Feeling lackluster in your day-to-day these days while trying to make literally anything more interesting? We totally get that, and while your white paper may be just that, completely white, we've got a way to jazz up any project looking for a musical boost (or, in some cases, a whole revamp). — Read the rest
Reposted from Crimethinc
In Washington state, Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney Elizabeth McMullen has declined to press charges against Forest Michael Machala, the far-right gunman who shot and nearly killed a counter-demonstrator during a fascist rally in Olympia on December 12. Machala’s attack was the second far-right shooting in Olympia in seven days. Thurston County Superior Court found probable cause for McMullen to file first-degree assault charges against Machala on December 14—yet she chose not to file them, letting the deadline elapse without doing anything. Machala posted bail shortly after his arrest, while his victim was still in the hospital. The court went on to drop the no-contact order stipulating that he should not approach the victim; in addition to removing protection from the victim, this lays the groundwork for Machala to regain possession of his confiscated AR-15. In refusing to press charges against a known extremist who carried out a widely documented shooting in front of a large number of witnesses, Elizabeth McMullen is inviting fascists to come to Olympia and turn it into a killing field.
Elizabeth McMullen’s decision must be understood as an attack in its own right, no less than the shooting Forest Machala carried out. Permit us to spell out why.
This protester just shot a counter-protester as Antifa counter-protesters were walking protesters out to the parking lot. #Washington #portland #protest #olympia pic.twitter.com/gtThORFJan
— Independent Media PDX (@NDpendentPDX) December 12, 2020
At the close of the Trump era, we have become inured to tragedies that would have struck us as outrageous just four years ago. We were shocked on the night Trump was inaugurated when Trump supporters shot a person in Seattle, Washington at an event featuring pro-fascist Milo Yiannopoulos—and we were shocked that the media reported on the “violence” of the demonstrators they attacked rather than the shooting. We were shocked when a fascist intentionally drove a car into a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators seven months later, killing one of them. Today, we are accustomed to such things. Just this year, fascists have killed too many people at demonstrations to list here.
Prosecutors in Washington State want to push this further. They want to see if they can normalize not even charging those who are shooting and killing us. One law for them—another for us.
Trump supporter Forest Michael Machala was the shooter in Olympia today. pic.twitter.com/Gav1C7Xabq
— WANaziWatch (@WANaziWatch) December 13, 2020
On the weekend of December 5, 2020, fascists converged on Olympia to demonstrate in favor of Trump’s belated attempt to steal the election. Concerned that they would carry out attacks of the sort that fascists have repeatedly perpetrated around the Pacific Northwest, Olympia locals organized a counterdemonstration. Clashes erupted; fascists triumphantly posted footage of themselves charging, attacking, and beating people. After one conflict, a Trump supporter from Port Orchard named Christopher Michael Guenzler stepped back, raised a gun, and shot a counter-demonstrator, “grazing” the victim’s chest with a bullet. This occurred in front of dozens of witnesses, but it still took the police quite some time to arrest Guenzler—in fact, the police first focused on violently attacking the same counter-demonstrators that the fascists had just attacked. In the end, police questioned Guenzler, and when he lied to them about the shooting, they arrested him and charged him with first-degree assault while armed with a deadly weapon. His bail was set at $50,000.
One week later, on December 12, many of the same fascists once again descended upon Olympia. Once again, violent clashes erupted between them and counter-demonstrators seeking to defend against the same attackers that had shot someone the previous weekend. At one point, a fascist drew his gun and advanced on the counter-protesters. He was subsequently arrested before he shot anyone.
A Proud Boy in Olympia just ran after the bloc with his pistol drawn. He appeared to aim but eventually reholstered. pic.twitter.com/oueMnhdaXP
— WANaziWatch (@WANaziWatch) December 12, 2020
Nonetheless, video footage from December 12 shows police forming a line at the front of the fascist demonstration and firing impact munitions at counter-demonstrators while fascists cheered them on, chanting “fuck antifa.” Some still consider it hyperbolic to refer to violent pro-Trump demonstrators as fascists, but this label seems apt enough when they identify themselves chiefly on the basis of their shared desire to attack those who oppose fascism. If that’s not enough, at least one participant in the demonstration—who has been identified as a well-known neo-Nazi—was captured on video shouting anti-Semitic abuse at counter-demonstrators, with the support of the other fascists present.
As they say in the South, cops and the Klan go hand in hand.
At the end of the afternoon, Forest Michael Machala opened fire with his handgun, shooting a counter-demonstrator in the back. Machala currently lives in Bellingham. He can be seen in the video footage, wearing gloves and shooting glasses, prepared to imitate the example set by Christopher Guenzler.
The charging documents state that Machala was arrested with a Glock handgun and two ten-round magazines. His Glock had a round in the chamber and seven rounds left in the magazine. Police found a single unfired round matching his bullets on the ground near the spot he was seen racking his gun in the video. Three different video angles capture Machala holding his gun immediately after the shot was fired. He was identified in the video and by witnesses as the shooter.
Prosecutors had already cited this evidence in the course of proving probable cause to the court. Yet they waited out the deadline to file charges, sending their “community engagement specialist” Jessie Knudsen to claim that they lacked sufficient evidence to proceed with charging Machala.
In so doing, they passed responsibility back to the Washington State Patrol to provide more evidence in the case. The Washington State Patrol themselves are hardly unbiased. Indeed, immediately after the shooting took place, Washington State Patrol officers once again attacked the same counter-demonstrators that Machala had just attacked, shooting impact munitions and chemical weapons at them, while at the same time providing medical care and support to Machala’s compatriots. It really could not be clearer that the prosecutor, the police, and the fascists are united in a single front.
Cops wrapping right wingers head pic.twitter.com/lQkiesk82h
— John #PortlandProtest (@Johnnthelefty) December 13, 2020
The reality is that the prosecutors could have brought half a dozen different charges against Machala in addition to first-degree assault. If they wanted to prosecute him, they would have filed all the charges and tried to intimidate him into taking a plea—this is the strategy they routinely employ against anti-Trump protesters, poor people, and people of color in general. They obviously intend to avoid prosecuting him altogether. Machala’s attorney has stated that he will argue self-defense if Machala is charged—a tacit admission that Machala was, indeed the shooter. Self-defense claims are almost always decided by a jury, not by a prosecutor refusing to bring charges.
If anti-fascists had begun shooting at either of these demonstrations, the police would likely have shot them immediately. The police always face towards anti-fascists at these events and inflict the vast majority of their violence upon them. The relatively restrained police response to this week’s far-right invasion of a government building in Salem, Oregon confirms this.
Also asking because discharging a firearm in public, within 500 ft of a business or residence, is already a crime in Washington, and that’s before you aim it at a person or injure anyone. https://t.co/VakCZWzNLt pic.twitter.com/2BKtpr57iL
— 45th parallel absurdist brigade (@45thabsurdist) December 22, 2020
Let’s compare this to other local precedents.
Jon Tunheim, the elected county prosecutor who likely calls the shots behind Elizabeth McMullen’s decision, is in fact a Democrat. But when Olympia police officer Ryan Donald shot two young Black men, André Thompson and Bryson Chaplin, in 2015, claiming that they attacked him with a skateboard, Tunheim pressed assault charges against both of them.
A cop shoots two young Black men and the county prosecutor presses charges against them when one of them is permanently paralyzed from the waist down and the officer is unharmed. A white fascist shoots a Black man in the back and receives no charges. This could be the antebellum South.
The shooting on December 12 took place less than seven miles from the street where police and federal marshals urged on by Trump extrajudicially murdered Portlander Michael Reinoehl to punish him for shooting an armed fascist who was in the process of attacking him. Afterwards, in a series of speeches around the country, Trump explicitly congratulated and praised the police for carrying out this murder.
For the second consecutive day Trump seems to endorse extrajudicial killings by federal forces pic.twitter.com/j1DQDGuJEw
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 14, 2020
Trump has pardoned 49 people in the past two days, including four Blackwater mercenaries who ambushed Iraqi civilians with unprovoked gunfire—murdering 14 people and injuring 17 more. As we saw in Ferguson in 2014 and more recently all around the country in the repression of Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the tactics and technologies that soldiers and mercenaries test out overseas are later employed in the United States against US citizens. With these pardons, Trump is showing that the laws that apply to poor people, people of color, and protesters do not apply to his supporters—but he is also seeking to curry favor with actual mercenaries with blood on their hands, in order to lay the groundwork for a future in which they can murder US citizens professionally.
Biden’s electoral victory has done nothing to curtail the escalating violence of the far right. It has only emboldened them, while at the same time giving liberals an excuse to leave the most vulnerable sectors of the population to face their violence alone.
It is certain that fascists in the Pacific Northwest—who have already killed several people in the past few years—will interpret Elizabeth McMullen’s decision to dismiss the charges as permission to shoot anti-fascists, provided they stage the shootings as acts of self-defense. Surely they are discussing how to accomplish this right now. When they do so, the blood will be on her hands.
With deeds rather than words, Elizabeth McMullen has announced to fascists around the United States that they can shoot people in the back with impunity. In effect, she is inviting fascists to converge on Olympia to carry out lethal attacks every weekend. Alongside Donald Trump, she is showing everyone that the law is not, as liberals foolishly believe, a measure for the sake of the public good that applies equally to all citizens. On the contrary, it is a weapon in the hands of racist authoritarians, just like the guns in the hands of fascists and police officers. She is doing her part to speed the coming of the day when blood will flow regularly in the streets of her own town. Presumably, she takes it for granted that her own blood will never pour into the sewers of America, mingled with the blood of those whose slaughter she is doing her best to facilitate.
But once such a cycle of violence gets underway, it’s hard to know where it will end.
Prosecuting Attorney’s Office: (360) 786-5540
The State of Washington v. Forest Machala case file is #20-1-01506-34.
Donations to the survivor of this shooting can be sent via CashApp to $UnlimitedHands or Venmo to @UnlimitedHands.
The post #PDXRentStrike: April 1st, May 1st, and Beyond! appeared first on It's Going Down.
Call for a rent strike in so-called Portland, Oregon. Autonomous organizers in Portland, OR are coordinating a citywide rent strike in response to the layoffs and hour cuts resulting from COVID-19 related closures of businesses throughout the state. We are in solidarity with strikers across so-called North America, and internationally! Please use our graphics, template... Read Full Article
If you’re anything like me, you’re currently going through some intense Animal Crossing: New Horizons FOMO. These sort of lifestyle sims aren’t for me, but I’ll admit – watching my mutuals posting their island adventures non-stop has me a little jealous. Where’s my Tanuki landlord? Why can’t I have a best friend who is also a dog? For the Doom marine, the latter is only a download away, thanks to a new mod for Doom II that lets Animal Crossing’s Isabelle join you for some righteous bloodshed against the legions of hell.
The post Violence in the Hands of the Violated is Self-Defense appeared first on It's Going Down.
The following communique comes from a group of anarchist women in Mexico analyzing the antagonisms within the recent women’s mobilizations and arguing for the necessity of self-defense. Mexico. March 2020 There has been a recent rise in women’s mobilizations, actions and organization throughout the world, denouncing the multiple forms of violence to which we are... Read Full Article
Sometimes it is very important to be awkward, inelegant, jerking, to be neither poetic nor prosaic, to be positively bad. To express other possibilities for bodies, alternative values, to stop making sense.
— Zadie Smith, “Dance Lessons for Writers,” Feel Free
Nykalily Dearlast week i told myself i was being paranoid and now i know that ofc they’re doing atrocities like this
A commercial database that maps the movements of millions of cellphones is being used by immigration and border authorities to round up undesirable immigrants for detention and deportation.
The Wall Street Journal [paywall] published a special report on Friday about how federal agencies under impeached president Donald Trump are exploiting cellphone location data to track individuals for enforcement of Trump's racist immigration policies.
“The location data is drawn from ordinary cellphone apps, including those for games, weather and e-commerce, for which the user has granted permission to log the phone’s location,” write te WSJ's Byron Tau and Michelle Hackman: Excerpt:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of DHS, has used the data to help identify immigrants who were later arrested, these people said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, another agency under DHS, uses the information to look for cellphone activity in unusual places, such as remote stretches of desert that straddle the Mexican border, the people said.
The federal government’s use of such data for law enforcement purposes hasn’t previously been reported.
Experts say the information amounts to one of the largest known troves of bulk data being deployed by law enforcement in the U.S.—and that the use appears to be on firm legal footing because the government buys access to it from a commercial vendor, just as a private company could, though its use hasn’t been tested in court.
Read more:
Federal Agencies Use Cellphone Location Data for Immigration Enforcement
[WSJ, reporting by Byron Tau and Michelle Hackman, Feb. 7, 2020 7:30 am ET]
A family in DeSoto County, Mississippi, bought a Ring security camera so they could keep an eye on their three young girls in their bedroom. Four days later, they learned that a hacker had broken into the camera and subjected their children to continuous bedroom surveillance, taunting the children through the camera's built-in speaker.
Ring blamed the break-in on the failure of the family to turn on two-factor authentication, using a weak password, and failing to change passwords (these are all good ideas, except for frequently changing passwords, which just leads to weaker password quality -- but they're also things that almost no one does).
Motherboard identified several crime-forums where hackers were trading automated tools to break into Ring cameras, using credential-stuffing attacks (previously), which involve trying a succession of leaked username/password combos until you find one that has been recycled on the service you're trying to break into. These tools sell for as little as $6.
Other Ring camera owners have faced similar privacy invasions, including a family in Florida that was subjected to a string of racial abuse through their cameras' speakers.
Using good passwords and 2FA is good advice, but better advice is to never put networked cameras or microphones in your home, ever.
Ever.
In a video obtained by WMC5 courtesy of the family, you can see what the hacker would have seen: A viewpoint that looms over the entire room from where the camera is installed in a far corner, looking down on their beds and dressers while they play. The hacker is heard playing the song "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" through the device's speakers, and when one of the daughters, who is eight years old, stops and asks who's there, the hacker says, "It's Santa. It's your best friend."
How Hackers Are Breaking Into Ring Cameras [Joseph Cox and Samantha Cole/Motherboard]
“Here's a lot of recent Pokemon Terrariums that I have made,” says IMGURian and extraordinary crafter PocketWorlds4.
Which one is your favorite? You can buy them on Etsy, and follow Pocket Worlds on Instagram.
Dyscalculia is a learning disability, a lot like dyslexia, but with math and numbers. Everyone knows what dyslexia is, but for some reason, dyscalculia isn’t as well known. I want people to know about this so no more kids are gonna believe uneducated adults who tells them that they’re just lazy and no more kids are going to think they’re just hopeless idiots when they try and try but just can’t understand. It happened to me, and I won’t let it happen to anyone else.
It’s surprisingly common and is often linked to ADHD. If you’ve ever had issues, look it up - you might find things fall into place for you, too.
- Difficulty reading analog clocks[14]
- Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a checkbook.
- Inconsistent results in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
- Difficulty with multiplication, subtraction, addition, and division tables, mental arithmetic, etc.
- Problems with differentiating between left and right.
- A “warped” sense of spatial awareness, or an understanding of shapes, distance, or volume that seems more like guesswork than actual comprehension.
- Difficulty with time, directions, recalling schedules, sequences of events. Difficulty keeping track of time. Frequently late or early.
- Poor memory (retention & retrieval) of math concepts; may be able to perform math operations one day, but draw a blank the next. May be able to do book work but then fails tests.
- Difficulty reading musical notation. Difficulty with choreographed dance steps.
- Having particular difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance (e.g., whether something is 3 or 6 meters (10 or 20 feet) away).
- When writing, reading and recalling numbers, mistakes may occur in the areas such as: number additions, substitutions, transpositions, omissions, and reversals.
- Inability to grasp and remember mathematical concepts, rules, formulae, and sequences.
- Inability to concentrate on mentally intensive tasks.
I can’t even comprehend what it might be like being a human who doesn’t have all of these characteristics. I don’t know how a brain can possibly just “remember” how to do long division or know what ten feet looks like.
I can’t even accept that a car is more than like nine feet long. Ours is fifteen feet long, and even standing next to it, my brain is POSITIVE it’s small enough to fit in a bathroom.
This is the most me thing I’ve ever read on this site. I can’t read analog clocks I can’t recall number sequences etc.
Japanese cities and towns across the country have their own manhole designs. Each one is unique and reflects the local culture, history or beauty. Fittingly, the country now has Pokémon manholes.
The Social Security Administration has a tool for looking up deaths in the USA that took place within the past three years, but older deaths are in the Social Security Death Master File (aka Death Index); you can buy a limited version of that from the SSA for $2.3k + $3.4k/yr; the SSA has quoted access to the full version at $5.2k.
Sai is crowdfunding to buy the full Death Index, which they will then publish online, for free, for all. As they say, "It is extremely useful for genealogical and medical research, preventing fraud, etc."
They're also suing the SSA to just publish this themselves: Congress already ordered them to do so.
The database includes "Name (first, middle, last, & suffix); date of birth & death; SSN; validation (Verified: Report verified with a family member or someone acting on behalf of the family / Proof: Death certificate etc observed by SSA); record update date; and record update code (add/change/delete)."
Think this is a rather un-“open” approach to providing something that Congress required to be publicly available. We would like to start litigation — but also to also pre-pay the requested $5.2k as a surety, so that they cough up the database now and we have a non-hypothetical fee charging to litigate. It would be very interesting to see, for instance, how exactly they spend 150 hours “searching” for a single database file.
We will make all received information publicly available, for free, both as flat files and through a Google BigQuery database. If we win the litigation, and get a ruling that it has to be made available for free, we will also make our hosted version continuously updated by simply having a regular re-FOIA of the deltas. Otherwise, we’ll do so if we can get the cost of obtaining it funded.
Social Security Death Master File [Sai/Muckrock]
(Image: Gunnvor Bakke, CC-BY-SA)
One of the features of abusive family environment is not being allowed to talk about past events. It’s unwritten law that you’re not supposed to mention that one time when your parent screamed at you, swore and called you slurs, broke something of yours, hit you, threw something at you, threw a tantrum and punished you when you did nothing wrong, failed to support you, failed to acknowledge you as a person, dismissed all that you do like it doesn’t matter. If you mention it, and acknowledge that it’s a thing that happened, and something they’ve done, you’re risking them doing it all over agian, just to “teach you better than to mention such thing”.
It’s normal in abusive environments to always continue as if nothing happened, as if what happened was just some kind of isolated incident that is probably not going to happen again, and you’re scared to cause it again by mentioning it. I’ve seen abusive parents throw unbeliveable amount of rage, threats and violence at their children, disappear for a while, then come back with a smile like nothing at all happened, like the event before wasn’t even real for them, making you feel like you could have just imagined it all. Children would be just so relived that the rage is over, they wouldn’t dare to mention it again, they just wanted it to not repeat. The fear of abuser gets overwhelming to the point where holding them accountable isn’t even a priority anymore, you’re not even expecting an apology or guilt over what they’ve done, you just end up feeling confused and helpless and hope to god they don’t explode again. You focus on tiptoeing around them and praying not to trigger another outburst, feeling like it could be your fault if it happens again.
These “incidents” are never isolated or accidental, abuser can bring them on whenever they want, to get more fear and control over the household, and they know it. They’re using the outbursts intentionally to keep the rest of the family on their toes, scared and ready to obey out of fear. They know they’ll get more tiptoeing and leeway and get away with anything and get special treatment as a reward for abusive behaviour.
Other way I’ve seen abusers deal with this is to pretend as if they’re too ashamed or too guilty to talk about those things, and everyone should stop reminding them as they already feel bad enough, of course they’re going to say it angrily, so you know that calling them out is dangerous, and then of course, do the abusive behaviour over, and over again, making is extremely doubtful about just how guilty they feel. If a person experiences guilt and shame after their behaviour, it’s unlikely they will repeat it, because it would hurt them too, so if they do repeat it, it’s more likely that their “guilt” was just a lie.
I actually thought every family had such “secrets” they’re not allowed to mention and it was common to not bring up the dirty laundry on other family members, until I heard a friend chat with their mom about something messed up that happened years and years in the past. I was shocked to hear that to them it was a completely normal thing to talk about, there wasn’t a thing that was forbidden to mention! Mentioning past events wasn’t used against anyone or to hurt anyone, it was just something to learn from and analyze and discuss, and this is normal for all events, everything should be talked about.
oh and one more thing, abuser sometimes will mention these events, but frame them as if it’s something victim did, or something that victim caused, for example “don’t make me do that again” or “yeah remember when you made me that angry and couldn’t handle it?” or they will look at the mess they made and ask who did it, or pretend victims did it instead. They’re not that delusional, they’re saying those things on purpose, because purpose of these events was to cause terror and guilt, and they’re later reinforcing it by blame shifting, and further ignoring the damage they’ve caused.
Nykalily DearI wanna play itI wanna play itI wanna play itI wanna play itI wanna play it!omg!
NYC Mesh -- the meshing, neutral, community based wireless ISP in New York City -- has undergone a drastic expansion beyond its initial supernode.
That first supernode, at 375 Pearl Street in Manhattan, was serviced by gigabit fiber, and offered downlinks to 300 buildings whose own antennas offered service to further buildings, and so on.
A new Industry City supernode has now been unveiled in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, boasting 50 times the capacity of the first node, which will extend coverage to Sunset Park, South Slope, Park Slope, Gowanus and Red Hook.
NYC Mesh is a nonprofit organized under New York City's chapter of the Internet Society (which administers the .org Top-Level Domain); users optional monthly donations of $20-50 (residences) and $100 (businesses). Hardware and setup costs $160. NYC Mesh does not retain or monetize user traffic, though it does sometimes analyze it to resolve service issues.
New York City has legendarily poor internet service, with the Verizon/Charter duopoly performing so badly that they have faced legal jepoardy from customers, regulators, state officials and city governments. 25-33% of NYC residents don't have access to broadband at all.
NYC Mesh is a non-profit project of the New York chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-NY), an organization tasked with building a better, more secure internet. And it’s part of a steadily growing trend of locals taking the problem of terrible US broadband (thanks to the apathetic government officials who enable it) into their own hands.
“NYC Mesh is more than happy to support anyone interested in building a community network,” Rasmusen said. “Our website includes information about every facet of our network and how-to guides for building your own. We also offer technical training to give all people the opportunity to become community network leaders and experts.”
A DIY Internet Network Has Drastically Expanded Its Coverage in NYC [Karl Bode/Motherboard]
(via /.)
