Link Salad, the Law and Disorder Edition
-- The Anarchists vs. the Islamic State - Seth Harp, Rolling Stone, Feb. 14, 2017
"It's impossible to say whether the Rojava Revolution has succeeded as a model of civil society because the country is so thoroughly mobilized for war. There are soldiers and police everywhere, fires burning in the streets. The bullet-riddled buildings are drafty and cold, with only sporadic electricity. The Kurds' chief pleasure, though, aside from tea and tobacco, seems to be one another's company. Their food is monotonous - bread, tomatoes, beans, sometimes mutton - but every meal is eaten communally, with second portions, and the place of honor, forced on any guest present. I was there two weeks and barely spent any money. I shared in whatever people were eating and slept wherever they slept. They are desperate for imports, yet if I ever so much as took a dollar bill from my wallet the Kurds would ward it off like a talisman of evil. I saw no rich people, no corporations, no banks, no big houses, no fancy cars, no one homeless or begging or starving. The people were of one class and improbably cheerful. They were united in support of the YPG and seemed to worship Öcalan, whose portrait hung in every building."
-- Europe's Child Refugee Crisis - Lauren Collins, The New Yorker, Feb. 27, 2017
"Wasil arrived at the Jungle with only the clothes he was wearing, a few changes of underwear, and five books. In Serbia, he’d got sick and seen a doctor, who had given him an illustrated Ladybird edition of “The Princess and the Frog,” along with a Penguin Readers paperback of “The Cay,” Theodore Taylor’s 1969 young-adult novel about a boy who loses his mother in a torpedo attack and washes up on a desert island. In a Slovenian jail, he’d picked up an educational text called “Islam and Muslims.” Some German journalists had contributed a heavily highlighted “Animal Farm” and an ancient copy of “West Side Story.” The Google Drive on his cell phone, to which he’d uploaded the hostage picture that he hoped would underpin his asylum claim, was his most precious possession, the twenty-first-century version of a diamond sewn into a hem."
-- An Amazing (Illegal) Plan to Defeat Terrorist Drone Attacks - Douglass Starr, WIRED, Feb. 28, 2017
"Imagine you're part of a great swelling crowd, one of 60,000 people who fill up the cauldron of noise and chaos that is a sold-out football stadium. For you and everyone around you, the game is an open-air gathering place, a chance to steam and scream and worry about nothing except the other team’s menacing D. To the security officials responsible for your safety, it is a constant source of worst-case-scenario planning. They install metal detectors; they enlist a kennel’s worth of bomb-sniffing dogs; they plant concrete pillars around the perimeter to keep out cars; they train personnel in the dark art of bag searching; they even obtain a temporary flight restriction from the FAA to keep all aircraft above 3,000 feet for a radius of 3 miles. They spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours to keep you safe, yet they know that none of it can stop a 3-pound off-the-shelf drone from flying in and dropping something on the crowd. Maybe it’s a toxic mist. Maybe it’s a bomb. Whatever it is, you’ll never see it coming, and because there is currently no legal way to bring down a drone with any accuracy or reliability, there’s nothing anyone can do but wait for it."
-- Dan Herbert lives to serve and protect cops-even Laquan McDonald’s killer - Maya Dukmasova, Chicago Reader, Feb. 15, 2017
"On a crisp morning in early November, attorney Dan Herbert, dressed in a blue suit and red tie, a thick, worn manila folder in hand and a razor nick drying on his chin, strides up the steps of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse on the corner of 26th and California. Inside, his client Jason Van Dyke-who was caught on video shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times-stands awkwardly in line for the metal detector, his aging father by his side. Herbert dispenses cheery hellos and friendly handshakes to the sheriff's deputies at the checkpoint. He asks that they let Van Dyke skip ahead in line and rides the elevator to the second-floor cafeteria to fill a large Styrofoam cup with black coffee. On the way to the wood-paneled courtroom where Van Dyke and his father sit demurely in a front pew and a few reporters lounge in the jury box, Herbert admits that this is his first time defending a client on murder charges. But it doesn't seem to sway his confidence."
-- The architecture of fear: how Caracas has adapted to constant threat of violence - Sofia Barbarani, The Guardian, Mar. 1, 2017
"In the slums, there is less money for protection, although shards of glass embedded in concrete attempt to serve the same purpose. But that didn’t stop thieves from breaking into 21-year-old Gustavo’s supermarket. “We have fences and cameras, but they broke down the back wall with a metal rod,” he says. His uncle recently returned to his home town in China after being shot on a busy commercial street in Caracas."
-- The FBI Has Quietly Investigated White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement - Alice Speri, The Intercept, Jan. 31, 2017
"WHITE SUPREMACISTS AND other domestic extremists maintain an active presence in U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. A striking reference to that conclusion, notable for its confidence and the policy prescriptions that accompany it, appears in a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide from April 2015, obtained by The Intercept. The guide, which details the process by which the FBI enters individuals on a terrorism watchlist, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File, notes that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers,” and explains in some detail how bureau policies have been crafted to take this infiltration into account."
"It's impossible to say whether the Rojava Revolution has succeeded as a model of civil society because the country is so thoroughly mobilized for war. There are soldiers and police everywhere, fires burning in the streets. The bullet-riddled buildings are drafty and cold, with only sporadic electricity. The Kurds' chief pleasure, though, aside from tea and tobacco, seems to be one another's company. Their food is monotonous - bread, tomatoes, beans, sometimes mutton - but every meal is eaten communally, with second portions, and the place of honor, forced on any guest present. I was there two weeks and barely spent any money. I shared in whatever people were eating and slept wherever they slept. They are desperate for imports, yet if I ever so much as took a dollar bill from my wallet the Kurds would ward it off like a talisman of evil. I saw no rich people, no corporations, no banks, no big houses, no fancy cars, no one homeless or begging or starving. The people were of one class and improbably cheerful. They were united in support of the YPG and seemed to worship Öcalan, whose portrait hung in every building."
-- Europe's Child Refugee Crisis - Lauren Collins, The New Yorker, Feb. 27, 2017
"Wasil arrived at the Jungle with only the clothes he was wearing, a few changes of underwear, and five books. In Serbia, he’d got sick and seen a doctor, who had given him an illustrated Ladybird edition of “The Princess and the Frog,” along with a Penguin Readers paperback of “The Cay,” Theodore Taylor’s 1969 young-adult novel about a boy who loses his mother in a torpedo attack and washes up on a desert island. In a Slovenian jail, he’d picked up an educational text called “Islam and Muslims.” Some German journalists had contributed a heavily highlighted “Animal Farm” and an ancient copy of “West Side Story.” The Google Drive on his cell phone, to which he’d uploaded the hostage picture that he hoped would underpin his asylum claim, was his most precious possession, the twenty-first-century version of a diamond sewn into a hem."
-- An Amazing (Illegal) Plan to Defeat Terrorist Drone Attacks - Douglass Starr, WIRED, Feb. 28, 2017
"Imagine you're part of a great swelling crowd, one of 60,000 people who fill up the cauldron of noise and chaos that is a sold-out football stadium. For you and everyone around you, the game is an open-air gathering place, a chance to steam and scream and worry about nothing except the other team’s menacing D. To the security officials responsible for your safety, it is a constant source of worst-case-scenario planning. They install metal detectors; they enlist a kennel’s worth of bomb-sniffing dogs; they plant concrete pillars around the perimeter to keep out cars; they train personnel in the dark art of bag searching; they even obtain a temporary flight restriction from the FAA to keep all aircraft above 3,000 feet for a radius of 3 miles. They spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours to keep you safe, yet they know that none of it can stop a 3-pound off-the-shelf drone from flying in and dropping something on the crowd. Maybe it’s a toxic mist. Maybe it’s a bomb. Whatever it is, you’ll never see it coming, and because there is currently no legal way to bring down a drone with any accuracy or reliability, there’s nothing anyone can do but wait for it."
-- Dan Herbert lives to serve and protect cops-even Laquan McDonald’s killer - Maya Dukmasova, Chicago Reader, Feb. 15, 2017
"On a crisp morning in early November, attorney Dan Herbert, dressed in a blue suit and red tie, a thick, worn manila folder in hand and a razor nick drying on his chin, strides up the steps of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse on the corner of 26th and California. Inside, his client Jason Van Dyke-who was caught on video shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times-stands awkwardly in line for the metal detector, his aging father by his side. Herbert dispenses cheery hellos and friendly handshakes to the sheriff's deputies at the checkpoint. He asks that they let Van Dyke skip ahead in line and rides the elevator to the second-floor cafeteria to fill a large Styrofoam cup with black coffee. On the way to the wood-paneled courtroom where Van Dyke and his father sit demurely in a front pew and a few reporters lounge in the jury box, Herbert admits that this is his first time defending a client on murder charges. But it doesn't seem to sway his confidence."
-- The architecture of fear: how Caracas has adapted to constant threat of violence - Sofia Barbarani, The Guardian, Mar. 1, 2017
"In the slums, there is less money for protection, although shards of glass embedded in concrete attempt to serve the same purpose. But that didn’t stop thieves from breaking into 21-year-old Gustavo’s supermarket. “We have fences and cameras, but they broke down the back wall with a metal rod,” he says. His uncle recently returned to his home town in China after being shot on a busy commercial street in Caracas."
-- The FBI Has Quietly Investigated White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement - Alice Speri, The Intercept, Jan. 31, 2017
"WHITE SUPREMACISTS AND other domestic extremists maintain an active presence in U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. A striking reference to that conclusion, notable for its confidence and the policy prescriptions that accompany it, appears in a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide from April 2015, obtained by The Intercept. The guide, which details the process by which the FBI enters individuals on a terrorism watchlist, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File, notes that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers,” and explains in some detail how bureau policies have been crafted to take this infiltration into account."