I'm gonna go with "unlikely." Thailand's army declares war on 'vice' - Features - Al Jazeera English: "Government pressure has coincided with the US decision to downgrade Thailand to its lowest ranking on human trafficking in an annual assessment last month, a decision that "disappointed" the country, said Songsak Saicheua, the Thai foreign ministry's head of US and Pacific affairs. "There is no illegal industry in Thailand," he claimed in an email. But according to Kan Yuenyong, director of Bangkok-based think-tank Siam Intelligence Unit, it is estimated that industries operating on the fringes of the law represent as much as 50 percent of the country's overall economy."
"I no longer have the energy for meaningless friendships, forced interactions or unnecessary conversations." - Joquesse Eugenia
In today's 'People Who Probably Shouldn't Be Cops' News. Afternoon links: California judge strikes down the state death penalty - The Washington Post: "A Georgia police officer who shot a kid who apparently answered the door holding a Nintendo Wii controller won’t be charged, despite a grand jury’s initial recommendation. The same officer previously shot a kid who was removing his backpack, under the mistaken belief that he was reaching for a gun."
America's Response to Child Refugees Fleeing Bloodbaths Is to Take Terrible Care of Them and Send Them Back | Alternet: "Those seething with so much rage and xenophobia that they’d hurl ugly epithets in the faces of children fleeing bloody violence in Central America bring shame to the whole nation. But the response of mainstream America hasn’t been much better. The media’s characterization of what’s going on at our southern border as a “crisis,” politicians pointing fingers at one another and Washington’s refusal to provide the resources necessary to care for a small wave of refugees — not to mention the bipartisan push to send them back home — is just as shameful when one considers the context.In June, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that in 2013, the global population of refugees from war and persecution hit 51.2 million — exceeding 50 million for the first time since World War II.Half of them were children.The vast majority were “internally displaced persons,” homeless people within their home countries. Many live in fetid refugee camps run by underfunded NGOs, where they face continuing privation and abuse."
Marijuana Smell Doesn't Justify Car Searches, Says MA Court - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Courts have "repeatedly held that the odor of marijuana alone can provide probable cause to believe that marijuana is present." Following up on such precedent, a Maryland prosecutor writes for Police Chief magazine that "no law enforcement agency should forget the importance and accuracy of the human sense of smell." And just last month, Ybor City, Florida, cops followed up on their important and accurate honkers to dismantle a man's truck. They found nothing. Now, at least, Massachusetts residents May gain a bit of a respite from searches by police wielding the Fourth Amendment-piercing power of their sense of smell... In its Craan decision, the Bay State's Supreme Judicial Court built on its 2011 Commonwealth v. Cruz ruling, saying "in view of the decriminalization of marijuana occasioned by the 2008 initiative, 'the odor of burnt marijuana alone cannot reasonably provide suspicion of criminal activity.'" (Sullum covered the Cruz ruling at the time.) That's because the odor of marijuana doesn't indicate the quantity, and possession of less than an ounce is decriminalized in Massachusetts in the wake of the passage of Question 2."
Brickbat: They're Just Pals - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland has accused Ashers Baking Co. of illegal discrimination and threatening to sanction it if it doesn't bake a cake featuring Muppets Bert and Ernie. A customer ordered the cake, which would also feature a slogan supporting gay marriage and the logo of a gay right's group, but the bakery canceled the order, saying it would violate the director's Christian beliefs."
Of course. NSA sees your nude pix 'as fringe benefits of surveillance positions,' says Snowden - Boing Boing: "You've got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22. They've suddenly thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility, where they now have access to all of your private records. Now, in the course of their daily work, they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sort of necessary sense. For example: an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation, but they're extremely attractive. So what do they do? They turn around in their chair, and they show their coworker. And their coworker says, "Oh, hey, that's great. Send that to Bill down the way. And then Bill sends it to George, George sends it to Tom, and sooner or later, this person's whole life has been seen by all of these other people. It's never reported. Nobody ever knows about it, because the auditing of these systems is incredibly weak."
Fake TSA screener infiltrates SFO checkpoint, gropes women - Boing Boing: "He was allegedly drunk, and had at least two victims before SFO's crackerjack private aviation security outfit, Covenant, noticed... Because all his victims had already flown by the time anyone noticed that the guy in khakis, a blue polo, and blue gloves who'd been steering women into the private screening booth wasn't actually airport security, they can't charge him with anything except being drunk in public. Meanwhile, the woman travellers whom America has systematically trained to defer to aviation authority or face brutal punishments apparently didn't notice anything amiss."
"You owe it to yourself to have that element of irreducible rascality."
Clever.
Always re-post: "The triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism."
Don't Blame Libertarians for Bipartisan Failures in Iraq and Afghanistan - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Have you heard the news? American foreign policy is in tatters BECAUSE LIBERTARIANS! Seriously, GOP blowhards are attacking folks such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for his foreign policy failures (Paul is slow to invade and occupy countries). Funny thing is, the Republican Party's preferred strategy of stupid goals topped off by terrible execution isn't working so well. And don't expect any help from a Democratic Party and a president that hasn't met a country they don't want to invade or drone...
All large-scale and long-term military engagements should actually be put to a specific congressional vote as dictated both by the Constitution and by common sense. The use of military force should be governed not by a set of infinitely expandable terms such as ensuring human rights and expanding democracy, but far narrower and less grandiose ideals of national defense. As Rand Paul wrote recently in a response to criticisms from Rick Perry and other Republicans, “Anytime someone advocates sending our sons and daughters to war, questions about precise objectives, effective methods and an exit strategy must be thoughtfully answered.” Most importantly, foreign policy should not be reduced to a synonym for military action and covert operations. The most powerful weapon the United States has for expanding peace and enlarging prosperity has nothing to do with guns and bullets and everything to do with the way in which we have created a nation of 300 million-plus people who generally get along peacefully while pursuing radically different visions of the good life."
...You got that? It’s not our go-it-alone crusaderism and robust military presence all over the world that has managed to lower America’s “favorability” in the eyes of longtime allies and client states such as Britain, Germany, Japan, and Egypt. It’s our hypothetical willingness to stop being globo-cop that’s the issue, not our very real attempts to nation-build and even region-sculpt in parts of the world that have asked us to leave...
Obama’s foreign policy certainly hasn’t lacked for the use of force. It has, however, lacked for successes, as became clear during an unintentionally hilarious yet telling State Department press conference in May. State’s Jen Psaki said that, in her view, “the president doesn’t give himself enough credit for what he’s done around the world.” “Credit for what?” one reporter interrupted. “I’m sorry, credit for what?” The others in the room started laughing. Around the same time, NBC’s Richard Engel, who is not known as a staunch critic for the administration, was asked to name a few countries with which relations have improved under Obama. His reply? “I think you would be hard pressed to find that...I think the reason is our allies have become confused." First under Bush and now under Obama, the one constant in American foreign policy is a lack of any conceivable constraint on whatever the president deems expedient at any moment in time. This is disastrous, especially when it comes to military and covert actions, because it precludes any serious public discussion and prioritization...
That’s not just bad for the U.S. It’s also bad for our allies, who have no framework by which to structure their own actions and expectations. The president is allowed to both declare red lines and then to ignore them when they are crossed, to dispatch troops or planes or supplies according to whim. In all of this, Obama in no way represents a break from Bush, but perfect continuity...
For the entirety of the 21st century, leading Democrats and Republicans have shown their inability to conduct foreign policy as anything other than unmitigated disaster. If a libertarian alternative—one that emphasizes cultural and economic exchange and uses military intervention as a limited, last-best-option that should be explicitly sanctioned by Congress—strikes you as immature and unlikely to succeed, that says more about your powers of self-delusion than you’ll ever understand."
Climatologist John Christy: "The Science Is Not Settled" - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Dr. Christy is an outlier on what the vast majority of his colleagues consider to be a matter of consensus: that global warming is both settled science and a dire threat. He regards it as neither. Not that the earth is not heating up. It is, he says, and carbon dioxide spewed from power plants, automobiles and other sources is at least partly responsible. But in speeches, congressional testimony and peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, he argues that predictions of future warming have been greatly overstated and that humans have weathered warmer stretches without perishing...
“I detest words like ‘contrarian’ and ‘denier,’ ” he said. “I’m a data-driven climate scientist. Every time I hear that phrase, ‘The science is settled,’ I say I can easily demonstrate that that is false, because this is the climate — right here. The science is not settled.”
Dr. Christy was pointing to a chart comparing seven computer projections of global atmospheric temperatures based on measurements taken by satellites and weather balloons. The projections traced a sharp upward slope; the actual measurements, however, ticked up only slightly. Such charts — there are others, sometimes less dramatic but more or less accepted by the large majority of climate scientists — are the essence of the divide between that group on one side and Dr. Christy and a handful of other respected scientists on the other...
...charts showing the divergence between actual global temperature trends and computer model projections. Here's one such:
Yet another TSA screener doesn't know that DC is part of America - Boing Boing: "An Orlando TSA screener told a DC-based reporter that he'd need a passport to fly, because DC isn't a state, so a DC driver's license wasn't valid ID. This isn't the first time we've written about this here, and it's not an isolated incident, according to the TSA. The real problem with this kind of dunderheadedness is that it makes it clear that the whole TSA rigmarole is just a pointless, humiliating, expensive dumbshow. If a TSA screener doesn't have the basic smarts to know that DC is part of the USA, it calls into question his ability to make good judgments about anything. Either terrorism is an existential threat to America, in which case the TSA checkpoints should be staffed by highly skilled crackerjacks, or it's not a big deal, in which case, we should be keeping our shoes on and flying with as much hair gel as we can carry. But saying that a single aviation attack is the end of America as we know it, and acting like it's a small enough risk that we can staff checkpoints with dimbulbs makes you wonder if this isn't about civil service empire-building, government contractor pork, and a general contempt for the American public, and not about terrorism at all."
7/17 - tweaked my lower back pretty good [pretty bad?] yesterday doing heavy [for me] deadlifts, so taking a few days off to heal up. Thinking I'm out of the gym til Monday, and next week is a light/deload kinda week, in prep for some PR/1RM testing the following week. Physical activity for the rest of this week limited to little more than some relaxed stretching while lying around bemoaning lifting with my ego and the fact that the strongest painkiller I can get my hands on is Tylenol. As penance for the lack of training posts I present to you a photo of the legendary Frank Zane and a super-cool martial arts movie gif set I came across. Onwards.
