Category: Politics

ICE protest surveillance

On By Paul HubbardIn Law enforcement, Politics, Radio, recommendationsLeave a comment

As I have written about before, taking your phone to a protest is 100% going to get you written into various government data stores. This story today confirms that ICE is using Stingrays.

So. As explained in Domestic surveillance and police riots, you can get a cheap Android device to communicate and photograph; since then there’s a new EFF project called Rayhunter that I’d also highly recommend. It’s inexpensive and quite simple:

  1. Go to Amazon and spend 31 bucks on an Orbic LTE router.
  2. Go to the Github page and get the Rayhunter firmware for it
  3. Install it
  4. Take the Rayhunter with you – even without connecting it to a computer, it will display if it detects a Stingray or other cell-site simulator.
  5. Consider a donation to the EFF for work like this.

A picture, just to show what it looks like. There are other supported devices and many places to buy them; this was easiest at the time.

P.S. – on Mac, you may need to run this to remove the app-signing error:

xattr -c installer

Status games

On By Paul HubbardIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Mother Jones today has an excellent story on Arlie Russell Hochschild’s book “Stolen Pride.” This quote in particular:

“We live in both a material economy and a pride economy, and while we pay close attention to shifts in the material economy, we often neglect or underestimate the importance of the pride economy. Just as the fortunes of Appalachian Kentucky have risen and fallen with the fate of coal, so has its standing in the pride economy…https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/jd-vance-arlie-russell-hochschild-hillbilly-elegy-stolen-pride-excerpt/

So close! What’s she’s describing is status. Rank in the community, real or perceived. Will Storr wrote an excellent book about it, “The Status Game” that I highly recommend. (My local library had it.)

The MJ story is excellent and well worth your time. The Storr book is longer; this review might help you decide if you’d find it worthwhile.

Worth a read: 99 problems

On By Paul HubbardIn essays, Law, Law enforcement, PoliticsLeave a comment

Ever wondered about your rights? Can, for example, you say no when the police ask to search your car?

Caleb Mason is here to help. (PDF)

This is a line-by-line analysis of the second verse of 99 Problems by Jay-Z, from the perspective of a criminal procedure professor. It’s intended as a resource for law students and teachers, and for anyone who’s interested in what pop culture gets right about criminal justice, and what it gets wrong.

http://pdf.textfiles.com/academics/lj56-2_mason_article.pdf

The song is often known for it’s crude language. I had avoided it, but according to Jay-Z and this article, it’s a reference to a K-9 search dog, not a woman or women. Also, you can’t refuse to exit the car, a locked trunk doesn’t require a warrant, and my home state is 2-party-recording consent.

Well worth a read. I’m no lawyer, but this was entertaining and informative.

Was the past better or worse than the present? – Lawyers, Guns & Money

On By Paul HubbardIn Politics, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The reactionary world view is based fundamentally on the idea that the past was much better than the present, because people were happier. And why were they happier? Because they knew their place in an unquestioned and unquestionable social hierarchy that gave their lives meaning and structure, and that specific kind of happiness is much more valuable than the shallower kind of happiness provided by general anesthesia and plentiful food and central air conditioning and the Internet and what have you.

That’s what every reactionary believes in his bones. That’s what fuels contemporary American fascism and contemporary American evangelical Christianity and right wing Catholicism (but I repeat myself).
— Read on www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/06/was-the-past-better-or-worse-than-the-present

Three grim notes

On By Paul HubbardIn Covid-19, PoliticsLeave a comment

But ultimately, some unknown percentage of those 80 million still unvaccinated will dig in and continue refusing vaccinations, even if they have to risk unemployment and other penalties. Some surveys indicate that the defiance is deep-seated, so we should expect a sizable number of marginalized, unvaccinated, unemployed, and profoundly angry Americans. These are the groups who might gravitate to leading or taking part in political violence, as we got a taste of with anti-lockdown protests last year.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-latest-covid-surge-is-just-the-start-of-a-new-nightmare?source=us-news&via=rss

But why would they do that? Let’s turn the microphone to LGM:

The whole key to understanding the anti-vax pro-horse dewormer mentality is that it’s not just this one thing for these people. Admitting that they’ve been wrong about this isn’t like admitting you were wrong about thinking that Willie Mays hit 700 home runs or that Detroit is the capital of Michigan. To admit you were wrong about this thing in particular would be to pull on a thread that could unravel your entire social and political identity. For those in the right wing bubble/base, admitting error on this point basically requires a literal conversion experience. It would be like a former Christian fundamentalist coming to the view that the Bible isn’t actually the inerrant word of God. In other words, that’s not just some random fact, but THE fact, that holds every other part of the person’s world view together.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/09/the-herman-cain-freedom-award

One last, less grim but much more difficult question: How much risk are we willing, as a people, to accept? Who bears that risk?

Will Americans accept the deaths of tens of thousands of people, as they do with the flu, if it means life returning to normal? Can the public tolerate an even higher death toll — akin to the drug overdose crisis, which killed an estimated 94,000 people in 2020 — if that’s what it takes to truly end social distancing and other precautions?

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22651046/covid-19-delta-vaccines-social-distancing-masking-lockdowns

I highly recommend all three essays. I’ve had them swirling around in my head for a few days now.

A nice bit of psychological insight into vaccine and mask resistance

On By Paul HubbardIn essays, PoliticsLeave a comment

Via the reliably-excellent ‘No more mister nice blog’:

If conservatives can’t be protected without being bound, they’d rather not be protected at all.

Steve M

That is, of course, his corollary to Wilhoit’s definition of conservatism:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Frank Wilhoit

Read the whole thing. It’s excellent.

Immigration Enforcement and the Afterlife of the Slave Ship | Boston Review

On By Paul HubbardIn essays, Politics, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Immigration Enforcement and the Afterlife of the Slave Ship from Boston Review. Coast Guard techniques for blocking Haitian asylum seekers have their roots in the slave trade. Understanding these connections can help us disentangle immigration policy from white nationalism.
— Read on bostonreview.net/race/ryan-fontanilla-immigration-enforcement-and-afterlife-slave-ship

Damn. I had literally no idea.

Eschaton: What Will We Call The New Tea Party

On By Paul HubbardIn PoliticsLeave a comment

It was a neat trick that for 4 years ‘Trump supporters’ were somehow distinct from ‘Republicans,’ and now we will inevitably have some other exciting new political movement that isn’t precisely associated with either of them, but they love America and freedom and are skeptical of Democrats but could be persuaded (but never are).
They will be the protagonists of our politics story, as they always are. Angry, racist, relatively affluent white people who are covered obsessively by our political press who somehow never manage to convey who they actually are, who is funding them, and what they actually want
— Read on www.eschatonblog.com/2021/01/what-will-we-call-new-tea-party.html

A good kickoff for the presidential transition.