Suppressing Internet Crime. I've got another priority for the Obama Administration: ending the massive crime spree going on every day, all over the world, via the Internet. People come into our homes and offices, and try to rob us and destroy our data, every day. The Internet is clogged with BILLIONS of scamspams that ISP's dutifully deliver to the email folders of hundreds of millions of people every day. I, for instance, get a minimum of 20 scamspams a day. Multiply that by only 100 million, because not everyone who has an email address gets scamspam, and you see that the Internet is seriously overburdened by thieves.
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Thousands of viruses, worms, and Trojans are also put out onto the Internet by insane individuals and perhaps also by hostile governments (Communist China most prominently, Russia perhaps second), and hack attacks by individuals and governments invade every computer they can get into, whereupon the invaders rummage around, steal info they find desirable, alter the content of websites, and even erase crucial information out of malice or military aggression. NOTHING is done about it, not any of it.
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The cost to society is massive. Entire industries are built around computer security, which would have to exist even if Internet crime weren't massive. But the cost could be borne by corporations and governments alone if the more casual attacks on individuals were ended. Hundreds of millions of computer users worldwide need to spend money that many can ill afford, to protect themselves from viruses and such. Why should anyone bear the entire cost of defense against crime? Protecting us from crime is a governmental responsibility. Indeed, it is one of the most basic of government purposes, one reason we consent to pay taxes at all. But our governments have disowned any responsibility for what happens online.
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That must change.
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In that many hackers and creators of viruses and phishing websites might be hard to catch, the base rule of crime and punishment comes into play: where the likelihood of punishment is high, the severity of punishment can be low; but where the likelihood of being caught is low, severity of punishment must be high.
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When people attack thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, the penalty must be extremely severe: physical punishment up to and including death, preferably by torture. Flogging is a good punishment, that achieves instant results. Imprisonment is a costly and useless punishment that achieves permanent change of behavior for the better relatively rarely. Recidivism is very high, in part because prisons, at least in the industrialized world, are much too pleasant. Indeed, for many people, life in prison is one long vacation, with no responsibilities — no rent to pay, no bills, no food to buy. And the people "inside" are the same people they would be associating with "outside".
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If a hacker were to be sentenced to five years in prison for each computer invaded, that could mount up to a very long term in a very short time. Indeed, even if we were to be so lenient as to sentence him/her (but usually "him") to only one year in prison for each computer invaded, those years could add up very quickly and very high. If the total exceeds 100 years, the sentence should automatically convert to death, since essentially no one can be expected to live for 100 years after being convicted of a crime. And why should society pay an average of perhaps $24,000 current dollars a year, year after year, to keep scum at leisure?
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In like manner, if a person defrauds people with one of these "Nigerian scams", a harsh penalty of five to ten years in prison for each person defrauded would very, very quickly produce an automatic death penalty.
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And as soon as the first Internet criminal is sentenced to death, we could expect to see a dramatic decrease in the kind of crime for which s/he was condemned to die. As soon as the execution is carried out, live via Internet (but not on YouTube or any other website where it could be replayed endlessly, lest it push some demented loser over the edge into violent crime), we could expect the number of all Internet crimes to plummet by perhaps 90%. The second execution, live via Internet, would then produce a 90% drop from what remained after the earlier execution, especially if a legend were shown under the picture of each execution in progress: "Notice to Internet criminals: We're coming for you too. Keep attacking society, and society will KILL you."
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P.S. Lest spammers who do not attempt to defraud, think they will get a pass, Congress and the UN should mandate severe penalties to bulk senders of unsolicited commercial email and the like as well. The costs of even nonfraudulent spam are high. A Wikipedia article says that an investigation by the California state legislature estimated that spam costs the U.S. $13 billion a year. That is a cost we should not have to bear, especially but not only in a time of economic downturn. Let businesses advertise in the periodicals and legitimate websites that are hurting for advertising revenues. And let their executives know that they PERSONALLY will be held PHYSICALLY accountable for abuses, even if such punishments, including imprisonment and flogging — a hugely effective punishment — should be (intended to be) less than lethal. Accidents happen. Some people get killed in prison. Some die of heart attacks during physical crises. Spammers should think about that.
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2d P.S. The people who display popup ads that evade popup blockers, and in the process of fiting and evading the popup blocker, freeze people's machines — in effect stealing control of people's machines and their time — should as well be punished severely. We have popup blockers because we don't want to see popups. Some website owners insist on attacking us anyway, and hijack our machine for two minutes each time they inflict popups on us against our will. They should be flogged.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,252 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:43 PM

 
Prosecute Drug Users for Narcoterrorism — and Kill Repeat Offenders. Mexico is being ravaged, and its very survival as a functioning democracy is at risk, because of the irresponsible and criminal behavior of American drug users. They must be prosecuted as co-conspirators in the crimes of narcoterrorists and made to pay for their crimes.

Ciudad Juárez, whose mayor and other elected officials have moved to El Paso in recent months and commute, ended the year with more than 1,600 drug-related killings. Nationwide, more than 5,700 — criminals, soldiers, police, journalists and bystanders — were killed. That's more than twice the estimated 2,300 slain in 2007.

Philip Heymann, a Harvard law professor and expert on terrorism, characterized the ongoing violence in Mexico as "narcoterrorism, given the tactics used," including beheadings and efforts to silence and intimidate society through threats, gruesome videos and text messages.

"I think the situation in Mexico is very, very dangerous for everyone, including the United States," he said. "The situation hasn't yet registered in the mind-set of Americans, but it will, especially when Americans become the target. All you need are two, three Americans killed and the issue will suddenly become important." * * *

"Ultimately," [a] senior [U.S.] administration official said, "we're not trying to wipe out drug trafficking in Mexico. We're trying to reduce it from the existential problem threatening democracy in Mexico and law enforcement. And you can't really do that until you weaken drug traffickers and strengthen the security forces."

There have been suggestions that Mexico could become a "failed state", and the government of the entire country collapse due to the massive violence and systematic subversion thru bribery of the government by narcotraffickers. Essentially all the money that funds narcoterrorism and bribery comes from U.S. drug users, who are the essence of the problem. They must be held to account, prosecuted as accessories to mass murder, and punished with extreme severity. Drug use in this country must be DESTROYED, along with international drug trafficking, and not just via Mexico. We need a war of extermination of the international drug trade, in which the militaries of the world deliberately provoke resistance to police action by drug traffickers — and then shoot them dead without trial. Napalm the fields where drug crops are grown, and the labs where plants are converted to drugs. Strafe the "people" working in the fields, be it growing or harvesting, and be it in Colombia, Afghanistan, Mexico, Hawaii, or anyplace else. Kill them all without trial. If they're working the drug fields, they are guilty. The only purpose of a trial is to establish guilt or innocence, but if people are caught in the very commission of a crime, why is a trial necessary? The narcoterrorists don't hold trials! Why should we? Just shoot them, strafe them, bomb them, napalm them. And if they surrender, rush them thru trial and kill them by some painful method of execution. Hoisting them slowly off the ground by a noose around the neck and letting them kick for a minute, then lowering them to the ground for a few minutes, and repeating many times until they finally expire, as to replicate what they do to their drug victims.
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Americans are responsible for Mexico's nitemare, and should be made to pay for their crimes.
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Drug pushers, druglords, and corrupt cops and officials who enable the drug trade should all be killed, as an automatic and inescapable penalty. Drug USERS need to be punished with extreme severity, up to and including DEATH for repeat offenses after being sent to prison and/or rehab. If they can't find the internal strength to take advantage of the opportunities society gives them to clean up their lives, we can provide external stiffening of their will — or simply END their lives so they no longer predate the planet.
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What loss would their deaths be? Some are going to die if we don't stop them anyway, from their contemptible, criminal vice — NOT "disease".
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CNN tonite added this info about the drug war in Mexico:

[Robert Pastor, a Latin America national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s] and [Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy center] note that the United States helps fuel the violence, not only by providing a ready market for illegal drugs, but also by supplying the vast majority of weapons used by drug gangs.

Pastor says there are at least 6,600 U.S. gun shops within 100 miles of the Mexican border and more than 90 percent of weapons in Mexico come from the United States.

And it's not just handguns. Drug traffickers used a bazooka in Tuesday's shootout with federal police and army soldiers in Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Texas. * * *

"It's as if the burden of being the main arena of the anti-drug war has overwhelmed Mexican institutions," [Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs,] said. "The occasional anti-drug battle is being won, but the war is being lost. And there's no prospect the war is going to be won."

Some gutless fools advocate that we surrender to drugs and just let society be destroyed by massive addiction, as tho addiction is harmless. Every nite, the people of this country are assailed by propaganda by the drug-legalization crowd, that "herbal cigarets" (Craig Ferguson),"weed" or "pot" (all kinds of "comics") and other drugs, including cocaine and heroin, are absolutely harmless — and even if there should be some trivial health hazard, people are entitled to ruin their lives if they want to. That is idiocy.
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Most people do not ever believe that the terrible things they hear happen to others could happen to them. Other people, who have miserable lives, give up on ever living well, so surrender themselves to slow death, tho they delude themselves into thinking they aren't killing themselves, they're only numbing the pain by "self-medicating" it away with potentially lethal toxins. In the process, they ruin the lives of everyone around them, and even drive cars and enormous SUVs under the influence, killing total strangers who have no reason to believe that the vehicle coming toward them is going to jump the line and kill them because the sh*head at the wheel is zonked out on marijuana — a supposedly "harmless" drug.
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What is the U.S. death toll — the only one that selfish, self-centered, tribalist Americans seem to give a damn about — from drugs? Reliable figures from disinterested parties are very hard to find online. The only figures readily on hand are from drug-legalization propaganda websites, which admit to 'only' 17,000 deaths a year. We are led to think that this is out of a population of 300 million Americans. The actual base population, according to a note at DrugWarFacts.org's own website?

An estimated 3 million individuals in the United States have serious drug problems.

Think about this. The population of Chicago is about 2.8 million, a bit lower than the estimated number of people in this country who have serious drug problems. If 17,000 people in Chicago were dying EACH YEAR from drugs, would we regard drugs as harmless? That's a death rate of 0.57% A YEAR. Multiplied by 300 million, that's 1,700,000. We get the same result if we divide 3 million people with a serious drug habit into 300 million Americans = 100, times 17,000 deaths = 1,700,000 deaths, if the total population were the meaningful number — as "DrugWarFacts.org" wants you to believe — in this one country alone. To put that in context, the actual total number of deaths in the United States, from all causes, was 2,448,017 in 2005. 1,700,000 is 69.4% of 2,448,017. Added TO 2,448,017, that would give us an annual death rate of 4,148,017, up more than 2/3 from the current national death rate. Of course, not all Americans would become addicted to drugs if they were legalized, but at a death rate of 0.57%, for each million additional people who did become addicted, we could expect 5,700 to die — EACH YEAR. If we have 3 million addicts, and 17,000 deaths, at a time when we try to suppress drugs, how many addicts, and deaths, would we have if we smiled upon drug use? 10 million, and 57,000 deaths per year? 20 million, and 104,000 deaths A YEAR?
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DrugWarFacts.org gleefully reports that 85,000 Americans die from alcohol each year. How meaningful is that? Well, how many Americans use alcohol regularly? 64%, according to CBS News. How many Americans die from alcohol each year? DrugWarFacts.org says 85,000. What is 64% of the U.S. population 18 or older? Well, 25% of the population is under 18, which means that on a base population of 300 million, 225 million are 18+. 64% of that is 144 million. 85,000 deaths represents 0.059% per year. That compares to 0.57% for deaths from drugs: 9.66 TIMES — hell, why quibble? TEN TIMES as many as from alcohol! "Drugs are harmless"? No.
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The figure of 17,000 deaths from the drugs that society tries to control, does not include deaths from AIDS, which is, despite Government lies, not an infectious disease at all, but only a drug injury suffered by willful users of drugs and, in the case of children, by the victims of their mother's drug use when they were in her uterus.

In 2006, the estimated number of deaths of persons with AIDS in the United States and dependent areas was 14,627. In the 50 states and the District of Columbia, this included 13,968 adults and adolescents, and 48 children under age 13 years.

The cumulative estimated number of deaths of persons with AIDS in the United States and dependent areas, through 2006, was 565,927. In the 50 states and the District of Columbia, this included 540,436 adults and adolescents, and 5,369 children under age 13 years.

How do we know that AIDS is a drug injury, aside from the admitted fact of massive drug use among the bulk of AIDS patients? Consider the discrepancy in AIDS between men and women:

According to the CDC, women continued to account for a growing proportion of new AIDS cases nationally, rising from 7% in 1986 to 27% in 2004. The most recent data (2004) show that African American women account for 67% of new AIDS cases among women; and Latinas account for 15% of those cases.

Now consider the distribution of deaths by gender of people admitted to have died from drugs:

Males are disproportionately represented among deaths related to drug misuse or abuse. In the average metropolitan area, males constituted 68% of drug misuse deaths reported to DAWN, ranging from 52% in Louisville to 77% in Phoenix. After adjusting for population size, the rate of drug misuse deaths per 1,000,000 population for males was 2.4 times that for females.

Let me do the math for you, since in the first quote, AIDS cases are given for women, but not men, and in the second quote, drug-related deaths are stated for men but not for women. 27% of AIDS being found in women = 73% in men. As for people killed by drugs outrite, 68% are men — "ranging from 52% in Louisville to 77% in Phoenix". A rate of death for men that is 2.4 times that of women is a fancy and confusing way of saying that 2/3 of drug deaths are of men. AIDS = 73% male; drug deaths = 66% to 68% to 77% male. Coincidence? No.
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To sum up, drugs are horrendously, nitemarishly destructive, which is why they were outlawed to begin with. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and are destroying entire countries, from Colombia to Mexico, and are ravaging Afghanistan, where the drug trade funds the Taliban in its war against the United States. The people ultimately responsible for this devastation are not just the pushers and druglords but, in all truth, the users. Without their money, the druglords would have no reason to slauter each other, innocents who get caught in the middle, police, mayors, and soldiers in Mexico and Colombia. Nor could they buy the guns and even BAZOOKAS they are using to fite the Mexican ARMY and murder elected officials who are incorruptibly trying to suppress the druglords' criminal enterprises. American drug USERS are wholly responsible for this inexcusable criminality, and must be held to account. If they don't STOP what they're doing, WE must stop them, by any means necessary, up to and including DEATH.
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Perhaps the threat of violent death at the hands of society will provide the incentive these disgusting losers need to kick their detestable habit. If not, let them die. They want to die. Let's help them get what they want: death. And once we start killing drug USERS, we will have an end to the bulk of this planet's drug-trafficking problem, because American drug users fund the bulk of the international drug trade, and produce the bulk of the deaths and devastation. They must PAY for their crimes.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Republicans Kick Obama in the Teeth, Again. President Obama's idiotic attempt to cozy up to Republicans has been met with another vicious rebuke. New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, who lured Obama into a trap by pretending to accept nomination as Commerce Secretary, sprang that trap today and announced that he just realized that he was a bad fit for an Administration with which he has no sympathy. Oh yeah. He only now realized that. All his years in office did not prepare him to know that, when the offer was first extended. What a bunch of bullsh(asterisk).
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How many times do Republicans have to say "This is war" before President Obama fites back and crushes the bastards underfoot?
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The people did NOT vote for bipartisanship. They voted to OUST the Republicans and institute something completely new. Isn't that what "change.com" was all about? CHANGE?
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The change we wanted was not in the nastiness between parties, but in the policies in place in Government. Let the Republicans be as nasty as they want. They just show themselves to be horrible, miserable excuses for human beings, as indeed they are. To avoid nastiness at the cost of compromising away all Democratic, Liberal principles is beneath contempt. Learn. The Republicans are your ENEMY. The Republicans are the PEOPLE'S enemy. The Republicans are the WORLD'S enemy. Crush them, destroy them, leave them in burning tatters so that some responsible new party might emerge from the embers.
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Obama needs to make a brief public statement:

When we came to Washington, as huge victors in the November election, part of what we hoped to accomplish was to change the tone in Washington and replace partisan bickering with constructive discussions above partisan rancor, to see what we could achieve, working together, for the public good. All our efforts to reach out to the Republicans have been met with vicious, ugly, partisan sniping and active disrespect for me, for the Democratic majority in both houses, and, by extension, for the great majority of Americans who voted to oust Republicans and institute change.
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I now say to Republicans, We get it. You don't want bipartisanship. You don't want to work for the American people. You just want to appeal to your base of fanatical, Radical Rightwingers. You are welcome to them. We have no interest in compromising our principles to accommodate the worst people in this country. You can have every last Radical Rightist in the Nation. We will work for the benefit of the rest, the decent people of the United States, and the world.
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You can consign yourselves to the trash heap of history and become the latter-day Whigs, if you like. We will march into the future as the victors of this election, and, if we do what the people sent us here to do, of many other elections yet to come. We are not so arrogant as to speak of a "permanent Democratic majority", as Karl Rove and his ilk spoke of a "permanent Republican majority" not so long ago. Because that kind of talk can make us as delusional and isolated in fantasy as the Republican Party has become. Instead, we will touch base not with our "base" as a party but with the American people, keeping ever in mind their interests, not the interests of the Radical Right, the fanatics, the doctrinaire free-market and free-trade loons who have brought us to the verge of planetary calamity.
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We are changing the rules, because that's part of what the people want changed. We will abolish the filubuster, and thus end the tyranny of a radical minority over the legislative process. We have the mandate of the people to do the people's bidding, and not be stopped by recalcitrant economic and social troglodytes, from moving into a future in which the benefits of the economy go to the many, not the few.
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We have the majority. We should not need more. And once we have abolished the filibuster, which we will do even if it is the only thing we get done in the Senate in the next entire month, via round-the-clock Senate sessions if need be, we will push thru every single act that we feel the Nation needs. If not one Republican votes for our program, so much the better. Once it works, we can go to the people in the next elections and say "The Republicans wanted you to suffer. They wanted us to fail. They did everything in their power to stop us from reinvigorating the economy and spreading the wealth to working people, out of the hands of capital and back in the hands of labor. Now we ask you to enlarge our majorities so we can see thru our program of change to make the United States not just the greatest but also the fairest Nation on Earth."

(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,244 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:34 PM

 
Let's Make a 'Bailout' Deal. The Republican Party wants to obstruct the Obama Administration's plan to rescue the economy from the ever worsening track it is on, toward another Great Depression. Let's make a deal: we will carve out Republican districts and Republican states from the rescue and not burden them with so much as one cent of the Federal spending at issue. In that the bulk of Red States and districts are poor, despite our pumping trillions of (current) dollars into them over the course of the last 70 years, we don't have to worry about their minimal contributions to the Federal budget. We could offer them a tax credit for their share of any tax increase (if any) that would have to be passed to pay for the rescue plan. But since there is not supposed to be any tax increase, there wouldn't be any need to pass a tax credit.
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Let's just write this provision into the stimulus bill:

Out of respect for the unwillingness of some Americans to take the approach the rest of us want, we hereby exclude from the expenditures to be made as a consequence of this measure every state whose Senators vote against this bill, and every district whose Representative votes against it. No moneys whatsoever from this act will go to those areas. They may proceed by their own free-market, tax-cutting and other economic strategies of their own choosing, consonant with the United States Constitution, to restore their local economy without intrusion of any Federal moneys that may flow from this current measure.

If you don't want the money, you don't have to take the money.
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If they believe that cutting taxes is all they have to do, and cutting Big Government is the way to save society from encroachments on personal liberty, they are free to cut all the state, county, and local taxes they wish, trim local and state government budgets, cut their own governments' payrolls, cut the number of non-Federal employees, cut services to the people of their areas, and see if that works!
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If they want to be included in the moneys to be "doled" out by the stimulus plan, they are hypocrites. If they genuinely don't want these measures for the rest of us, they plainly don't want them for themselves. So let them do without.
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Why would Republicans want to change a plan they pretend to be sure will not work? Why try to make little changes that would allow them to vote for a bill they pretend to believe cannot work? If it won't work, just vote against it, period. And then WHEN it doesn't work, you will be proved right, the Democrats will be proved wrong, and you can blame them alone for that failure, not contaminate yourselves and lay yourself open to blame too
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You can also enact locally, as I say above, all the measures that you assert are the true and proper cures to our difficulties. Make your philosophy work in your own states and districts, and you will teach the world — not just the Blue States, but the entire world — that free-market economics and the total defeat of Big Government is in fact the way to solve our economic — and social — problems. Put YOUR money, not OURS, where your mouth is.
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It's time for the Blue States to stop shipping money by the boatload to the worthless white trash of the South. Tell them plainly, "Pay your own way. You keep talking free market while cashing Government checks. Have the integrity to turn away Government aid. Prove that you are right the only way you can: by practicing what you preach."
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:14 PM

 

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:17 PM