Uncategorised
Christopher Dorner was a renegade LAPD cop who made headlines for several days in February 2013.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner_shootings_and_manhunt
~Dorner was probably not involved in cryptocurrencies, but he is a good representative of the spirit of individual responsibility and ethics that will be necessary for crypto and decentralized economies~
The LAPD has a long history of abusing vulnerable groups and Christopher Dorner seems to have been an honest cop who decided to straighten out his department.
In 2007 Dorner was involved in the arrest of a schizophrenic man. During the arrest another officer kicked the 'mentally ill' person in the head, among other things, while the man was handcuffed. This is not that unusual, but Dorner filed a complaint against his fellow officer, which is extremely rare. Ultimately he was fired, accused of fabricating the accusation against a fellow officer.
Mr Dorner spent several years appealing the firing until the court made its last ruling against him.
On February 1st, 2013 journalist Anderson Cooper received a dvd with Dorner's complaints against the LAPD.
Over the next several days, Dorner would kill several officers and some family members of officers, causing the police to go into a frenzy to defend itself. Numerous higher ranking officers considered possible targets were given bodyguards. The police shot up several vehicles that they thought he might be in, including one with two older women who were delivering newspapers.
Finally he was located, in a cabin near the command post police were using for the hunt.
Police set fire to the cabin they believed he was in, rather than negotiate and try to capture him.
He had outmaneuvered them so thoroughly they did not want to risk him getting past them again.
Police claim he committed suicide as the cabin burned, but his body was not recovered.
The extremes the LAPD went to in protecting themselves were stunning.
There has never been any comparable effort by the LAPD to protect any threatened group to the extent they protected themselves. In most shootings involving a highly trained person the police will let the person kill until they run out of bullets, then they will move in when it is safe. Police were criticized roundly for doing that in numerous recent shootings, including the Parkland Florida shooting, the Pulse nightclub shooting, the Las Vegas shooting etc.
In this case though the police themselves were being targeted and they went full out to protect themselves, even shooting several innocent people etc.
Was Dorner a good guy or a bad guy?
For the police he was a bad guy, obviously. But a lot of people supported him, and to this day there are occasionally references to him in news articles, which invariably bring out support for Dorner.
What was it that he actually did?
The police tried to portray him as a dangerous murderer who was a threat to the public, but actually Dorner was known as an extremely ethical person. He saw a situation where an entire police department had free reign to use violence against vulnerable populations without any restrictions. He went fully through all the 'proper' procedures to correct problems, but was up against a very corrupt organization. Whether or not a person wants to support such an extreme response, there is no question that he was on the side of justice. He was defending vulnerable people, and gave his life for that, while his fellow officers were focused only on protecting themselves.
Should an honest police officer avoid rocking the boat?
Or should they fight against their former colleagues, as Dorner did violently and Serpico and a few others have done more peacefully?
Below are links to Dorner's manifesto. Several links are provided in case they are removed.
https://genius. com/Christopher-dorner-manifesto-annotated https://web.archive.org/web/20190801061820/https://genius.com/Christopher-dorner-manifesto-annotated
http://www.laist.com/2013/02/07/christopher_dorners_manifesto_in_fu.php
https://factreal.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/chrisdornermanifesto.pdf ~pdf~
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jbh7CNTwtEA Video, his 'manifesto' being read. 1100 thumbs up, 87 thumbs down.
~For anybody who hesitates to consider Dorner respectable, some questions~
1) If you were part of a group that was being attacked routinely by police, and there was literally no effective legal recourse, would you want somebody defending your interests?
Or should you simply submit to the powerful group?
2) Did he actually try to fix the problems he saw by going through the accepted normal routes?
He did. He filed complaints with his supervisors, then took his case to the courts and used appeals until they were exhausted.
3) Did his actions have any effect?
Actually there seems to have been a huge increase in police accountability measures since his death, and it seems to have started about the time he went on his rampage. A person could argue against the violence of his acts, but his violence was targeted. The police killed and wounded several innocent people as they were looking for him. Since then there has been a steady increase of interest in unnecessary killings by police. http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2018
~One point worth adding ~
If body cameras had been worn during the incident in which Dorner accused another officer of attacking a handcuffed person, he would still have his job and quite a few people would not have died.
Body cameras are not a complicated thing. There are cameras at Walmart that cost less than $50 which can record hours of high quality video. Walmart also sells duct tape or staples which could be used to attach the bodycams. And yet officers routinely keep their cameras turned off, and it is the norm for police chiefs and administrators to encourage their officers to not record things that would look bad in the media. There have been many cases where several officers each claimed they forgot to turn their cameras on, or that they malfunctioned. Absurdity that could only happen if it were tolerated, even encouraged, from the top of those organizations.
Body cameras will not solve all police abuses, especially when higher level types are complicit. Note the case of Sergio Alvarez
"Rachel Alvarez has disputed that. In the statement read for her at the sentencing, she contended she found evidence in March 2012, six months before the department said it first learned of the crimes, of possible wrongdoing of which the police were aware. “I came across an Internal Affairs paper I found in my own home that mentioned one,” she said, adding that her husband told her at the time that he had been ordered to leave his dash cameras on while on patrol. She wrote that the allegation was never investigated.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article41086659.html
Also "... no fewer than eight individuals in the West Sacramento police department knew about officer Alvarez's sexual misconduct and criminal acts as of March 2012, months prior to his attack on plaintiff...".
and
"In West Sacramento, one civil lawsuit against the department and the city, filed on behalf of a mentally ill woman who attorneys say was twice coerced into giving Alvarez oral sex and once was sodomized by him, alleges that trading sexual favors for non-enforcement of laws was so well known within the 70-member force that officers nicknamed it “tickets for treats.” "
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2015/11/01/police-sex-crimes-licenses/74954514/
Imagine if employee theft were a problem in banks. Should banks give employees the option of turning off their cameras?
Why should police officers be held to a much lower level of accountability, and given extra opportunities to hide misconduct, than bank tellers?
~Also worth adding~
Dorner had a sterling character. Nobody who researches his case honestly would accuse him of being anything other than a person of the highest ethics, though perhaps a little prone to violence.
It is important that individuals act on their own ethics, and not hide within organizations that give them costumes and shiny badges to substitute for real character.
But also important that a person always hesitate to violence.
Sometimes violence is necessary, and a person could argue whether that was the case here, but the vast majority of times when people use violence it does not lead to anything constructive. My opinion is that Dorner had exhausted all reasonable options and chose that path as his only remaining option.
Also worth noting that when Dorner was on his rampage there were a number of articles and videos that showed people holding sign along highways supporting him.
As plentiful as they were, pictures of those signs are almost unfindable on Google today.
Some of the top comments from https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J2gQnb1oUKM
"One man stands up to corruption. Fired"
"Looks like you guys messed with the wrong bull"
"Chris Dorner: The last honest LAPD cop. A true hero. He exposed their cowardice and sociopathy so they murdered him for it."
"This is just one person that challenge the corrupt and double face system that we live in."
Chris Dorner. A true American hero. He fought against corruption and walked a righteous path in the process. RIP
~
Three months after Dorner was killed...
"Rigoberto Arceo 34, May 11, 2013 Los Angeles CA – Arceo, who was a biomedical technician at St. Francis Medical Center, was shot and killed after getting out of his sister’s van. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department says Arceo “advanced on the deputy and attempted to take the deputy’s gun.” However, Arceo’s sister and 53-year-old Armando Garcia — who was barbecuing in his yard when the incident happened say that Arceo had his hands above his head the entire time."
https://whatzenalotionbar.wordpress.com/tag/schizophrenic/
Every person has mixed ancestry at some points in their history, but one of the main products of the melting pot is people who are recently mixed, people who can identify their recent composite races.
It's been the normal custom throughout history for males to 'be' the race of their fathers and females to 'be' the race of their mothers, but melting pots often are also a mix of politics, and people commonly confuse their origins to adapt to some political expediency.
~
At some point in the future, there might be three perceived races among most people.
1) The original race of humans which diverged into many races.
The common paradigm, and that which the current popular scientific mind sees as 'obvious', is that there were numerous 'original races' which dispersed over the globe and formed the various groups existent today. Of course the 'original' races had to have a common root, and that common root descended from 'original races', ad infinitum.
"Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA are thought to be of separate evolutionary origin, with the mtDNA being derived from the circular genomes of the bacteria that were engulfed by the early ancestors of today's eukaryotic cells."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA
A more historically useful paradigm is that there was one original race, a pre or early human group, from which all modern humans diffuse / originate. This would be a geographically spread out group of human ancestors, analogous to how today’s various races have roots in different areas. The analogy will be complete if humans keep expanding and any currently isolated groups are able to speciate.
example / some unknown early hominid species from which almost 100% of modern human DNA originated.
2) The male and female races.
There is a possibility that men and women are more 'two symbiotic species' than 'two halves of one species'. Very speculative but possible. It's a paradigm that appeals to some, not to others, but it could develop as mainstream. It’s based on the obvious roots of the two genders in two different symbiotic organisms which combined to form the precursors of animals. See above Wiki quote on mtDNA.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_sexual_reproduction
https://theconversation.com/the-y-chromosome-is-disappearing-so-what-will-happen-to-men-90125
https://crev.info/2018/02/y-chromosome-disappearing/
3) The local race.
If parts of the various human tribes that are still fairly distinct races can continue to evolve apart from melting pots 'post space travel era', then there will be a rapidly growing diversity of ethnic races. Space colonization might allow this but any isolated group that has even a small amount of outside DNA would probably not evolve as fast in a unique direction.
In the past there was not space for two hominid races in one region, there still is not today, but space travel may change that in a hundred years or less.
If that does occur and numerous isolated human populations survive, there will be all sorts of Darwinian adaptations to space that will cause human groups to diverge much faster than they have on earth,
At some point the divergence will be fast enough that where a person is in outer space will determine what the local race is. Since a background of 'too much genetic diversity' is as fatal to a species as a background of 'not enough genetic diversity' is to an individual, there will probably be attempts to limit sub groups of humans to regions of outer space.
It's considered a 'racist theme' to even examine the negatives of increasing racial diversity, but at some point the political correctness will have to yield to facts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_diversity
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreeding_depression
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
Horses were well adapted to many environments, and spread around the world, presumably with access to genetic diversity in the long term from distant subgroups. In other words there might be a several hundred year delay, but the genes of a horse in one part of the world would have reached a separate population in another part of the world.
Horses went extinct in North America about 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. Some people speculate their extinction was due to humans but that seems unlikely. There have probably been many other species as well that expanded and then both consolidated in a region and continued to diversify with distant groups that were consolidating. If it were a good genetic strategy there would be a lot of evidence for that, but the lack of many such species, and the general tendency of species to succeed long term as one isolated population, seems significant even if it isn't easily explained in an inoffensive way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse
It seems likely, from nature, that a species goes through phases. When it has just differentiated and is expanding then genetic diversity is good. Once it has reached a 'consolidation' phase then there is probably a price for continuing to diversify with other sub groups. Whether the human race, or any specific sub group, benefits or loses from being 'melting potted' will probably become clearer in the future, but the fact that there are many species, rather than few, would seem to point to their being some mechanism that prevents any one species from continuing to both consolidate and diversify in any ecosystem.
~In Progress
~
Many traditions have ancestor legends about an early race. There is a blurry line between whether these legends refer to a past or a future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
http://www.ancient-literature.com/other_gilgamesh.html
http://looklex.com/e.o/texts/religion/gilgamesh01.htm
~In Progress~
Most people have some experiences like the following examples.
~
Years ago I knew a guy who was unimpressive in every respect except that he liked to talk about things he did while serving in the United States military.
He said that his time in Vietnam was like having an erection that lasted for months. He could, and did, rape any woman he wanted to rape, and kill any man he wanted to kill.
Today that uberpredator job has shifted largely from soldier in distant land to policeman in a neighbor’s town.
It is the same adolescent mentality of creating a gang to get extraordinary power then creating a paradigm to justify acting on dark urges. But now it develops slowly, and with a more solid foundation.
The United States has a vast corps of predatory ‘saviours’, people who will watch you and try to punish you, according to their paradigm for your own good.
All a person can do is curse them and wish death on them before they cause too much harm.
~
Several days ago I registered some bounty hunter domains and wrote the page Bountyhunting.
Nobody knew I had registered the domains except the registrar, but still there were hits on non existent pages trying to find out if there were certain pages created.
Several years ago, more than a decade in fact, I made a website about a detox I worked at. Among other surprises was that Baidu, the Asian search engine, was hitting my server with numerous requests for password protected files that might be stored unprotected. If I made xyz file protected in one folder, Baidu would look in other directories to try to find an unprotected copy. Google was even worse. They had some sort of browser spying that indexed pages that had been created through a website editor and then tried to get those pages even if they had never been online.
So, who would have been able to find out that I registered certain domains a few days ago, and also know that my websites always have a specific log in, and then try to snoop on what bounty websites I may have started?
Bounty hunting is an innocuous thing, a simple way for poor people to get low or medium paying tasks. But it can also be a less civil activity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance
https://bigthink.com/experts-corner/why-the-surveillance-state-must-end
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnqk5m/the-surveillance-state-and-you-crabapple-100
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/china-surveillance-state-artificial-intelligence
Is the sort of surveillance practiced commonly now by governments a harmless activity? Most of the people who are involved in surveilling use some sort of security mentality to justify their intrusiveness. They pretend that they are reducing crime or preventing mischief.
Almost all people involved in surveillance are younger people. It is one of many types of policing that older people generally do not participate in.
Anybody who has some familiarity with psychology beyond academics is aware of the harm surveillance does to both sides. It neither solves crimes nor prevents problems.
Unfortunately, at least in the United States there is not much a person can do to prevent that kind of offense, aside from wishing curses on those government agents and other gangsters who surveill others without very strong cause.
A popular criticism of crypto is that it will enable certain crimes. However the biggest difference between crypto and fiat is that fiat is completely anonymous, while crypto is not. If you buy, sell or transact crypto, you need to connect to a network, and all of your activities are visible, both on the network and on the respective blockchain. https://www.wired.com/2013/08/bitocoin-anonymity/
~
Hackers have always been a threat, but there is one massive new threat that will emerge with crypto.
In many countries governments are provided back door access to most operating systems by 'security companies' and even by other governments. Theft by law enforcers has always been a big problem in most countries, but with the advent of crypto this problem is likely to increase.
Hundreds of thousands of 'law enforcers' around the globe, who have routine backdoor access to most computers will soon have access to the private keys of wallets, exchange passwords etc.
From government employees who believe that they have the right to commit crimes to those who try to manufacture crimes for unknown reasons, cryptocurrency will probably face a substantial threat from 'law enforcers'.
As with other crimes committed by 'law enforcers', the percentage caught and prosecuted will be minuscule.
https://www.coindesk.com/narcotics-agent-stealing-bitcoins/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/stealing-bitcoins-with-badges-how-silk-roads-dirty-cops-got-caught/ same plot https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/30/politics/federal-agents-charged-with-stealing-bitcoin/index.html updated again https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/ex-agent-corrupted-by-silk-road-sentenced-to-2-additional-years/
https://theintercept.com/2014/09/28/u-s-officials-invented-terror-group-justify-bombing-syria/
https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/
http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-is-manufacturing-terrorism-cases-2016-6
Some of the most absurd examples of law enforcement gone awry are western 'law enforcers' masquerading as North Koreans online https://www.zdnet.com/article/trojan-malware-attacks-by-north-korean-hackers-are-attempting-to-steal-bitcoin/ Most people with some computer literacy can discredit stories like that easily, but these attacks have probably earned millions of dollars for the 'law enforcers' who perpetrate them.
Page 69 of 76
"It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand."
~ Apache