http://keenesentinel.com/…

Published: Saturday, June 13, 2009

For those of you who don’t know me, allow me to introduce myself.

I moved to Keene in 2004 with my wife of 16 years and two children, now 7 and 8.

I have owned the same home in Keene since moving here. I attend Grace Evangelical Free Church in Spofford, am a DC-10 captain for an international charter airline, home-school our active children and play drums and other musical instruments.

I also serve as the president of the Free State Project.

Over the past several weeks, numerous news articles and opinion pieces have mentioned the Free State Project. I’d like to offer facts and opinions that I hope will shed light on the subject from an angle not yet covered.

I am in the unique position of being both a resident of Keene, a focal point of recent local and national press, and an official representative of the Free State Project.

First, as a representative of the Free State Project, I’d like to present several facts that correct or clarify inaccurate and misleading statements that have appeared in The Sentinel and other media outlets lately:

1. The Free State Project is very simple: It seeks 20,000 participants who agree to move to New Hampshire, where they will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protections of life, liberty and property.

2. The Free State Project does not take positions on specific issues, legislation or candidates for office. It does not specify any area for participants to move to, and it does not specify tactics for achieving a “free state.”

The project itself does not exert the fullest practical effort. Participants in the project do so on their own.

3. The Free State Project does not own or control any radio shows, newspapers or magazines.

4. The Free State Project is funded through donations and does not have members, dues, or shadowy corporate backers. Its budget is small and financial reports are posted on the Web site.

5. The Free State Project’s most visible activity in New Hampshire consists of two events each year: the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, and the Porcupine Freedom Festival.

The 2009 Porcupine Freedom Festival will be June 25-28 in Lancaster. Those interested in learning more about the Free State Project, and meeting some Free State Project participants are encouraged to attend.

Though the project takes no position about the activities that have received so much attention lately, I do have personal opinions as a resident of Keene.

I, too, wish all the antics would stop.

It disappoints me that a mature group of people could be so foolish as to waste tax-funded law enforcement resources by initiating attacks against such nonviolent silliness as giving a manicure, holding a plant, or not meeting someone’s aesthetic preferences for outdoor furnishing.

Then, when performers of such nonviolent acts make audio or video recordings of the taxpayer-funded assaults, or choose not to cooperate with threats, the law enforcers get upset and initiate more acts of physical violence.

All this makes law enforcement look more like a gang of perpetually-adolescent thugs than civilized adults.

All of this generates news and opinion pieces, peppered with factual inaccuracies and slurs, that support the notion that it’s good to spend tax dollars assaulting nonviolent, non-fraudulent behavior, whether it be provocative or just plain goofy.

And that’s just plain goofy, or at least it should seem so to anyone who values liberty.

Maybe the question here is, who values liberty? Will the real liberty lovers please stand up?

VARRIN SWEARINGEN
President
Free State Project
2 Starlight Drive
Keene

http://www.star-telegram.com/…

A $226,000 armored vehicle for the North Richland Hills Police Department SWAT team arrived a few days ago to replace one the agency got in 1990.

To many people that vehicle — and others like it used by police departments across the country — will go unnoticed. The public seems to largely accept the use of military-type equipment, technology and tactics as not only appropriate but also necessary to fight crime and make communities more safe and secure.

Armored vehicles are used by law enforcement agencies in Fort Worth, Arlington and Bedford and at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, just to name a few. Some police departments have assault rifles, noise-flash devices and grenade launchers. Arlington even sought federal money for a drone aircraft.

But some criminal-justice experts are troubled by law enforcement agencies’ growing use of military-style equipment. Rather than employ such equipment only in extreme situations, the critics say, their use is becoming commonplace, leading police to use unnecessary force and intimidating residents. For example, some cite an episode last year in which police used a battering ram to raid a Duncanville swingers club when no one answered a knock.

“We have been witnesses to a little-noticed but nonetheless momentous historical change — the traditional distinctions between military/police, war/law and internal/external security are rapidly blurring,” said criminal justice professor Peter Kraska, of Eastern Kentucky University, in one on his studies on the militarization of police departments.

Local police officials note that growing populations, rising crime rates and more-lethal weapons available to criminals have forced officers to keep up. They also say they rely on training to make sure equipment is used appropriately.

“For years, there’s always been a parallel between law enforcement and the military,” said Bedford Police Chief David Flory, former director of training for the Texas Tactical Peace Officers Association. “Of course, the big difference is the rules of engagement. The military in Afghanistan or Iraq is dealing with warfare. We as officers have the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Penal Code that we must follow.”
Read More…

http://blog.al.com/…

A group of Birmingham police officers beat an already-unconscious suspect with fists, feet and a billy club, a battering caught on videotape until a police officer turned off the patrol car camera.

Authorities believe the video, taken in January 2008 after a chase by several area law enforcement agencies ended when the fleeing suspect’s van flipped, has been seen by numerous Birmingham officers and as many as a half-dozen supervisors over the past year.

But top city and police officials weren’t made aware of the taped beating until they were contacted by the district attorney’s office three months ago.

In fact, investigators say, the suspect, Anthony Warren, didn’t even know he’d been beaten until the tape surfaced in March. Warren was ejected from the vehicle and knocked unconscious, and thought all of his injuries were sustained in the wreck.

This guy is a scumbag and obviously asking for it but the attack was still uncalled for.

http://arstechnica.com/…

Having just passed its super-controversial Création et Internet “graduated response” law, you might think the French government would take at least a brief break from riling up the “internautes.” Instead, the government is prepping a new crime bill that will, among other things, mandate Internet censorship at the ISP level, legalize government spyware, and create a massive meta-database of citizen information called “Pericles.”

French newspaper Le Monde has the details on the new law, dubbed “Loppsi 2.” Together with the recent Dadvsi law (which banned DRM circumvention) and Création et Internet (which disconnects repeat online copyright infringers), Loppsi 2 will “fix” France’s various cybersecurity issues.

Think of the children

Loppsi 2 allows the state to install software that can “observe, collect, record, save, and transmit” keystrokes from computers on which it is installed. In essence, it allows for government-installed Trojans for a period of four months; a judge can extend this period for four months more.

In the US, the FBI has used similar techniques for several years, installing a program called CIPAV on suspects’ computers to record and transmit “pen register” data back to investigators.

Under Loppsi 2, French ISPs would also need to participate in a Web censorship regime that initially appears targeted at child pornography. Critics like Jean-Michel Planche, who advises the French government on Internet issues, are already calling the new bill the end of an open and neutral Internet.

Finally, the bill allows for a database called “Pericles” that can pull together information from various existing French databases to create a “super-dossier” on people. According to Le Monde, such a database could contain all sorts of crucial, personal information, and sounds certain to set off the same debates that have taken place in the US whenever similar projects have been floated.

Oh—and did we mention that Loppsi 2 funds all sorts of other crime-fighting techniques, including automated camera systems that record the license plates of cars passing by on the motorway?

Taken together, the Loppsi 2 draft shows just how serious the Sarkozy government is about getting some control over this crazy Internet thing that all the kids are using now. Actually, this is a situation playing out in most developed countries at the moment, and it’s not yet clear whether a global consensus will emerge on how to deal with law enforcement challenges on the ‘Net.

Numerous countries in Europe already run Internet child porn blacklists; massive government databases exist or are being developed just about everywhere; graduated response laws are slowly moving into the mainstream. France just seems more interested than most in adopting all of these ideas in the shortest possible timeframe.

As many of y’all heard the MHD crew was arrested yesterday morning while traveling through Jones County, MS. Currently on our Southern Style route, we met some good folks in New Orleans the night before and were heading to Meridian, MS for breakfast with other fans of freedom then to Nashville, TN, where we were to pick up Allison Gibbs from the airport then head to a meetup there held in conjunction with Liberty on the Rocks and the TN Center for Policy Research. But that didn’t exactly pan out…

UPDATE: Listen to the Motorhome Diaries crew discuss this on Free Talk Live.

Read More…

http://www.nytimes.com/…

Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers – eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 – face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots – BAM! BAM! – fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence – an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

“Our end goal is to create more agents,” said April McKee, a senior Border Patrol agent and mentor at the session here.

The law enforcement posts are restricted to those ages 14 to 21 who have a C average, but there seems to be some wiggle room. “I will take them at 13 and a half,” Deputy Lowenthal said. “I would rather take a kid than possibly lose a kid.”

Just as there are soccer moms, there are Explorers dads, who attend the competitions, man the hamburger grill and donate their land for the simulated marijuana field raids. In their training, the would-be law-enforcement officers do not mess around, as revealed at a recent competition on the state fairgrounds here, where a Ferris wheel sat next to the police cars set up for a felony investigation.Their hearts pounding, Explorers moved down alleys where there were hidden paper targets of people pointing guns, and made split-second decisions about when to shoot. In rescuing hostages from a bus taken over by terrorists, a baby-faced young girl screamed, “Separate your feet!” as she moved to handcuff her suspect.

In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. “If we’re looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like,” he said, “then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don’t know, would you call that politically incorrect?”

This is seriously fucked up. YAY fascist police state Hiter youth brigade!