Here’s a sidebar from a recent story by Dave Winer about why he wants ports on his computers, and why freedom is more important to him than Apple style:

Reminds me of a story a Jamaican cab driver told as he was driving me from Montego Bay to Negril. This was a long time ago, when my Jamaican uncle was still alive and I was still a smoker. As we drove through a village, he pointed out the new cottages, and said they had been built by the Cubans. They have all the modern conveniences, running water, indoor plumbing, even electricity. But the people don’t want to live in them because Cuban-built houses don’t have back doors.

I asked why do they need back doors?

He laughed and said, when the police knock on the front door, it’s nice to have a back door.

— Dave Winer, Scripting News (2010-05-28): I don’t like wires but I do like ports

• THE ARCHEOLOGY OF LIBERTY: The Mises Institute has posted a ton. Jesse, The Perpetual Three-Dot Column (2010-06-11). THE ARCHEOLOGY OF LIBERTY: The Mises Institute has posted a ton of old issues of Liberty in pdf form. My writing appeared in Liberty from late '91 through early '97, and I was a staffer there from mid-'93 to the end of '96. So I've got a lot of old… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-12.)

• Free Bradley Manning! Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-06-12). SPC Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer in the vicinity of Baghdad, was arrested two weeks ago for having supposedly sent Wikileaks the "Collateral Damage" video of US troops shooting Iraqi civilians.Justin Raimondo has the full story here.As Mike Gogulski notes in the comments,… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-12.)

• The Anthony Gregory Song Video. blog of bile (2010-06-12). This is a world of magic and delight. (Linked Saturday 2010-06-12.)

• Obama Theory of the Month. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-06-06). Is Barack Obama a secret Muslim? communist? immigrant? extra in the video for "Whoomp (There It Is)"? Gawker weighs the evidence. (Linked Saturday 2010-06-12.)

• Inconsistent Idealization in Rawls. Will Wilkinson, Will Wilkinson (2010-05-26). Section 42, "Some Remarks about Economic Systems," in John Rawls' A Theory of Justice is peculiar, especially the discussion of public goods problems. Rawls cites James Buchanan and Mancur Olson as authorities on the nature these problems. However, these are political economists working from assumptions about behavior that Rawls specifically… (Linked Sunday 2010-06-13.)

• Any Doubts about which is the Roguest Nation? Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-06-13). From Physicians for Human Rights:In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’ involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent… (Linked Sunday 2010-06-13.)

• Unarmed Student Shot by Police. bosco, blog of bile (2010-06-13). On March 11th, 2010 police officers raided Derek Copp's apartment, shined a flashlight in his eyes and shot him in the chest. The raid was concerning an alleged sale of $60 worth of marijuana. The officer is currently facing a felony charge with a maximum penalty of four years. It… (Linked Sunday 2010-06-13.)

Q.: When does a government police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man actually get arrested and promptly charged with first-degree murder, within a week of the shooting?

A.: When he shoots a government soldier instead of one of us civilians.

Well. Maybe I’m not being fair. Maybe the speedy arrest and the severe charge isn’t just due to the fact that he shot a government soldier. Maybe it’s due to the fact that he did the shooting while he was off-duty, drunk, and getting into fights at a club — not gunning somebody down in the street while officially on the job.

Ha ha, just kidding. Back in September 2005, the last time this exact same government police officer shot an unarmed man off-duty in a drunken rage, the punishment he got for this drunken assault with a deadly weapon was an eight-day vacation from his job.

The purpose of government law enforcement has nothing to do with protecting innocent people from crime. The primary purpose of government law enforcement is to protect government force.

See also:

• GT 2009-06-11: The Police Beat: Now they want a task force…

Officer J. Smith, Las Vegas Metro, responding with a handstrike to the face

According to a story printed in the Las Vegas Review Journal, Officer J. Smith, a police officer working for the local governments in Las Vegas and Clark County, beat a captive prisoner in the face while the man was handcuffed. I’ve scare-quoted the name because that’s the most that the R.-J. could glean from the police reports; the police department is officially refusing to release the name of the cops accused of beating the hell out of a handcuffed prisoner. The cops were there late at night because of a noisy party and reports of a fight. James Akins didn’t want to talk to the police, and when they arrested him for not coming out of his apartment, Akins tried to stand his ground, while a pair strangers forcibly dragged him away in handcuffs to be driven off to jail. (The dragging away is dignified as escorting Akins to the car by the Las Vegas Review Journal.) So James Akins spat at the armed strangers hauling him off in the middle of the night. Officer J. Smith was apparently in no physical danger at all, but he did get spit at, and this insult to his dignity was enough to for him to have responded with a handstrike to Akins’ face. The report in the R.-J. makes it seem as though Officer J. Smith just smacked James Akins once; what actually happened is that Officer J. Smith handcuffed Akins, repeatedly slammed him into a door, forced him downstairs, and then threw him to the ground and punched him in the face several times.

The Incident is being Internally Investigated by Officer J. Smith’s coworkers at Las Vegas Metro, but cop spokesman Officer Marcus Martin is helpfully explaining to the press that There is no department policy that prohibits officers from striking handcuffed suspects. (No doubt there isn’t. What does that say about the policy?) In the meantime, Officer J. Smith, whose full name and identity Las Vegas Metro refuses to release, is still out on patrol on the streets of Las Vegas while being Internally Investigated for beating handcuffed prisoners.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel inaccurately reported yesterday that the government District Attorney’s office had mounted a smash-and-grab raid on SubRosa Cafe, the Anarchist space in Santa Cruz that has been black-baited and scapegoated over the past month for a riot they had nothing in particular to do with. The situation in Santa Cruz got pretty scary, with SubRosa collective members receiving frequent harassment and death threats from Respectable Citizens. What actually did happen sounds here sounds worrying, but the SubRosa collective has made clear that the newspaper story is wildly inaccurate. There has been no raid so far — although there were four armed deputies dispatched to nose around on a pretty flimsy pretext:

Four armed deputies visited SubRosa Wednesday May 19th. SubRosa was closed at the time. They told a neighbor they wanted to talk to SubRosa staff about worker’s comp issues. One of the deputies was an inspector from the Santa Cruz District Attorney’s Office.

Beyond this unsuccessful visit, SubRosa has not had any contact with law enforcement. SubRosa was not raided, and our door was not broken. We did not, and do not call the police.

SubRosa is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and has no paid workers and is an all-volunteer space. SubRosa has a business license to operate in the City Of Santa Cruz. SubRosa is in compliance with all city and county fire codes, zoning requirements, entertainment permits, health codes, workers compensation, and sales tax requirements. No workers comp claims have been filed, nor have we been contacted by the Division of Workers Compensation.

— SubRosa (2010-05-21): A Word About the Reported Raid

It sounds to me like the District Attorney’s office and the po-po would like to take the opportunity to go fishing for connections between SubRosa and the riot. Which is worrisome. Not the same thing as the raid the Sentinel spread sensationalistic rumors about — but still a reason to worry, and to offer your support and solidarity to SubRosa if you believe that they should not be threatened, attacked or harassed by the state’s armed goons solely on the basis of their political beliefs. If you’d like to support the SubRosa project, I’m sure they could use it these days;

Donations

SubRosa is fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3) non-profit and your donation is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. We will happily provide you with a tax-deductible receipt.

We can accept donations by check, money order, or credit/debit card.

If you can’t make it down to SubRosa, one-time donations can be sent to:

SubRosa
703 Pacific Ave
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

— SubRosa: Support