Editorial

Bruce Schneier is the Bill Nye of computer security. He has made a career of both as a cryptographer and as someone who can make computer security issues accessible. I've been reading his works for over twenty years. I fought to have has first book Applied Cryptography used as a text when I was in my third year in college. In his field, he is an absolute heavyweight. He is also a noted civil libertarian on privacy issues and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which for the unfamiliar, is the ACLU of the internet.

It was noted by media organizations not fully integrated into the establishment that the Washington Post ran 16 negative articles on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours between March 6th and March 7th during the Democratic party debate in Flint Michigan.

The recent trove of Democratic National Committee emails leaked by Guccifer 2.0 via Wikileaks continues to yield gold like Smaug's horde. One thread of emails shows a CNN staffer soliciting edits from both the DNC and the Clinton campaign prior to turning her work in to her editors. Maria Cardona's work background shows she receives two paychecks, one from CNN and the other from an inside the beltway PR firm. Yet she takes her marching orders from Luis Miranda, the Communications Director of the Democratic National Committee.

On July 14 a forum on police community relations was held at the New Birth Christian Ministries on Refugee Road. The turnout, which included City Council Staffers and off duty police was less than half the size of recent local protests against police murder. There was a panel discussion which included a Westerville police department representative, City Council President Zach Klein, three representatives of the Columbus Police Department and Civil Rights Attorney Sean Walton.

Party conventions long ago ceased to be places where platforms are decided, decisions are made or votes are cast. Everything material that a party does is meaningless at a convention because the real decisions made by real power brokers happened already. Conventions are media events designed to boost a candidate and create “momentum” enough to keep the public from being fatigued by another three months of speeches full of promises that will never be kept. Well, that is the normal case.

“We do not come to this plaza to mourn where he fell, we come to you, we return to the living. There were others before him remember? Yes, you remember. But then the blood was hidden, it was so far. The South's rain washed it from the Earth, far far away. The People's death was as it has always been, as if no-one had died, nothing. As if they were stones falling to the Earth.

The State of Utah used to grant a person condemned death a final choice. The choice between hanging and firing squad. Washington State permitted the rope or the electric chair. Washington replaced the chair with the needle and Utah swapped the rope for the same.

Henry Green was murdered by police in his own neighborhood on June 6. He was shot without warning by plainclothes police who were there as part of a summer program that is alternately called a “Community” policing program or a “Summer Safety” program. Only the Columbus Police Department is investigating his murder. As his family, along with community organizers from his neighborhood press the city leaders for some real initiative towards justice those leaders have further entrenched themselves and their programs.

The Senate is close to bi-partisan approval of new gun control legislation in the wake of the Orlando Pulse massacre carried out by former prison guard and private military contractor Omar Mateen. There had been opposition from both sides of the aisle on the use of the already existing “no-tfly list” as a basis for prohibiting the purchase of firearms by certain people. The no fly-list is secret. How someone gets put on it is secret. How someone gets off it is impossible. The new list will be based on something called the “Selectee List.” This list is even more chilling.

I own firearms. I'm a leftist. Not a #feelthebern leftist. Bernie is too far to the right for me. Because of my politics, men have come to my home to kill me. This has happened more than once. When it did happen the only things that saved my life, and the lives of my roommates, were training and the physical possession of effective tools.