brahmin Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Being an American Indian, I tend to recognize the obvious and intrinsic danger of mass immigration rather better than Americans or Europeans do, as the majority of them still genuinely believe that so long as the invader isn’t armed and wearing a uniform, he isn’t an invader. They haven’t had their land formally seized by their foreign rulers and been forced onto reservations, not yet. Americans and Europeans are still in the “retreat and hope they go away” phase.

Guess what? They never go away. Occupying armies go away. Mass immigrants don’t, not voluntarily.

Contrary to the historically ignorant popular opinion, military invasion is actually far less destructive to a nation than a mass immigration. Paris was invaded and occupied by German soldiers, and it remained Paris. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam were all invaded and occupied by US soldiers and they are still Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.

But Detroit was mass-immigrated by Africans and it is no longer Detroit except in name. Palestine was mass-immigrated by Jews and it is no longer even Palestine by name. If the current trends continue, by the year 2100 Australia will be Chinese and Sweden will be the first Arab country on the Baltic Sea.

History suggests these trends will not continue. I anticipate that Reconquista 2.0 will take place in the aftermath of WWIII, once Clown World has been defeated and the immorality of multiculturalism and mass immigration is correctly blamed for the horrors of the war.

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I Didn’t Even Have to Ask

There is an old saying, attributed somewhat dubiously to Voltaire: “I prayed the Lord to make my enemies ridiculous, and He answered my prayer.”

I can’t claim any credit here, and I very much doubt any divine intervention was required, as the SFWA has not only managed to make itself ridiculous again, but is now demonstrating that there is no reason for it to even exist anymore.

If you’ve read my body of work here at Upstream over the past year or so, you know I’m not a big fan of the SFWA. From their long and sordid history of hagiographic treatment of serial child molesters to cancelling their own honorees to getting vast amounts of member data leaked, it’s safe to say that SFWA as an organization has entered the “skinsuiting” phase of their existence; a once-valuable entity that had meaning, now merely doing whatever it can to rake in cash on little more than its former notoriety.

If that sounds too harsh, allow me to present what came to mind after I had a chance to pore over their recently released tax returns for 2021. That year’s filings have been of particular interest, given that 2021 saw a highly profiled but spectacularly failed lawsuit.

The “LOLsuit”, as it became known in certain corners of the internet, was the effort of member author Patrick Tomlinson to subpoena Cloudflare into revealing the identities of the users on an Opie and Anthony fan forum that had taken to trolling him. It’s been highly speculated since that Tomlinson received help from SFWA’s Legal Fund for the effort. Many who had taken a look at our previous article on SFWA’s filings from prior years were anxious to see if barely-an-author’s escapades would be reflected in 2021’s long-awaited filings.

Welp, wouldn’t you know it, their legal expenses nearly quintupled compared to 2020 (that year’s filings can be found here):

LEGAL EXPENSES 2020: 17,533

LEGAL EXPENSES 2021: 83,750

Which, naturally, leads me to wonder if 2023 is the year I should consider filing that lawsuit to force the organization to publicly acknowledge that I am still a member. The Legal Legion certainly has a much better record in the California courts than SFWA’s legal team.

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On the Nonexistence of Equality

As I have pointed out again and again, equality is a complete myth. It flat out does not exist, and has never existed, in any capacity whatsoever. And once more, those who purport to believe in the myth underline my observations.

UFC President Dana White should be held accountable for slapping his wife.

Okay, fair enough. It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but domestic abuse should not go unpunished, particularly in the case of public figures caught physically attacking other individuals in public.

White, who is UFC president, was captured on video slapping his wife during a New Year’s Eve party on vacation in Mexico. TMZ released a clip of the incident Monday, and it shows White’s wife, Anne White, slapping him across the face and Dana quickly responding by slapping his wife in the face.

Wait, what? The guy was attacked by his wife, he defended himself by responding in kind without escalating the situation, and therefore he “should be held accountable”. For what, precisely? And shouldn’t Anne White be held accountable for initiating the use of violence as well as her physical abuse of her husband?

The only reasonable conclusion one can reach here is that a) equality is nonexistent and b) the sports media is completely retarded.

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You Can Legislate Morality

Another foundation of libertarian philosophy is destroyed, as the response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in Texas conclusively demonstrates:

Recently released data shows that abortions committed in the state of Texas have decreased by 97 percent since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Based on data reported by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, 68 total abortions were committed in the month of July in Texas compared to the 2,533 babies who were killed in January.

Although the number of abortions reached slightly more than 3,000 during the months of March and April, the statistics show that numbers steadily decreased beginning in May. There were 2,596 fewer abortions committed in July than there were in June.

Of the women who sought abortions between January and July, less than 100 were married. Sixty of the 68 unborn babies who were killed in July were the children of unmarried women.

Most of the abortions committed during these seven months ended the lives of babies at up to eight weeks’ gestation. Two were committed on babies at 9-10 weeks gestation, one at 11-12 weeks, two at 13-14 weeks, four at 15-16 weeks, and five at 17-20 weeks. No babies were killed past 21 weeks.

It’s not only morality that can be legislated, but sanity as well, as we’re seeing with the gender-denial nonsense. We’re learning – or really, re-learning with the support of statistical and scientific evidence – that most, if not all, of the Enlightenment theories are entirely false. From economics to science, what worked beautifully as rhetorical hypotheses for hundreds of years are turning out to be comprehensive failures when put into practice.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things… The fact that a chaotic and ill-educated time cannot clearly grasp that truth does not alter the fact that it always will be the truth. Our generation, in a dirty, pessimistic period, has blasphemously underrated the beauty of life and cravenly overrated its dangers. As for our own society, if it proceeds at its present rate of progress and improvement, no trace or memory of it will be left at all.

G.K. Chesterton

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“Private” Companies

The self-appointed defenders of capitalism very much want you to ignore the fact that every single corporation is a government creation. And as such, not only should they not enjoy the Constitutional protections of the rights possessed by individuals who are posterity of the Founders, they should be subject to the same limits that are imposed on the government.

The necessity of this reinterpretation of what is, and what is not, private, is demonstrated by the latest Twitter documents released by Elon Musk.

All social media platforms work with the US government to censor content, Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday. Documents released by Musk following his purchase of Twitter showed that the platform colluded with the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other government agencies to suppress information on elections, Ukraine, and Covid-19.

“Every social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government,” Musk tweeted, adding that “Google frequently makes links disappear, for example.”

Musk was referring to internal Twitter communications published by journalist Matt Taibbi with his approval, which suggested that the platform’s senior executives held regular meetings with members of the FBI and CIA, during which the agencies gave them lists of “hundreds of problem accounts” to suspend in the run-up to the 2020 election.

In addition to Twitter, the government was in contact “with virtually every major tech firm,” Taibbi claimed. “These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest.” CIA agents “nearly always” sat in on meetings of these firms with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, Taibbi claimed, explaining that although this task force was convened to fight alleged election interference by foreign states, it made “mountains of domestic moderation requests.”

This is a massive series of constitutional and criminal violations. If, as we expect, it goes entirely unpunished, it will serve as further confirmation of the complete illegitimacy of the current U.S. regime.

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Yes, the Deck is Stacked

It’s not an excuse to sit around and do nothing. But never waste any time whatsoever attempting to imitate or replicate what the apparently successful do, and definitely don’t listen to anything they say. It’s all extraordinarily manufactured, fake, and gay:

FTX FILLED ITS BANKRUPTCY FILLING TODAY

IT IS EVEN WORSE THAN ANYONE IMAGINED

AN OVERVIEW:

1) FTX LENT SAM BANKMAN OVER $1 BILLION DOLLARS FOR PERSONAL USE

2) FTX USED CUSTOMER FUNDS TO BUY HOUSES FOR EMPLOYEES

3) FTX DIDNT HAVE A LIST OF EMPLOYESS AND WHAT ALL THEY DID

4) FTX DID NOT KEEP ANY BOOKS OR RECORDS OF ITS DIGITAL ASSETS

5) ALAMEDA RESEARCH WAS EXEMPTED FROM AUTO LIQUIDATION ON FTX

6) FTX BUILT A SOFTWARE TO HIDE THE MISUSE OF CUSTOMER FUNDS

7) FTX HAD $400 MILLION IN UNAUTHORIZED TRANSFERS THE DAY THEY FILED FOR BANKRUPTCY

8) FTX HAD BILLIONS IN INVESTMENTS OTHER THAN CRYPTO BUT THERE ARE NO BOOKS OR RECORDS OF ANY OF IT.

9) SAM BANKMAN MADE ALL BUSINESS DECISIONS ON APPS THAT AUTO DELETED EVERYTHING AFTER SOME TIME

HE ENCOURAGED ALL EMPLOYEES TO DO THE SAME

The thing is, Bankman-Fried absolutely would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t all come crashing down. And he still hasn’t been arrested. He may never be arrested or held accountable for his copious crimes. It’s increasingly observable that the financial elite in the USA isn’t actually an elite of any sort whatsoever, it’s just a small group of highly connected people who are permitted to shamelessly break the laws and profit by doing so.

I would be willing to bet that the “young genius” has a lower IQ than at least 15 percent of the regular readership here. Because “success” of the sort that comes with fawning media attention is almost entirely manufactured.

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