Invoking district court rule 2.14, Wes and Meg are sentenced and their cases sent to superior court for “de novo” trial. Wes is also arrested on a theft charge for when he allegedly accidentally walked out of the KSC library with books in his backpack. Despite apologizing and giving the books back, charges were pressed. Here’s the raw video:
In 2003, security analyst Bruce Schneier introduced the concept of security theater: “Security theater refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security. An example: the photo ID checks that have sprung up in office buildings. No-one has ever explained why verifying that someone has a photo ID provides any actual security, but it looks like security to have a uniformed guard-for-hire looking at ID cards. Airport-security examples include the National Guard troops stationed at US airports in the months after 9/11 — their guns had no bullets. The US colour-coded system of threat levels, the pervasive harassment of photographers, and the metal detectors that are increasingly common in hotels and office buildings since the Mumbai terrorist attacks, are additional examples.”
Security theater is driven by political forces: the public demands that the government do something to provide more security. This demand is passed on to representatives, who rely on the the positive perception of voters to get re-elected. Naturally, when they are being judged on these grounds, they maximize the appearance of security rather than security itself.
Over the last few years, Keeniacs have witnessed the growth of a similar phenomenon– activism theater. Activism theater refers to activist measures that make people feel like government policy is being improved without doing anything to actually improve government policy. (Even if the goal is no government, that requires a change in government policy, from what we have today to the absence of any government action.) Examples of activism theater are the School Sucks Project “outreach” and City Hall drinking games. Both of these were billed as activism, and yet there’s no plausible mechanism through which they could have changed anything– their activism guns had no bullets. (more…)
Free Keene’s Ian discusses with Ernest Hancock on yesterday’s “Declare Your Independence“:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzzlcddBhZM (more…)
Some government agent whined to YouTube about his appearance in a video of the chalking of the Concord federal building by NH liberty activist Biker Bill and YouTube obediently pulled down his videos. Bill has re-uploaded them to a different video service. Full story here. The censored videos are below:
(more…)
This weekend, Kat Kanning and The Emperor of Free Grafton were violently arrested for chalking the sidewalk outside the federal building in Concord. These are the second and third arrests for chalking at the federal building in two months and activists are going back next month. Apparently feds ignored a child who was also chalking the sidewalk, so apparently activists were targeted for their message. Here’s the full story from CDEvolution.org’s Jason Talley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNs6l5QGNfc
The joke is on you if you still think the “justice” system actually renders any. Case in point: Eight activists were charged with misdemeanor trespassing at the county jail earlier this year. (That one can “trespass” on property that is open to the public is another ludicrous issue, but I digress.) All eight activists were arrested together, so the circumstances of the cases were identical. The activists’ trials were broken up over multiple months. First, in August, was Jim Johnson. Jim was convicted of misdemeanor trespass and is currently appealing to a jury trial. Then, in September, was a multi-defendant trial involving yours truly, Lauren Canario, and fellow Free Keene bloggers Sean Murphy and Dale Everett. In this trial, the same man in the robe, Edward Burke, admitted that we couldn’t be found guilty of misdemeanor trespass, meaning it was not proven that it had been adequately communicated to us that we needed to leave. However, he convicted us all of violation-level trespass. Of course, this wasn’t what we were charged with at the start of the trial and unlike the misdemeanor charge, the requirements for conviction of this charge revolve around the defendant supposedly knowing he or she was not supposed to be in the place in question. Of course, we thought we could be there, as we’d been to the old jail countless times doing the exact same thing and had never been told to leave. However, we were not allowed to ask questions that would have been relevant to such a defense, because at the time of the trial it was still a misdemeanor, so the robed man ruled against those questions, saying they weren’t relevant to whether or not we were told to leave and didn’t, which is what needed to be proven by the state gang for a misdemeanor conviction.
If that wasn’t inconsistent and arbitrary enough for you, we come to the trial of Menno Troyer, who was quietly found NOT GUILTY of violation trespass a few days after his trial! (more…)
Recent Forum Posts
