Above the law

This is a little thought exercise. Imagine that American Atheists had $57 million in their bank accounts (I know, I already broke your brain, but try. This is entirely imaginary and disconnected from reality.) Now imagine that we learned that American Atheists had been carrying out some criminal activity for the past decade…say, scamming little old ladies out of their pensions, or sending out roaming teams of atheist thugs to beat up children and steal their lunch money (wait, now you’re having an easier time imagining that? Stop reading this blog, Christian.)

Then, they’re caught. Documents are uncovered that show long-term official support for these unethical behaviors. Retribution is to be delivered: the courts are about to enforce penalties, forcing American Atheists to give the money back to the little old ladies and children. Dave Silverman cunningly transfers all $57 million out of their bank accounts and into a new account labeled “Widows, orphans, and kitten trust fund” and declares that the money is no longer an American Atheist asset and therefore is not subject to any kind of seizure or penalty.

Now that you’re holding that improbable train of events in your head, ask yourself, “Would the courts buy it?” You can also ask yourself, “What would the public think of American Atheists and Dave Silverman?”

You would hope that the courts wouldn’t fall for such a transparent ploy, and you’d expect that the whole country would revile the organization.

You’ll be relieved to know that no, American Atheists has not perpetrated such a dastardly move (and, unfortunately, their pockets are not jingling with $57 million, ill-gotten or not). But guess who has?

Replace “American Atheists” with “the Catholic Church” up there, and substitute Cardinal Timothy Dolan for Dave Silverman. Are you surprised that the courts fell all over themselves to exempt the Catholic church from punishment?

A federal judge in Wisconsin handed down an opinion yesterday granting the Catholic Church — and indeed, potentially all religious institutions — such sweeping immunity from federal bankruptcy law that it is not clear that it would permit any plaintiff to successfully sue any church in any court. While the ostensible issue in this case is whether over $50 million in church funds are shielded from a bankruptcy proceeding triggered largely by a flood of clerical sex abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Judge Rudolph Randa reads the church’s constitutional and legal right to religious liberty so broadly as to render religious institutions immune from much of the law.

The case involves approximately $57 million that former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan transferred from the archdiocese’s general accounts to into a separate trust set up to maintain the church’s cemeteries. Although Dolan, who is now a cardinal, the Archbishop of New York and the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has denied that the purpose of this transfer was to shield the funds from lawsuits, Dolan penned a letter to the Vatican in 2007 where he explained that transferring the funds into the trust would lead to “an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”

That loud grunt you heard a couple of days ago was every skeevy televangelist, every child-diddling priest, and the entire hierarchy of the Catholic church having a simultaneous orgasm. Crime does pay if you’ve got a religious excuse.

One bit of hope:

Judge Randa, a George H.W. Bush appointee, has a history of being reversed by higher courts in cases involving hot button social issues, so there is a good chance that his opinion will ultimately be reversed on appeal. In the meantime, however, Randa effectively places the church above the law — and leaves what could be hundreds of sexual abuse victims in the cold.

Mmmm, pesticide cut with baking powder, yum!

Matt Cahill is pretty much unqualified to do anything.

Cahill said he had been pursuing a program in exercise physiology, but when questioned by attorneys he couldn’t remember taking any courses in chemistry or pharmacology. He never received any degree. Before the accident, his job experience after high school involved working as a condominium lifeguard and at an ice rink.

But, he said,

“I had a scientific background in school, I just don’t have a degree.”

That’s all it takes to be a hack who markets supplements…supplements that cause liver damage, blindness, or kill. As it turns out, all those companies selling magic pills have a loophole: call it a dietary supplement, and the federal inspectors are mostly incapable of doing anything about it, short of the pill actually killing people with cyanide or something obvious.

But Matt Cahill can cut insecticide with baking powder and sell it as a “weight loss supplement”. It actualy works — low grade poisoning will tend to make you shed pounds. His pills killed a young woman, a crime for which he served a two year sentence, and as soon as he got out he was packaging marginal chemicals as “herbal supplements” for body builders and raking in $30,000/month.

a href=’http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/25/bodybuilding-supplement-designer-matt-cahill-usa-today-investigation/2568815/’>Read the whole disgraceful story (warning: autoplay video at link!).

The racialization of danger

Tim Wise reposts an essay from 15 years ago; it’s remarkable for how nothing has changed since. It’s about this peculiar asymmetry in which, when a black person commits a crime, most people are quick to generalize the behavior to their race; when a when a white person commits a crime, blame falls on the individual. I thought it was enlightening to see the litany of crimes primarily committed by white people.

It’s amazing how many crazy whites there are, none of whom feel the wrath of the racial pathology police as a result of their depravity. Killing parents is among our specialties. So in 1994, a white guy in New York killed his mom for serving the wrong pizza; last year, a white kid in Alabama killed his parents with an axe and sledgehammer; and in 1996, Rod Ferrell, leader of a “vampire cult” in Murray, Kentucky, bludgeoned another member’s parents to death and along with the victims’ daughter, drank their blood so as to “cross over to the gates of hell.” Which brings me to rule number one for identifying the race of criminals. If the crime involved vampirism, Satan worship, or cannibalism, you can bet your ass the perp was white. Never fails. But you’ll never hear anyone ask what it is about white parents that makes their children want to cut off their heads and boil them in soup pots.

Ditto for infanticide. When Susan Smith drowned her boys in South Carolina, she had hundreds of people looking for a mythical Black male carjacker, because that’s what danger looks like in the white imagination. We should have known better, especially when you consider how many white folks off their kids: like Brian Peterson and Amy Grossberg, in Delaware, who dumped their newborn in the garbage; or the New Jersey girl at her prom who did the same in the school bathroom; or Brian Stewart, from St. Louis who injected his son with the AIDS virus to avoid paying child support; or the Pittsburgh father who bludgeoned his 5-year old twins to death when they couldn’t find their Power Ranger masks, and were late for day care; or the white babysitter outside Chicago who bound two kids with duct tape, before shooting them and turning the gun on himself. None of these folks’ race was offered as a possible factor in their crimes. No one is writing books about the genetic or white cultural causes of such behavior. In 1995, when a poor Latina killed her daughter in New York by smashing her head against a wall, every major news source in America covered the tragedy, and focused on her “underclass” status. But when a white Arizona man the same month decapitated his son because he was convinced the child was possessed by the devil, coverage was sparse, and mention of race or cultural background was nowhere to be found.

Or consider thrill killing, spree killing, and animal mutilation: three other white favorites that occur without racial identification of the persons involved. In October 1997, a white male teen obsessed with Jeffrey Dahmer killed a 13-year old to “see what it feels like.” In New Jersey, a 15-year old white male killed an 11-year old selling candy door-to-door, but only after sexually assaulting him. Late last year, a white couple in California was arrested for “hunting women,” and torturing and mutilating them in the back of their van. At Indiana University, a white male burned four cats alive in a lab, while in Martin, Tennessee, two white teens set a duck on fire at the city’s recreational complex, and in Missouri, two white teens killed 23 cats for fun, prompting their white neighbors to say, not that there’s something wrong with white kids today, but rather, “boys will be boys.”

So all that’s what my genes predispose me to do…good to know. If people are going to assign genetic causes to black people’s behavior, it’s equally legitimate to do the same to use white people, right?

His prescription for what we ought to do about it did make me cringe a bit, though.

And the next time you hear about some flesh-eating, Satan-worshiping teenager who just pickled his grandma, you’ll know his race before you even see his face on the nightly news, and you’ll know that if he’d just spent a little more time in church with the Black folks, none of this might ever have had to happen.

AAAAAAIIEE! Philistines!

A number of valuable paintings were stolen from a Rotterdam museum by a ring of Romanian criminals.

The stolen works have an estimated value of tens of millions of dollars if they were sold at auction. Thieves took Pablo Picasso’s 1971 "Harlequin Head"; Claude Monet’s 1901 "Waterloo Bridge, London" and "Charing Cross Bridge, London"; Henri Matisse’s 1919 "Reading Girl in White and Yellow"; Paul Gauguin’s 1898 "Girl in Front of Open Window"; Meyer de Haan’s "Self-Portrait" of around 1890; and Lucian Freud’s 2002 work "Woman with Eyes Closed."

They’ve been found.

A Romanian museum official said Wednesday that ash from the oven of a woman whose son is charged with stealing seven multimillion-dollar paintings — including a Matisse, a Picasso and a Monet — contains paint, canvas and nails.

…

Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, director of Romania’s National History Museum, told the Associated Press that museum forensic specialists had found “small fragments of painting primer, the remains of canvas, the remains of paint” and copper and steel nails, some of which pre-dated the 20th century.

“We discovered a series of substances which are specific to paintings and pictures,” he said, including lead, zinc and azurite.

You are permitted to cry a little bit.

Why was Gary Younge’s article removed?

How odd. An article was removed from The Guardian website, and now only this note has been left in its place.

This article has been taken down on 14 July 2013 pending investigation.

I guess they’ll investigate away. Meanwhile, you can read the article as originally posted.

Open season on black boys after a verdict like this
Posted:Sun, 14 Jul 2013 07:25:00 GMTPosted:2013-07-14T08:07:42Z

Calls for calm after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin are empty words for black families

Let it be noted that on this day, Saturday 13 July 2013, it was still deemed legal in the US to chase and then shoot dead an unarmed young black man on his way home from the store because you didn’t like the look of him.

The killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year was tragic. But in the age of Obama the acquittal of George Zimmerman offers at least that clarity. For the salient facts in this case were not in dispute. On 26 February 2012 Martin was on his way home, minding his own business armed only with a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles. Zimmerman pursued him, armed with a 9mm handgun, believing him to be a criminal. Martin resisted. They fought. Zimmerman shot him dead.

Who screamed. Who was stronger. Who called whom what and when and why are all details to warm the heart of a cable news producer with 24 hours to fill. Strip them all away and the truth remains that Martin’s heart would still be beating if Zimmerman had not chased him down and shot him.

There is no doubt about who the aggressor was here. The only reason the two interacted at all, physically or otherwise, is that Zimmerman believed it was his civic duty to apprehend an innocent teenager who caused suspicion by his existence alone.

Appeals for calm in the wake of such a verdict raise the question of what calm there can possibly be in a place where such a verdict is possible. Parents of black boys are not likely to feel calm. Partners of black men are not likely to feel calm. Children with black fathers are not likely to feel calm. Those who now fear violent social disorder must ask themselves whose interests are served by a violent social order in which young black men can be thus slain and discarded.

But while the acquittal was shameful it was not a shock. It took more than six weeks after Martin’s death for Zimmerman to be arrested and only then after massive pressure both nationally and locally. Those who dismissed this as a political trial (a peculiar accusation in the summer of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden) should bear in mind that it was politics that made this case controversial.

Charging Zimmerman should have been a no-brainer. He was not initially charged because Florida has a “stand your ground” law whereby deadly force is permitted if the person “reasonably believes” it is necessary to protect their own life, the life of another or to prevent a forcible felony.

Since it was Zimmerman who stalked Martin, the question remains: what ground is a young black man entitled to and on what grounds may he defend himself? What version of events is there for that night in which Martin gets away with his life? Or is it open season on black boys after dark?

Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict will be contested for years to come. But he passed judgement on Trayvon that night summarily.

“Fucking punks,” Zimmerman told the police dispatcher that night. “These assholes. They always get away.”

So true it’s painful. And so predictable it hurts.

I don’t know what’s wrong with it. Maybe the editors noticed a typo.

Hiroshima on a light switch

It’s always sad to see science perverted to serve hatred, and here’s an awful example: two KKK members have been arrested in a plot to kill Muslims en masse.

A plot to design a radiation weapon that could fit in a small van and be used to silently kill humans was unraveled by an FBI task force that charged two men — a General Electric Co. industrial mechanic from Saratoga County and a computer software expert from Columbia County -— with conspiring to sell the weapon to Jewish groups or a southern branch of the Ku Klux Klan.

A federal complaint unsealed Wednesday in Albany said the vehicle-mounted radiation gear was intended to be remotely controlled and capable of aiming a high-energy lethal beam of radioactivity at human targets. The concept was that victims would mysteriously die from radiation poisoning within days.

The FBI on Tuesday arrested Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, of Providence, Saratoga County, and Eric J. Feight, 54, of Stockport, who are accused of developing "a radiation emitting device that could be placed in the back of a van to covertly emit ionizing radiation strong enough to bring about radiation sickness or death against Crawford’s enemies," according to an FBI agent’s sworn complaint.

I’m glad that they were caught. It would be small consolation if they’d succeeded, and managed to poison themselves during their development efforts.

Charities to avoid

Never give money to any organization unless you’ve investigated it first. The Tampa Bay Times did a lot of investigating for you, and compiled a list of the 50 worst — it seems a shame that we don’t have a law that sets a threshhold for the ratio of money spent on salaries to money disbursed for the actual cause — below this number, you’re a legitimate charity, above that number, you’re a grifting operation preying on the generosity of the public.

They probably can’t do that, though, because then every priest would get labeled as a con man.

The worst are the cancer charities, and the article singles out the Reynolds family and their nepotistic mill for turning dying people into salaries. Cancer is so easy for these crooks: everyone hates it, there’s no plus side to the disease, and there’s a wealth of tragic heart-string-tugging tales to be mined from it. And you can’t tell from the names what they’re doing! “Breast Cancer Society,” for instance…how can you refuse to support that? “Children’s Cancer Fund of America” — OMG, children with cancer? Here’s $50. And then the members of the family doing the bilking make 6 figure salaries for shipping boxes of surplus junk to cancer patients.

It reinforces my opinion that most people are good, but that there are always parasites who know what buttons to push to exploit them.

A chilling tale of rape and social psychology

Georgia Weidman attended an Infosec conference in Poland and was sexually assaulted. It’s a very strange story, not because there’s any ambiguity — she was simply attacked by an acquaintance, and fought him off — but because she lets us in to all the tangled confusion going on in her head about this attack. It’s not just a physical event, dealt with and done, but a threat to her role in the community.

First, she builds up to the story with a lot of concern about “grey areas”. These “grey areas” are pretty damn sad in themselves, and I think it’s a symptom of her efforts to understand what happened to her that she’s discussing all this. The attempted rape wasn’t grey at all.

The third grey area for me is what constitutes rape. A lot of my fears in writing this post stem back to this post from Norin Shirley about being attacked at a conference. Reading the comments makes my stomach turn, knowing that the same thing is about to happen to me. “She’s a slut,” or “she’s making it up for attention,” sort of things. It makes me feel bad and like an anti-feminist to say this, but some guy putting his hands down my pants when I don’t want him to, while I certainly don’t condone it, sounds a bit more like life than rape. It’s just a sad fact. If you are female from time to time you will be touched without permission. Not too many years ago marital rape didn’t legally exist, and in the middle ages knights at arms were encouraged to practice chaste courtly love with the queen while gallivanting around the country forcing their lust on peasant girls. Sometimes it just sucks to be female you know. Then again sometimes it sucks to be male too. False rape accusations do happen. If I was a guy, I think I might be afraid of that. Luckily Norin Shirley was able to get away before her attack escalated, as was I.

I’ll skip over the actual account of her attack. It’s the usual sordid nastiness by an abusive guy, with the good news that smacking someone really hard in the temple with a coffee cup will terminate their arousal. But then there’s the aftermath. She calls the hotel staff, the conference organizers, works her way up to the Polish policy and the US embassy, and then…all the second guessing begins.

Conference staff was originally very supportive. But then they went to hear his side of the story and they suddenly wouldn’t even look at me. I realize it’s a complicated situation, but what I hit myself in the eye? I asked an organizer point blank if he believed me, and he said he didn’t know. I don’t know what the guy’s story is, but from the police and the conference’s refusal to act, I assume it’s pretty convincing. Hotel staff pulled the security tapes. Someone I thought was a friend of mine watched them with hotel staff. The general jist I got from the interaction was because I was on the tape letting him into my room, walking in the hallway with him, etc. I must be lying. Where in any of that did I consent to unprotected sex, being hit, etc?

The interesting stuff is the reactions. The people who say things like, “This isn’t what I think of course, but I bet a lot of people don’t believe you because you flirt on Twitter,” or “Everyone saw you kiss so and so at this party, so of course no one believes you didn’t want to have sex with that guy.” The implication is I think a bit disturbing. If I pursue a relationship with one guy, I have now consented to sex with any guy? I realize the typical argument is that a girl wearing a short skirt is asking to be attacked. But this seems to go a little further than that even. Because I from time to time express myself in a provocative manner, there was no attack at all. I have consented to any sexual thing any human being wants to do to me ever. Of course reasonable people should see that this is complete nonsense. “I watched the security footage. You let him in your room. How can I believe your story?” I never said I didn’t let him in. While in hindsight this was ultimately a bad move, the real irony is the author of the quote above invited me to hang out in his room alone at an event a couple months ago and have a few drinks. I accepted and we hung out and had a great time, alone. At no point did I feel threatened. The number of times I have hung out alone with another conference speaker are too many to count. I just want to be one of the guys you know. I want to be invited into your exclusive little groups of infosec rockstardom. I want to be good enough to be friends with you guys. I want to be invited to be on panels. I want to coauthor some research. Good luck having any of that ever happen for me if I have to hide in my room alone.

She was the victim, and what’s her concern? That she won’t be able to express herself sexually. That she will be locked out of the professional interactions needed to advance her career. We’ve seen that over and over, haven’t we? If a woman flirts at any time at all, it will be thrown in her face repeatedly if ever she tries to set boundaries. If she dares to protest casual sexism, she is going too far and must be silenced, or kicked out of the community.

That’s what I took out of Weidman’s story. The attempted rape was terrifying, but she was strong (but why does she have to be strong?) and handled that well. It’s the repercussions that bounce back and slam women over and over and over again afterwards that are really chilling. I’ve known people who were robbed, and no one afterwards questions their competence or the appropriateness of their activities at a conference; no one blames the victim. Why is rape different?

And she lost friends and reputation over something that was not her fault.

So do what you want to do infosec. Say that Georgia is a big whore and got what she deserved. Say that it wouldn’t happen to any other girl in infosec because no one else would be stupid enough to let a guy in her room. Say I’m making it up to further my feminist agenda and I’m secretly in league with Ada Initiative. Believe me, you aren’t going to say anything I haven’t heard already, and from people I thought were my friends. Do your worst. You can’t hurt me anymore than you already have. The people who were kind to me will forever have my thanks. Some of you really saved me that night. Some of you really saved me in the days after when I was alone in a foreign country and no one wanted anything to do with me. And some of you have hurt me. Some of you have failed to be there for me when I thought we were friends. Things like this have a way of clearing that up.

This is the last thing I have to say about all this. My duty is done. I don’t want to be the poster girl for infosec feminism. I want to be a researcher, and a trainer, and a speaker, and an icon. There’s a bad guy out there who has no remorse. I have reason to believe he was behaved badly towards women before at conferences and will do it again. The Polish legal system, while they have a report refused to take any action on the grounds that I had no proof, I had been drinking, etc. The US Consulate in Poland also has a record of it. But that’s it; it’s over and done with. I gave a talk the next day, I taught a class the next week. You aren’t going to get rid of me that easily, and I’m not going to stop expressing myself because someone can’t behave. If I want to show you my “I Love Joe McCray” sharpie tattoo on stage, I’m going to do it. If I want to say something silly on Twitter that could be construed as sexual I’m going to say it. The last thing I’m going to do is stop being myself because of this. Then he wins. And he didn’t win. People have offered to beat him up for me. I already did that. I’m not asking anybody to do anything for me, I’m asking you to do something for the next girl. This guy is dangerous. I was lucky. She might not be.

Is her attempted rapist now wrestling with his conscience and wondering whether he’ll be able to interact appropriately with his professional peers now? I doubt it. That anguish is left to his victims. He apparently has no worries that his fellow security consultants might reject him for his behavior…and he’s a goddamned rapist.

Amazon did what?!??

Greg Laden alerted me to a surprising message that I then found in my spam mail: Amazon has unilaterally terminated their contract with associates in Minnesota. They have a program called Amazon Associates which bloggers could take advantage of: we registered with Amazon, they gave us a little personal code to imbed in links to books, and in return for promoting Amazon with our linkage we got a little gift certificate every month, a small percentage of the profit. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was a handy revenue trickle. For instance, I cashed out a couple of months worth of certificates from them and the money is being used to buy all the widgets (many of them through Amazon!) for the laboratory fish facility we’re building here.

So when you click through a book link here and it took you to Amazon, and you bought something, you were actually contributing a few pennies to undergraduate research at the University of Minnesota Morris.

But no more. Here’s the letter I got.

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account will be closed and your Amazon Services LLC Associates Program Operating Agreement will be terminated effective June 30, 2013. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional Minnesota state tax collection legislation passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Dayton on May 23, 2013, with an effective date of July 1, 2013. As a result, we will no longer pay any advertising fees for customers referred to an Amazon Site after June 30 nor will we accept new applications for the Associates Program from Minnesota residents.

Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to July 1, 2013, will be processed and paid in full in accordance with your regular advertising fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 30, 2013, any final payments will be paid by August 30, 2013.

While we oppose this unconstitutional state legislation, we strongly support the federal Marketplace Fairness Act now pending before Congress. Congressional legislation is the only way to create a simplified, constitutional framework to resolve interstate sales tax issues and it would allow us to re-open our Associates program to Minnesota residents.

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates Program, and look forward to re-opening our program when Congress passes the Marketplace Fairness Act.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Team

So…all the Amazon links scattered throughout my site will still be contributing to Amazon’s revenue stream, but I no longer get any reward for them. That’s fai…wait, no, that’s totally unfair. Is this the kind of treatment we can all expect when the New World Order of Amazon achieves complete domination of the planet? That’s worrisome.

Hey, legal people: if I were instead to have my daughter, who lives out of state, set up Amazon Associate status, and then replace the code in my links to redirect income to her, would that be reasonable? I have no interest in evading state taxes and would happily pay those, but I would be interested in evading Amazon’s punitive behavior.