Category: reason

This story is mostly for Matt Welch, who likes baseball, goats,
and diapers (in that order, according to his Wikipedia page).

Former baseball slugger, Madonna boy toy, and steroid enthusiast
Jose Canseco recently bought some goats, put diapers on them, and
then…things got weird:

A couple hours after acquiring his new goats, Canseco was pulled
over. 

Apparently, the officer got a kick out of Canseco’s new animals
in the backseat.

Read more here.

And if you care about the power of teh Interweb
and the radical, non-filtered speech acts it enables, follow
Canseco (the more admirable half of the Bash Brothers!) on
Twitter.

Past episodes of “more signs we’re living in a Philip K. Dick
novel” include the strange case of
Fetus-Free Pepsi, the creation of an online dating
service built around Atlas Shrugged, the al Qaeda plot to
kidnap the
star of Cinderella Man, and of course the entire career of
Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Mandatory reading (unless you’re already tripping balls on CAN-D
and Perky Pat layouts): “Which
Philip K. Dick Story Are We in Today?”

This story is mostly for Matt Welch, who likes baseball, goats,
and diapers (in that order, according to his Wikipedia page).

Former baseball slugger, Madonna boy toy, and steroid enthusiast
Jose Canseco recently bought some goats, put diapers on them, and
then…things got weird:

A couple hours after acquiring his new goats, Canseco was pulled
over. 

Apparently, the officer got a kick out of Canseco’s new animals
in the backseat.

Read more here.

And if you care about the power of teh Interweb
and the radical, non-filtered speech acts it enables, follow
Canseco (the more admirable half of the Bash Brothers!) on
Twitter.

Past episodes of “more signs we’re living in a Philip K. Dick
novel” include the strange case of
Fetus-Free Pepsi, the creation of an online dating
service built around Atlas Shrugged, the al Qaeda plot to
kidnap the
star of Cinderella Man, and of course the entire career of
Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Mandatory reading (unless you’re already tripping balls on CAN-D
and Perky Pat layouts): “Which
Philip K. Dick Story Are We in Today?”

WARSAW-“This COP is already
locked in failure,” declared Anjali Appadurai at a press briefing
as the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP-19) of the U.N. Climate
Change Convention (UNFCCC) slouched toward its close on Friday
night. She added, “This COP has delivered nothing.” As it happens,
Appadurai was one of the activists who participated in the
“massive” walkout of self-styled civil society at the conference on
Thursday, but there she was on the podium at as representative of
the
Third World Network. Never mind. The environmental ministers
and diplomats are still at it trying shape some kind of deal.

So what would “success” look like to Appadurai and other climate
change activists here at the Warsaw conference? First, the rich
countries would have to admit their
historical responsibility for damaging the climate and commit
to cutting their greenhouse emissions by 40 percent below what they
emitted in 1990. Currently, developed nations have committed to
cuts amounting to about 18 percent by 2020.

Second, it is not enough that the rich countries promised in
2009 at the Copenhagen climate change conference to “mobilize” $100
billion per year in climate change funding for poor countries
beginning in 2020. Meena Raman, another representative of the Third
World Network, cited the demands from the Like-Minded Developing
Countries for $70 billion in climate change funding by 2015. The
poor countries are also adamant that the billions “mobilized” by
rich countries should not come from the private sector: that’s just
way too uncertain. Poor country governments will accept only public
funds in the form of grants.

Citing the awful devastation wreaked on the Philippines by
Typhoon Haiyan, the poor country negotiators claim is that it’s far
too late to mitigate or adapt to climate change. It’s now time to
pay for the effects of climate change. So the third demand from
poor countries is that the rich countries set up a separate funding
mechanism in addition to the annual $100 billion already promised
to compensate poor countries for the
loss and damage caused by climate change.

The rich countries have been resisting all three of these
demands. Instead, they are focusing on how to reach some kind of
binding global treaty at the COP in Paris in 2015.
Under that agreement all countries, rich and poor, are supposed to
make nationally determined mitigation commitments. That is, each
country is supposed tell the rest of the world how and by how much
they plan to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions after the new
treaty comes into force in 2020. Poor countries counter that they
will not make any such commitments until the rich countries make
firm climate change funding commitments.

The rich countries led by U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern
would count the conference a “success” if it achieved two things.
First, negotiators would establish uniform greenhouse gas
mitigation performance standards that could be compared directly
across all countries. Second, the conference would adopt a
timetable in which each country is expected to make its initial
mitigation pledges public and available for criticism, preferably
by late 2014 or early 2015. The rich countries also do not want to
create a new loss and damage bureaucracy, but have those issues
handled under the already existing adaptation provisions of the
UNFCCC.

The COP was supposed to close at 6 pm (CET) but the negotiations
continue and are expected to run well into the night. My final
dispatch from the Warsaw climate conference, reporting on what it
delivered, if anything, will appear on Monday

Last November, voters in Los Angeles County
approved a measure requiring the use of condoms on the set of
pornos shot in the county. Predictably, the mandate was quickly
challenged in a lawsuit, both for the broad powers of enforcement
and
on free speech grounds. Over the summer, a court rejected the
free speech claim but
did rule to narrow the powers of health inspectors tasked with
targeting porn sets, requiring, among other things, warrants and
judicial review. The county did not appeal the ruling.
Nevertheless, some porn companies have been driven out of LA,

and California altogether, and permit requests in Los Angeles
county have plummeted. The Huffington Post
reports:

The LA County Department of Public Health told HuffPost
that 11 porn companies have been issued public health permits since
January. And yet there are many more adult film organizations in
LA, where an estimated 90 percent of porn movies in the
U.S. are made.

Industry insiders say that many adult film companies have not
applied for public health permits, adding that even those who have
a public health permit have yet to be inspected by the county.
County officials did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiry as to
whether the department has conducted any inspections of porn
sets.

So it could be that porn producers are still in LA and just filming
without either public health or film permits. That’s what Michael
Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, thinks is
happening, even though industry officials like [Free Speech
Coalition CEO Diane] Duke insist otherwise.

Weinstein, who authored the condom mandate, has been very
critical of LA County for not enforcing the law. Without
enforcement, porn companies don’t feel the need to use condoms on
set, Weinstein said to HuffPost.

“Would people speed more,” he added, “if they knew they wouldn’t
get caught?”

Weinstein refuses to acknowledge the civil liberties
implications of his puritan nanny state
crusade. When the county declined to appeal the court’s ruling on
the condom mandate, Weinstein
told the Huffington Post that county officials “obviously have
a callous disregard to the will of 1.6 million voters… The
department is bureaucratic and lazy. They want to do as little as
possible.”

Weinstein and his fellow crusaders, though, want to do as much
as possible to drive porn out of Los Angeles, and California, as
possible,
with state lawmakers looking at regulations that would require
the use of safety goggles on porn sets where contact with bodily
fluids is likely (all of them?).  Supporters and fetishists of
porn regulation and enforcement look ever more likely to regulate
and enforce the entire industry completely out of their reach.

Reason TV previewed the condom mandate last year:

What would have happened if
the CIA
the KGB
you and
me the OswaldBot 2000 missed his target on November 22,
1963, allowing John F. Kennedy to finish out his term? You can
never prove a counterfactual, but I think the evidence is pretty
strong that (1) the country would have
suffered through the Vietnam War anyway, and (2) the president
probably would not have been able to
pass a domestic agenda that was anywhere near as sweeping
as LBJ’s. Put another way, the liberal nostalgists who dream of
bygone Camelot would probably like that timeline even less than
they like ours. (A question to ponder: How would it have affected
the ’60s protest movements to have a Kennedy instead of a Johnson
in the White House?)

If all that New Frontier nostalgia is
getting you down, I’ve got one Kennedy link for you that is
mercifully devoid of reverence: Paul Krassner’s classic hoax
“The Parts That Were Left
Out of the Kennedy Book,” which many readers took to be true
when it first appeared. Published in 1967, the piece pretended to
be a series of outtakes from William Manchester’s popular tome
about the assassination,
The Death of a President. It begins with some material
that was well known to journalists but had not yet been reported,
such as the president’s infidelities, and then it grew steadily
less reliable, culminating in…oh, I won’t spoil the ending for
you. But I will warn away anyone who doesn’t want to read anything
involving Lyndon Johnson’s genitalia.

Bonus link: I talked about JFK conspiracy
theories on
Canadian TV this morning.

Sterling Wheaten, a K9 handler for the Atlantic
City, New Jersey, Police Department, has a special talent for
making unpleasant waves without consequences—so far. Only five
years on the job, and he’s been named in half-a-dozen lawsuits, and
investigated (but “exonerated”) repeatedly by Internal Affairs.
Now, just months after siccing his dog on a man who was already
lying on his face on the ground after being pounded by other police
officers (see the image at right), he’s accused of jumping and
arresting a woman because she videorecorded him roughing up her
brother.

From
Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia:

[Janine] Costantino says Wheaten arrested her brother after he
got into an altercation with another patron.

“Wheaten had my brother in a headlock and his arms were limp and
his legs were weak,” Costantino said. “I screamed out that it was
police brutality and that I was videotaping it all.”
That’s when she claims Wheaten turned on her.

“He was running at me and he says, ‘Give me the phone you
b**h,’” she said. “He grabbed my bun and he was slamming my
forehead into the floor.”

Wheaten then arrested Costantino but court records show the
charges against her were later dropped. Costantino says she’ll
never forget what one officer told her the night of the
incident.

“He’s like, ‘Oh, that’s your first mistake,’” she said. “You
shouldn’t be videotaping police officers.”

Wheaten is one of six officers under investigation for using
excessive force against 20-year-old David Connor Castellani.
Castellani had been ejected from a casino for being under age.
Surveillance video of the incident (see below) shows him mouthing
off at the cops as he walked away. Apparently wounded in their
pride, the cops rushed him (he was across the street) and laid into
him with fists, feet, and batons. Late-arriver Wheaten let his dog
do the work after Castellani was down.

From Wallace McKelvey at
pressofAtlanticCity:

Atlantic City officials and activists called for increased
scrutiny Tuesday as more allegations of excessive force surfaced
about one of six police officers recorded on video allegedly
beating a 20-year-old Linwood man this summer.

David Connor Castellani filed a lawsuit against the city, its
police department and six officers Tuesday in U.S. District Court
in Camden.

On June 15, Castellani was removed from the Tropicana Casino and
Resort. A short time later, at 3:10 a.m., Tropicana surveillance
video obtained via subpoena showed him being tackled by police,
with a K-9 released on him. Castellani’s injuries required 200
stitches and ongoing physical therapy, family members say. …

At least six other lawsuits filed in the last three years allege
that Sterling Wheaten, the K-9 officer seen in the video, abused
his power during the course of arrests. Wheaten graduated from the
Atlantic County Police K-9 Academy this May. Tracy Riley, his
attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. One
of the lawsuits was dismissed and another settled out of court.

That article details the six lawsuits naming Wheaten and
predating the Castellani lawsuit, alleging such acts as punching,
beating, and throwing people down stairs. One plaintiff also claims
that Wheaten attacked him with a police dog.

The Comcast report refers to “an internal police report which
shows that Atlantic City Police internal affairs investigated
Wheaten 15 times between 2008 and 2010 for allegations of
misconduct, some of those allegations being excessive force. Each
time however, the department concluded Wheaten did nothing wrong or
that there was not enough evidence to clearly prove he did
something wrong.”

McKelvey says there are “21 complaints against Wheaten over a
three-year period” and that complainants included then-Chief John
Mooney and Deputy Chief Henry White. White alleged excessive force
and Mooney complained of “simple assault and standard of
conduct.”

The former police chief and the deputy chief complained
about Wheaten and he’s still on the job? You have to wonder just
what kind of photos he has filed away. And how long the people of
Atlantic City will have to tolerate him and his buddies.

Update: Costantino’s phone is MIA, along with her
video. According to a pressofAtlanticCity
report:

“Wheaten stood up and handed the phone to a smaller man in a
plaid shirt and said, ‘you got this?’,” the suit reads. “To which
the man in the plaid shirt said in sum and substance, ‘yah, I’ll
take care of it. Don’t worry’.”

That man, also unidentified in the suit, allegedly put the phone
in his pocket and walked away. The phone was never recovered after
the arrest.

So we’ll have to make do with video of the Castellani
incident.

Yesterday, a bunch of environmental and social
activists staged what they were pleased to call a “massive” walkout
from the UN climate change conference venue in Warsaw. I watched it
take place and took some cell phone photos,  and then reported
that perhaps a 100 activists, or to be really generous, maybe 150,
had
“massively” walked out.

I returned on Friday to the conference where I hear it repeated
numerous times by various remaining members of “civil society” that
800 activists had actually joined the walkout. Then I start
googling around and find that some news outlets had reported that
number as being factually so, e.g,. Reuters,

Environment News Service, and
Grist. Really?

Amusingly, as I walked into the National Stadium today, I
overhead the following conversation between two young activists
while we three waited to hand over our coats at the cloakroom:

He: I walked out yesterday, did you?

She: Yes, but I had to walk back in almost immediately because
we had meeting with a delegation.

I kid you not.

When I was a reporter in Central America, I was introduced to
the concept of “lying for justice” by some supporters of the
Sandinistas who explained to me that sometimes one had to tell lies
in order to be heard.

Reports exaggerating theatrical performances of this sort are a
disservice to readers, listeners, and viewers of the news.

Yesterday, a bunch of environmental and social
activists staged what they were pleased to call a “massive” walkout
from the UN climate change conference venue in Warsaw. I watched it
take place and took some cell phone photos,  and then reported
that perhaps a 100 activists, or to be really generous, maybe 150,
had
“massively” walked out.

I returned on Friday to the conference where I hear it repeated
numerous times by various remaining members of “civil society” that
800 activists had actually joined the walkout. Then I start
googling around and find that some news outlets had reported that
number as being factually so, e.g,. Reuters,

Environment News Service, and
Grist. Really?

Amusingly, as I walked into the National Stadium today, I
overhead the following conversation between two young activists
while we three waited to hand over our coats at the cloakroom:

He: I walked out yesterday, did you?

She: Yes, but I had to walk back in almost immediately because
we had meeting with a delegation.

I kid you not.

When I was a reporter in Central America, I was introduced to
the concept of “lying for justice” by some supporters of the
Sandinistas who explained to me that sometimes one had to tell lies
in order to be heard.

Reports exaggerating theatrical performances of this sort are a
disservice to readers, listeners, and viewers of the news.

As the
Senate Armed Forces Committee works on
the latest iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act,
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va) sees it as a good opportunity to
try again to pass cybersecurity legislation. He has submitted the
Cybersecurity Act of 2013, legislation passed in the Senate
Commerce Committee this summer after the failure of CISPA to gain
momentum. Though the legislation failed to pass Congress this
summer, the president issued an executive order to implement some
of the objectives anyway, or, as the Hill
reports:

The measure is far more modest than legislation that
Rockefeller and other Senate Democrats backed last year. That bill
would have pressured critical infrastructure companies, such as
banks and power plants, to meet minimum cybersecurity
regulations.

After opposition from Republicans killed last year’s bill,
President Obama issued an executive order instructing the Commerce
Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
to craft voluntary cybersecurity best-practices for critical
infrastructure companies.

Rockefeller’s amendment would codify the executive order into law.
It would also boost cybersecurity education, research and
development for cyber threats. 

The text of the two amendments Rockefeller submitted (among more
than 500 NDAA amendments) can be read here
and here.

Yesterday,
I wrote about a number of European nations that have formed a
“drone club,” which aims to develop UAVs that can compete with
American and Israeli drones. In the same post I briefly mentioned
the Chinese Wing Loong drone, which bears some resemblance to the
American Predator drone, leading some analysts to conclude that
Chinese espionage may have played a role in its development.

Today, there is more drone news. According to Chinese state
media, the Chinese flew a stealth drone for the first time
yesterday, the latest example of Chinese military development,
which U.S. officials believe is changing the security situation in
the Pacific. The most recent annual report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
Commission (USCC), released on Wednesday, says the following
(PLA stands for “People’s Liberation Army”):

PLA modernization is altering the security balance in the Asia
Pacific, challenging decades of U.S. military preeminence in the
region.

The U.S. is understandably wary of recent Chinese military
developments, especially given American military presence and
diplomatic obligations in Asia and the Pacific. The USCC report
highlighted the Hongzha-6K bomber, which the Chinese air force
received in June, that is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and
of reaching Guam.

From the USCC report (LACM stands for “land attack cruise
missiles”):

In June 2013, the PLA Air Force began to receive new Hongzha- 6K
(H–6K) bomber aircraft. The H–6K has an extended range and can
carry China’s new long-range LACM. The bomber/LACM weapon system
provides the PLA Air Force with the ability to conduct conventional
strikes against regional targets throughout the Western Pacific,
including U.S. facilities in Guam. Although the H–6K airframe could
be modified to carry a nuclear-tipped air-launched LACM, and
China’s LACMs likely have the ability to carry a nuclear warhead,
there is no evidence to confirm China is deploying nuclear warheads
on any of its air-launched LACMs.

The ongoing dispute between
China and U.S. ally Japan over uninhabited islands puts the U.S. in
an awkward position. Last year,
I wrote on how Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at
the Australian National University, believes the U.S. could get
dragged into whatever conflict that could result from this
territorial conflict escalating.

Last month, a
The New York Times wrote an article on White and the views
he outlines in his book
The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power.
White believes that conflict between the U.S and China is a
possibility if China and the U.S. continue to try and assert
themselves as the dominant power in the Pacific:

If the two countries continue to compete for primacy in the
Pacific, a new Cold War — or worse, an open conflict — will be the
result, he says. Many American analysts agree that conflict between
China and the United States is possible, maybe increasingly likely.
But few buy the argument that the United States is losing ground to
China and must consider a power-sharing arrangement to avoid
war.

“The strategic rivalry between the United States and China is
driven by their different and incompatible roles in the region,”
Mr. White said during a recent visit to Beijing, where he spoke to
several academic groups, including a generally favorable audience
organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “The principal
aim of the United States is to preserve American primacy in Asia.
China conversely wants, as a minimum objective, at least an equal
role with United States. Primacy for the United States, equality
for China — they are inherently incompatible.”

It of course remains to be seen if the far-from-ideal
relationship between China and Japan will drag the U.S. into a new
conflict. But if it does, China’s recent military developments will
ensure that the conflict will be quite different to the sort of war
the U.S. has been waging since the beginning of the 21st
century

For more from Reason.com on China and drones here and here.