Strict Surveillance States Supposedly Supply Security, So...
...what the fuck?
My whole life, I’ve been listening to the government tell me how its MOST IMPORTANT JOB is to keep people safe, and if we just allow it a little bit more control over our lives, we’ll finally have the safety required for a functioning society. I’ve talked a bit over the years about the USA PATRIOT Act and how it massively expanded government power, with the predictable result of that power being used against American citizens and not just “foreign terrorists” as was initially promised.
But over the holiday season, we got a few perfect examples of why the government’s “mo’ surveillance mo’ better” logic falls completely flat. The first was the horrific murder of two Brown students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, on a campus blanketed with 1,200 security cameras. Surely all this surveillance would (finally) come in handy to solve the crime, right?
Not so fast.
TWO DAYS after the murders, Providence Police released this incredibly helpful video of the shooter and asked for the public’s help to identify him:
Do you recognize this person who has arms and legs and walks upright? Contact Providence Police right away! 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Unfortunately, if this shooting taught us anything, it’s that many of our officials are WILDLY unqualified to handle a “shit hits the fan” situation:
For days, Providence officials attempted to answer basic questions from the press — but by and large they had no answers to give. They didn’t know who the perp was, they didn’t know who else was in the room, and — despite all those cameras — they didn’t have any good footage of the shooter.
But you have to realize, they’re tired!
Finally, a homeless Redditor “cracked” the case by tipping off authorities to a suspicious car, which lead to a rental car agreement in the name of Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente. With THAT lead, police determined that after the shooting, Neves-Valente went to the home of MIT Professor and former classmate Nuno F.G. Loureiro and killed him as well. (It’s unknown if Neves-Valente had a beef with Loueiro or thought Louriro would help him escape.)
So while the Providence Police were running around trying to find a single collective ass with all their combined hands, the shooter killed again — twice if you count the bullet he put into himself in a storage locker.
After the assailant was found dead, it came out that a Brown custodian had reported him to campus security multiple times — but nothing was ever done about the suspicious person casing out classrooms on campus.
So just a quick recap — Brown university is blanketed by surveillance, but it didn’t capture ANY useful footage of the shooter. Officials claim this is because the shooting occurred in an old building, though others suggest the cameras were turned off at the behest of groups who didn’t want footage falling into the hands of ICE. The university ignored the reports from staff, and the police stumbled around for days until the case was solved by a guy living in a university basement.
After an epic cock-up like this, there’s only one logical response: a standing ovation.
LOOK HOW GOOD WE DID, GUYS! NOW THAT ANNOYING PRESS WILL GO AWAY AND WE CAN GO BACK TO COLLECTING OUR PAYCHECKS IN PEACE!
The scene reminded me so much of this one:
A self-congratulatory spectacle celebrating the complete and utter failure of “the experts” to actually do their supposed jobs — which, as they tell us OVER AND OVER is to “keep people safe.”
Sadly, we got another example of this THE NEXT DAY in Australia, as father and son Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24 killed 15 people and wounded dozens more when they opened fire on a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach.
Thanks to tight Australian gun laws, citizens were “armed” with only their limp dicks and camera phones — giving us some “great” footage of the massacre as it unfolded. (If this guy had a gun, he could have stopped the shooting nearly immediately. Instead he sits and watches for 10 minutes.)
Normally I wouldn’t post a video that’s SO LONG, but it really drives home the point that when seconds count, the police are just minutes away — even if there’s a police station right down the street.
(It should be pointed out that the attack didn’t actually last 20 minutes. From the video above, it looks like the cops are returning fire about 4 minutes in — you can see the gunmen’s stances change from confident and reckless to duck and covering.)
Why the delayed response? Here’s the official story — you can do with it what you like.
The first police responders to the Bondi massacre were armed with Glock pistols that lacked the lethal range of the Akrams' rifles and shotguns. Two police officers were among the wounded.
Yet the terrorist who was killed at the scene was shot…with a handgun.
This is a terrible tragedy in the name of terrorism, and a future similar event can only be prevented by…tightening Australian gun laws.
But it turns out the elder Akram HAD government approval to own these guns — even after his son “hit the radar” for his association with ISIS-affiliated groups in 2019.
Clearly there’s only one response to the massive failure of the Australian surveillance and permission state — ban anonymous speech!
And this is fine because Australia doesn’t have American-style free speech laws. You can say what the government allows you to say, end of story, no apologies.
Authorities will also be able to prohibit protests for up to three months following a terrorism incident.
Isn’t it CRAZY that no matter what the problem is, the answer always seems to come back to “holding social media companies to account” and changing speech laws? If the government is so inept that it approves a firearms license for the father of a suspected ISIS sympathizer, THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE PUBLIC — the problem is a government that writes checks it can’t cash, then gaslights us about the issues.
It’s been a while since the Global War on Terror days, but doesn’t ISIS stand for
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria?
Might that organization have a TEENY bit to do with religion?
But just as we saw during covid, the overwhelming force of the state is typically reserved for those who are still more or less connected to the system. It’s much easier to arrest a middle-aged grandma for mean Facebook posts than it is to, say, stop grooming gangs from rampaging through your country (or the subway). It’s much easier to yank the bank accounts of licensed truckers than confront violent BLM protestors. It’s easier to prevent an unvaccinated person from getting into a restaurant than from sneaking over the border.
A quick reminder of what Australia did to people who didn’t follow covid rules:
But it seems these strict rules are never enforced on the people who are making life miserable for others. Every week I’m reading stories about how another innocent was attacked by a criminal with a history longer than…
When an EMT asked about the suspect, a cop responded, “He’s a regular. He usually punches. I guess today he decided to escalate from his usual.”
Pea, was slapped with an assault charge over the latest incident, has racked up a long list of prior arrests for assault, property destruction and unlawful use of weapons.
He was booked eight times this year alone in the King County jail, but none of them resulted in felony charges, records show.
If we can’t even keep people safe from the threats we know about, why on earth should we we agree to ANY more “for the greater good” surveillance that just so happens to fail when it could actually be useful?
We have enough laws on the books as it is — but those laws are pointless if the authorities are simply going to ignore them. How can you rail on about the evils of crime while actively ignoring current laws? (Or worse, calling them racist.)
We don’t need more CCTV cameras on street corners or internet hall monitors going through our social media feeds — what we need is to ditch idiotic progressive crime policies and put forth a renewed effort to actually keep our streets safe.
Maybe then people will think about taking the bus again.
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A very Swedish way of looking at government and the state is to compare it to a family. The idea was, to run the nation to be a good, supporting and loving family.
The image still holds, and is I think valid for many nations, only now the government runs the state as if it was the Manson family.
The whole Brown shooting fiasco was a classic example of idiotic leftist policy, incompetent politicians and officials and a 'media' that no longer does their jobs. It's also a classic example of democrat gerrymandering. This is in my back yard so to speak.
Providence, Newport and parts of the South Counties all are solid blue. Get out into the hinterlands though, pretty much solid red. Yet, not a single conservative US congress critter. Instead, we have Jackie slowly calcifying in his lifetime seat, the incredibly ignorant, corrupt bloviate, Shelly Outhouse and the beta Seth Magaziner as a representative. Remember too that lackluster Gina Raimondo came from here too.
The Providence crew isn't much better. The Mayor is a disgrace, the governor even more of a disgrace and the DEI hire police chief can barely speak English. We will never get an intelligent report on what really went sideways.
Seems that anything the democrats touch, turns to crap.