Tag: law

Putin is unimpressed by US threats

Snowden is granted at least one year of Russian asylum:

The U.S. is “extremely disappointed” in the move by Russia to grant ‘temporary asylum’ to Edward Snowden, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters this morning. Carney appeared to add a threat, as the WSJ reports, he added that the Russian decision undermines law-enforcement cooperation between Moscow and Washington. Russia’s decision also threatens to derail a planned September summit in Moscow between Obama and Putin, as Carney advised “we are evaluating the utility of a summit in light of this.”

These are strange days indeed, when Americans are fleeing abroad and seeking political asylum.  Especially when they’re fleeing to Russia.  In not entirely unrelated news, the international business magazines are finally beginning to figure out that USG’s use of corporate America as NSA spy vehicles is not likely to enhance American Internet technology exports.

Wikileaks: Manning didn’t aid enemy

Bradley Manning has been found not guilty of aiding the enemy.  That’s a bit of a surprise and should help Edward Snowden breathe a little easier.

Manning has been found not guilty of the most serious charge of “aiding
the enemy”. However the private has been found guilty on five counts of
violating the espionage act.

Ignorance of the law

Is no excuse for looking like a moron.  Instapundit wonders what the vibrant ignorati posturing publicly about Florida law will do when they realize that Florida is not the only state in question here:

WHAT WILL THEY DO WHEN THEY FIND OUT THAT CALIFORNIA, MASSACHUSETTS AND PENNSYLVANIA HAVE STAND-YOUR-GROUND LAWS, TOO? Some of the music industry’s biggest acts are joining Stevie Wonder in boycotting Florida over the state’s controversial “stand your ground” law. UPDATE: Illinois has “Stand Your Ground” Too — And Obama Voted For It. Will they boycott White House performances? Dumbasses.

Tomato, tomahto….  Stevie Wonder declares: “I decided today that until the ‘stand your ground’ law is abolished in
Florida, I will never perform there again,” he said. “As a matter of
fact, wherever I find that law exists, I will not perform in that state
or in that part of the world.”

From Wikipedia: “Many states have some form of stand-your-ground law. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.”

Blindness isn’t merely a physical phenomenon. It should be amusing to see how quickly Mr. Wonder backs down once he realizes he just effectively ended his career outside the recording studio.

Mistrial or he walks

“A lot has been made of the fact that there are six women on the Zimmerman jury.  My expectation is that he will be found not guilty, less because he isn’t actually guilty of anything but self-defense, but because there is a Hispanic woman on the jury.  On matters of race, Hispanics not only tend to stick together, but more importantly, tend to be considerably less guiltable, for lack of a better expression, than whites.”

I wrote that last night but didn’t post it because I was intending to write more and didn’t get around to finishing it.  As it happens, the post was overtaken by events, because last night the jury rightly found George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin:

George Zimmerman never denied shooting Trayvon Martin, but he said he did so in self defense. Late Saturday night, a Florida jury found him not guilty in the teenager’s death. The verdict caps a case that has inflamed passions for well over a year, much of it focused on race and gun rights. The six jurors — all of them women — deliberated for 16½ hours. Five of the women are white; one is a minority.

I tend to doubt there will be any massive riots; it’s been pretty clear that the prosecution completely failed to make any coherent case against Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense.  Also, unlike Rodney King, this wasn’t an official cop thing and the black community in America knows very well that it is getting its clock cleaned by the Hispanic community everywhere from Compton to Miami.

This tweet sums it all up: “So a Hispanic shoots a black and is acquitted by women, but it’s still white men’s fault.”

Apple found guilty of ebook price-fixing

Now this is going to cause some SERIOUS tremors throughout the publishing world.

The tech giant’s defeat in a New York court is likely to cost the iPad and
iPhone maker hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The technology giant battled the US Department of Justice in the landmark
case, heard last month in Manhattan, over whether a policy of allowing
publishers to set the price of ebooks broke America’s anti-trust laws.

On Wednesday District Judge Denise Cote, who oversaw the trial, said that
Apple was the ringleader in a conspiracy, which forced the price of ebooks
upwards from the $9.99 Amazon had set as standard to $12.99 and in some
cases $14.99.

“The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants conspired with
each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book
prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing
that conspiracy,” Judge Cote said. “Without Apple’s orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have
succeeded as it did in the spring of 2010,” she added.

The good news is that ebook prices should continue to fall to more economically sensible levels.  And the power of the gatekeepers is going to continue to dwindle as their revenues and profit margins continue to fall in response to the greater competition they are facing from independent publishers and self-publishers.

Another interesting thing is that for contractual reasons I am not at liberty to divulge, the major publishers will not be able to sell books through the in-game retail channel.  This will provide even more incentive for the big game developers to retain their media tie-in rights rather than continuing to license them to publishers unable to sell the books through their games.

President Stasi

Obama sets federal workers to spying on each other:

In an initiative aimed
at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President
Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions
of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are
not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government
documents. The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat
Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions
of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk
persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them
could face penalties, including criminal charges.

Anyone noticing a theme here with this president?  He’s got the government spying on everyone around the globe, he’s got bureaucrats spying on other bureaucrats, he’s got doctors spying on patients, and I suppose it won’t be long before he’ll have kids spying on parents.

Cops aren’t rocket scientists

I find this report of the 2nd Circuit Court decision to be interesting for two  reasons:

A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.”

He said he does not plan to take any further legal action.

Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

Most Cops Just Above Normal The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average.

Jordan alleged his rejection from the police force was discrimination. He sued the city, saying his civil rights were violated because he was denied equal protection under the law.

But the U.S. District Court found that New London had “shown a rational basis for the policy.” In a ruling dated Aug. 23, the 2nd Circuit agreed. The court said the policy might be unwise but was a rational way to reduce job turnover.

1.  Cops only have 104 IQs on average.  Keep this in mind when dealing with them.  It should come as no surprise that so few of them are capable of understanding the abstract Constitutional aspects of their job.  Talk slowly, don’t use any big words, and focus on the practical aspects of the situation that they should be able to follow.

2. If it is legally rational to bar intelligent men from a job to reduce the expense of job turnover, it is legally rational to bar young, fertile women for exactly the same reason.

Rabbit reviews

As we saw with Dr. Helen’s new book, one can always tell when the warren is hopping mad about something, because immediately they start throwing money at charities and “reviewing” books.  Icefog, for one, has been a very busy little rabbit.  It’s really remarkable how many books she managed to read through in just one day!

It would certainly be fascinating to discover this “reviewer” is an SFWA member given Amazon’s review policies.  And it’s interesting to learn that GoodReads is even more prone to fake reviewery.  Of course, as always, I look forward to the usual suspects whining “but how do you KNOW they’re fake reviews?”

A throne of garbage

June 14, 2013

Where to begin? This is tripe by any other name. There’s really no
story, and the language is infantile. When writing this the author must
have worn out his thesaurus, as this wordy little book looks like every
sentence is gleaned from Roget. The dialogue is hopeless, and the
characters laughable. Unless you can find nothing whatsoever to do with
your time, do anything other than waste it on this book.

A waste of $2.99

June 14, 2013

Yes, I know it’s just $2.99, but surely you can find something better to
spend it on. This author, self-avowed racist and mysogynist does not
deserve you money, however paltry the sum.

Author dimentia

June 14, 2013

There is no evidence inthis book that the author is capable of writing a
book, or even successfully pretending to without significant external
support. Perhaps his writing should be taken with at least a small grain
of salt. It is not that I, and others, do view him as human, (although
genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens
sapiens), it is that I do not view him as being fully civilized for the
obvious reason that he is not.

Infantile writing

June 14, 2013

The quality of the writing in this weak attempt at wrting is truly
pathetic. It shows what one man with a thesaurus and an elementary
understanding of the English language can accomplish. Save your time;
save your money. Do anything other than read this trash. 

I post these here in case they are removed by Amazon, because they serve as evidence that NK Jemisin’s false and malicious claims about me have already led to real and material damages.  They also show that SFWA has abetted those claims by permitting her to break Forum confidentiality without reprimanding her in the manner that I, and other members, have previously been reprimanded for doing the same.

In addition to those damages, there is the serious emotional trauma that I have suffered due to the multiple threats of violence being directed against me, in some cases by SFWA members, as a direct result of Ms Jemisin’s breach of confidentiality.  There are even indications that certain parties are concocting an organized plot to physically assault me involving an SF author with highly trained martial arts skills, the threat of which now renders me unable to attend professional conferences and materially harms my ability to secure future book contracts.

“And there is white-hot anger, so fierce you become the eye within the
maelstrom of your own rage, calm as your pulse exceeds the beats of a
marathon runner, calm as your fingers grasp and clench, calm as you grip
your aggressor’s throat and squeeze.  This last I feel for Theodore Beale.”
 – Foz Meadows, June 14, 2013

“You are a better person than I am; I can think of another response to Beale. Because I am incapable of stripping myself of irony, it’s a solution he’d approve, because he is not as fully civilized as I am. I’m sure it would be a lively, if sparsely-attended, wake.”
– Rafe Bronx, June 14, 2013


“Ignoring it hasn’t made it go away, and it never will. That has become undeniably apparent between this and the Sarkeesian
mess in the gaming community, and I have gone past the point of anger to
disbelief to exhaustion to numbness and back to blinding white-hot
rage. Time to put on the shitkicking boots.”
– Samantha, June 14, 2013

“There is
something….spectacularly unpleasant about him. He strikes me as someone
who is just itching for a really thorough arse kicking. I think it would
actual count as a medical intervention and possibly do him a lot of
good.”
– Louis, June 14, 2013

“I also can’t wait for the day when Theo literally gets his ass kicked by
a progressive SF author / martial artist like Matthew Woodring
Stover… just wait”
– Educated Professor, June 14, 2013

“i really would just love to meet up with him and deliver my personal
feelings in a direct and nonverbal way. ugh. the bad taste in my mouth,
make it go away.”
– Mark Monday, June 13, 2013 

The very troubling thing here is that SFWA has a history of turning a blind eye to threats of violence made by its members.  Just to give two of several examples, it took no action of any kind even though I complained to the SFWA Board about the following threats, one made by one of the organization’s own board members, the other made on the SFWA President’s own blog.  I cannot post more due to the forum confidentiality rules.

“Ah, yes. Mr. Beale. When I decided to run for re-election as SFWA
South-Central Regional Director, someone asked me what I would do if Mr.
Beale won the Presidential election. I replied, “Ask my friends to
start a bail fund.”
– Lee Martindale, SFWA South-Central Regional Director, February 1, 2013

“Whever I think “alpha male”… my daydream quickly becomes a Sweeney Todd
nightmare in which I’m serving the remains to my dinner guests,
disguised as some sort of heavy-seasoned stew beneath puff pastry,
because I wound up killing said Alpha Male in sheer exasperation before
sundown and need to get rid of the body….”
– Laura Resnick, SFWA member, August 17, 2012

The beauty of unintended consequences

This is a lovely variant of a technique I once used in disputing a bill with an energy company.  Hey, if they record all the calls, then the information clearly exists and they have to provide it upon request, right?

Terrance Brown, 40, is on trial in South Florida for allegedly conspiring with four other men to hijack armored trucks delivering cash to banks in 2010. All have pleaded not guilty. But now Brown has come up with a unique defense: he wants the National Security Agency to turn over his phone records to the court to demonstrate his innocence.

The case, which is taking place in federal court, involves phone records – the FBI and prosecutors have been using cellphone records to demonstrate the men’s locations near the robbery attempts. The prosecution said that it was unable to get cellphone records from the time before September 2010 because the phone carrier had destroyed the records.

It will be interesting to see how the NSA tries to get out of producing the data it is so diligently acquiring.

Better there than the US “justice” system

Edward Snowdon makes it clear that he doesn’t trust the U.S. courts.  Nor should he.  Nor, for that matter, should you:

Edward Snowden says he wants to ask the people of Hong Kong to decide his fate after choosing the city because of his faith in its rule of law. The 29-year-old former CIA employee behind what might be the biggest intelligence leak in US history revealed his identity to the world in Hong Kong on Sunday. His decision to use a city under Chinese sovereignty as his haven has been widely questioned – including by some rights activists in Hong Kong.

Snowden said last night that he had no doubts about his choice of Hong Kong.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” Snowden said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post.

“I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law,” he added.

His decision makes a tremendous amount of sense in light of the various travesties committed on a regular basis by the US courts.  Moreover, China is one of the very few countries that are not inclined to be cowed by US threats.