larvatus | Entries tagged with laws

The essential predicate for a charge of sexual assault of an adult is a lack of consent on part of the victim. Nothing in Charlotte Waters’ original complaint, which has been modestly removed from Reddit, but happily remains available via the Wayback Machine, even begins to allege that she had failed to consent to any sexual act, any photo opportunity, or any other aspect of her modeling encounter with Terry Richardson. Interestingly enough, as any journalist ought to know, actual malice as the essential predicate of liability for libel is defined as “knowledge that the information was false” or that it was published “with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not” (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)). Thus in failing to align his accusation of Terry Richardson with the content of published allegations against the latter, Justin Jones acts with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not, and therefore willfully commits libel on behalf of The Daily Beast.

Writing for The London Review of Books, David Bromwich summarizes the state of our union:

Since the prosecutions of whistleblowers, the abusive treatment of [Bradley] Manning and the drone assassinations of American citizens have been justified by the president and his advisers, a dissident in the US may now think of his country the way the dissidents in East Germany under the Stasi thought of theirs. ‘The gloves are off.’ Nor should we doubt that a kindred fear is known even to the persons who control the apparatus.

I offer the following thoughts in the nature of commentary.

Shortly after 9/11 Dick Cheney proclaimed that it will be necessary for us to be a nation of men, and not laws. Shortly after Edward Snowden disclosed the scope and extent of NSA surveillance, giving the lie to its sworn denial by the parties responsible for its execution, Barack Obama sought to reassure us that he wasn’t Dick Cheney. That is right, in so far as the limited surveillance of foreign communications advocated and implemented by Cheney, has been extended to all Americans under the Obama administration.

In the wake of Snowden’s disclosures, Obama has sought to reassert “the system of checks and balances” around NSA surveillance and to “set up and structure a national conversation” on cyber surveillance and civil rights. Ironically, up to now, the system of checks and balances has been stymied, as the Supreme Court shut down the last attempt to adjudicate the legality of NSA surveillance for want of standing. In other words, it found the plaintiffs unable to prove their injury by snooping so secret that it couldn’t be publicly acknowledged. Snowden has single-handedly removed this obstacle to judicial scrutiny. He cannot be faulted for the crimes he committed in doing so, just as he cannot be faulted for taking our manly overlords at their lawless word. In a system whose executive branch has arrogated the unalterable authority to execute its citizens without a trial, whose courts have renounced their power to deny any warrant or check any prosecution in the matters of national interest, an individual willing and able to expose the abuses of power under the color of authority, has every right to place himself above the law, even as the state loses its authority over a challenger to its corruption. That’s what it means to live in a nation of men, and not laws.

Eighteen years ago, Claire Wolfe observed: “America is at that awkward stage when it’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.” I am grateful to Snowden for increasing our odds of fixing the system from within, before our bastards are fit to get shot.

Emily Bazelon’s impassioned assault on the First Amendment, made in the names, and on the behalves of, receptive parties in failed romantic relationships, publicly shamed by their former mates, characteristically misses its mark. If speech is actionable, its kind will always already have been chilled, e.g. by statutes that penalize libel or invasion of privacy. The problem with banning “revenge porn” is that in the typical instances its content is true and its subject’s rights to privacy will have been waived through her voluntary communication thereof, by word or by deed, to the alleged tortfeasors who subsequently disseminate it against, or regardless of, her will. Under these circumstances, anti-SLAPP statutes designed to penalize the filing of lawsuits that aim to curtail protected speech, will typically require the plaintiff to pay the defendant’s legal fees and costs upon the ensuing showing that her lawsuit is unlikely to succeed on its merits in view of its Constitutional protection. Put simply, a reasonable expectation of privacy is generally waived through its subject’s voluntary disclosure of the underlying facts to any other party not bound by the duty of confidentiality. And it gets worse: if the former recipient of your sexual ardor wronged you in a way whereby she may wrong others, e.g. by infecting you with an STD, or even by screwing around behind your back in a way that exposed you to the mere likelihood of contracting an STD, your public disclosure of these facts would not be subject to liability under the privacy statutes, in virtue of being of legitimate concern to the public. Arguably, you have a duty to disclose it the general public, in proportion with your good faith belief that your perfidious ex represents a danger to others.

A fine survey of the remains of privacy’s disclosure tort can be found here.

Michael Feld points out that “to the extent that the 2d Amendment authorizes citizens to arm themselves against a potentially tyrannical government, whether Federal or State, it simply confounds reason to restrict such arms to small arms, and not to include the shoulder-mounted anti-helicopter missle launchers that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan; and like that”.

The prevailing understanding of the Second Amendment is that it protects an individual right to keep and bear those, and only those small arms that are commonly used for self-defense and appropriate for service in the militia. Thus brass knuckles and sawed-off shotguns—ungood; handguns and machine guns—doubleplusgood. This is consistent with gun control, e.g. through licensing concealed carry of handguns or registering the ownership of machine guns. But outright bans on ownership and carry have been off the table since Heller and McDonald. Accordingly, I support and expect the reopening of the NFA registry, closed since May of 1986 for newly manufactured machine guns. It never got closed for destructive devices, but the Constitutional bounds of regulating civilian ownership of recoilless gun and rocket-propelled grenade launchers remain to be litigated. I for one do not wish their official distribution to civilians to proceed along the lines whose most prominent success story began with Ronald Reagan’s approval of providing Stingers to Osama bin Laden’s mujahedin confederates in March of 1986, pursuant to the original program finding signed six years earlier by Jimmy Carter.

—Tu sais ce que c’est que la morale ? Moi je vais te dire ce que c’est la morale. La morale, c’est fait pour ceux qui la tiennent, les riches. Et tu sais qui a raison à chaque fois ? C’est les riches. Et c’est les pauvres qui trinquent. Tu veux la voir ma morale à moi ?
—Euh… Ouais.
—Ouais ? Tu vas pas regretter après hein ?
—Je sais pas.
—Je crois que tu vas avoir un peu peur. La voilà ma morale. La morale c’est ça. Tu sais pourquoi je me balade avec ça ? Hein… ? Parce que celui qui m’amènera la morale avec son uniforme, OK ? Il aura plus de chance, OK ? D’avoir sa putain de justice derrière lui. Et moi, la voilà ma justice. Que tu te trompes ou que t’aies raison c’est la même chose mon grand.

—You know what morality is? I’ll tell you what it is. Morality is made for those who own it, the rich. And you know who is right every time? The rich. And it is the poor who pay the price. You want to see my morality?
—Uh… Yeah.
—Yeah? Sure you won’t regret it?
—I don’t know.
—I think it’s gonna scare you a little. Here is my morality. That’s morality for you. You know why I'm walking around with it? Huh…? Because the guy in blue shows off his morality, OK? He’s got the upper hand, OK? To have his fucking justice backing him up. But me, here is my justice. Right or wrong, same difference, my friend.

—Gaspar Noé, Seul contre tous, 1998

Methinks the homophiles are protesting too much by resolving to ignore the obvious charitable reading of Justice Scalia’s insistence on submitting law to moral scrutiny. Consider that their most compelling current jurisprudence calls for equal protection of homosexuals as distinguished by immutable characteristics of their sexual preferences. Suppose that tomorrow, psychiatrists declare the preferences of coprophagia, apotemnophilia, or kleptomania to be equally immutable. Would it be reasonable to demand that restaurants served excrements on par with conventional nutrients; that surgeons be compelled to amputate healthy limbs on their owners’ demand; or that bankers and shopkeepers surrendered their stock to anyone organically beholden to the advantages of theft over honest toil? Might it not make more sense to submit equal protection to moral judgments? Anyone who thinks this far-fetched is welcome to contemplate the immutability of schizophrenia as grounds for mandating equal treatment for its patients.

Current Mood: artistic

Dear Bay Area law enforcement personnel,

Over the following year, I shall reside and appear in your jurisdictions, exercising my fundamental rights under the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution of the United States in the course of ongoing peaceful public protests, as documented at http://www.subrah.com/ and http://larvatus.livejournal.com/tag/webex. The attached images and the article "Man with semi-automatic weapon protests on Sand Hill", published in a local newspaper, should give you an adequate idea concerning the parameters of my performances.

I conduct my protests in response to independently witnessed and officially documented death threats made against me and my family in order to deter us from pursuing claims recorded in a lawsuit subsequently filed in California Superior Court, County of Santa Clara as case No. 1-02-CV-809286, Zeleny v. Zhu and WebEx, in the names and on the behalves of Min Zhu and WebEx Communications, Inc. The evidence of these threats and their gravity sufficed for Judge Jacob Adajian of Los Angeles Superior Court to acquit me on 11 April 2003 of weapons carry charges on the grounds of necessity, in a bench trial of case No. 2CR11665. In accounting for his acquittal, he ruled:

He wouldn't get a gun permit. He wouldn't get a gun permit. We just don't issue those in L.A. unless you're a movie star or somebody who shouldn't have one. But they manage to get one. Attorney's [sic.] should have one. I couldn't get one when I was an attorney. I know when I became a judge, a responsible person, I was able to get one. Not as an attorney. I think he had a good-faith belief in the threat. He did go to the police. He did do the right thing.

Ten months after this decision, my father Isaak Zelyony, plaintiff in a related lawsuit No. 1-02-CV-810705, styled Zelyony v. Zhu, suffered fatal injuries in an apartment fire that appeared to start at two locations at once. A thorough investigation of causes and origins of this fire, which a retired Los Angeles Fire Department captain undertook on my behalf, failed to rule out the likelihood of foul play. My father was important to me. I am seeking amends for unlawful threats of violence that were followed by his violent death under suspicious circumstances. As of this writing, I have a pending lawsuit in federal court against callers who warned me that my father's death was not an accident and promised to arrange for me to rejoin him. I am protesting the ongoing institutional and individual support of a violent sexual deviant, who represents a grave personal threat to me and my family.

As law enforcement officers, you are well placed to assess my situation. For starters, you might consult the 1988 sealed police report of childhood sexual abuse made by Min Zhu's then 14 year-old daughter Erin. On numerous occasions Erin recounted Min's prior use of the terms that failed to dissuade me from pursuing my claim against him and his company, to persuade her to yield to his sexual advances. Her subsequent complaints of her molestation by Min Zhu can be found on newsgroup alt.sexual.abuse.recovery via Google Groups search for the terms "Erin Zhu sexual abuse". Additionally, they can be found along with her draft complaint against Min Zhu for childhood sexual abuse, her email correspondence with Blixa Bargeld to that effect, and various declarations by third parties attesting to the same facts, as matters of public record in Santa Clara Superior Court case 1-02-CV-809286, Zeleny v. Zhu & WebEx. Erin Zhu has authenticated the accounts of her rape by her father that she had authored and relayed or publicized, in sworn depositions in that case. Moreover, in a sworn deposition taken by John Walton on 3 November 2003, in Zelyony v. Zhu, Santa Clara Superior Court Case Number CV-810705, she confirmed under oath having settled her childhood sexual abuse claim against her father Min Zhu for $300,000, paying her lawyer David Affeld a contingency fee of 2.5%. She admitted having participated in the preparation of the draft complaint, which included a graphic description of her rape by Min Zhu. She acknowledged that after she settled her claim against them, her parents made her the beneficiary of a trust; and although she denied linking it to the settlement, she later settled a claim by her lawyer, who sued her for a contingency fee portion of the trust. While denying on that occasion that her childhood sexual abuse by her father involved "penetration", Erin Zhu confirmed under oath having told her lawyer when they prepared the draft complaint that it did involve penetration, and never having told him otherwise; and she further confirmed under oath that this sexual abuse occurred between 1 and 20 times. I urge you to consult the relevant parts of the transcript of Erin Zhu's referenced deposition, as entered in evidence and permanently consigned to the public record in NEA v. Zeleny, San Mateo Superior Court Case No. CIV499465, in the context of California Penal Code Section 263 providing: "The essential guilt of rape consists in the outrage to the person and feelings of the victim of the rape. Any sexual penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the crime."

My revelations of these facts failed to diminish the support of Min Zhu by the Menlo Park venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA). By NEA's accounts, its business relationship with Min Zhu began in 1999 when it invested in the company that he founded, WebEx Communications, Inc. According to SEC filings, NEA's General Partner Scott Sandell was on the Board of Directors of WebEx until February 2002. In his sworn declaration Sandell testified that "Min Zhu was a consultant at NEA, with the title Venture Partner, from March 17 2004 through March 2008." NEA has acknowledged that in 2004 I emailed them about Erin Zhu's claims concerning her childhood sexual abuse by her father Min Zhu. In my communications I pointed out that Erin verified under oath having made these claims between 1991 and 2001 in conversation with her friends, associates, and employees; in public Usenet postings and letters to her husband Blixa Bargeld; and in statements to her lawyer David Affeld in connection with the claim for childhood sexual abuse that he presented to her parents and settled on her behalf. My notices went unanswered and had no effect on NEA's support of Min Zhu and his position at WebEx. Meanwhile, WebEx's CEO Subrah Iyar attempted to cover up Min Zhu's rape of his daughter. In the course of defending against my lawsuit under his leadership, WebEx filed sworn corporate declarations claiming that there was "absolutely no truth" to the allegations that Min had raped his daughter seven years prior to its founding, while allowing him to use its corporate assets as hush money to buy her silence about his crimes, and employ its corporate counsel in defending against my claims made against him as an individual, independently of his connection with WebEx. Min Zhu resigned from WebEx and fled the United States to China only after I exposed him as a child rapist at the WebEx User Conference in San Francisco, on 2 May 2005. Yet in September of the same year, NEA funded Min Zhu's next venture in China, in full knowledge of the foregoing events. Witness this pointed observation published by China Venture News on 23 September 2005: "What's missing in the Private Equity Online article or any NEA release is any mention of the previous controversy surrounding NEA's venture partner, Min Zhu, who joined NEA in 2004, after his forced resignation as WebEx President and Director." Another side of Min Zhu's character is captured in the 2007 report of a joint investigation of WebEx by FBI and NSA, which found it illicitly transferring the records of its customers' confidential communications to China. To connect the dots, NEA's knowing sponsorship of a duplicitous child rapist has been an open secret in the venture capital community for over seven years. This is especially noteworthy in an industry, whose foundations can be shaken by a female partner's displeasure at receiving a copy of Leonard Cohen's The Book of Longing from her male colleague.

According to Min Zhu, as of 2008, NEA continued to invest money in his company Cybernaut. I have no reason to doubt that their business relationship has continued to this day. By all accounts, Min Zhu has established himself as an excellent profit earner, inspiring investments from numerous profit-seeking institutions and individuals undeterred by scruples about his character. In bringing to light its defects, I look forward to finding out, how far the turpitude of Silicon Valley capital is matched by its shamelessness.

Please be assured that I am sensitive to your concerns for public safety. Accordingly, in the course of my Constitutionally protected activities, I pledge to abstain from any unlawful actions, including, without limitation, the following:

loading any firearms in the absence of a reasonable fear for life or limb;
deploying or firing any deadly weapons or firearms in the absence of a clear and present danger to life or limb;
making any threats of unlawful violence, including, but not limited to, drawing or exhibiting any deadly weapons or firearms in the presence of another person, in a rude, angry, or threatening manner;
stalking, accosting, or harassing any individual, including, but not limited to, making harassing telephone calls to any individual or institution, or sending harassing correspondence to any individual or institution by any means;
making any statement or engaging in a course of conduct that would place a reasonable person in fear for his or her safety, or the safety of his or her immediate family, and that serves no legitimate purpose; and
capturing visual images or audio recordings of any individual who has a reasonable expectation of privacy, or otherwise attempting to frustrate such an expectation.

I am pleased to point out that my prior events in San Diego, Milpitas, Menlo Park, and Santa Clara were unmarked by any disturbances. I hope that the same will be the case on this occasion of scaling up my activities within the bounds of legitimacy sanctioned by the authorities of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. Owing to substantial gains in my quest for legitimate remedies, my protests shall include topical artistic performances by bagpipers, clowns, rappers, and a brass band. I shall employ portable generators, high-intensity floodlights, and night vision devices to discover the identities and whereabouts of other friends and supporters of Min Zhu. It is my position that the mounting of these performances and the use of these instruments are protected under the First Amendment, and therefore are not subject to local permit requirements. However, as an accommodation provided in the spirit of courtesy, I shall consider reasonable requests for placing time, place, and manner constraints on my performances on a case-by-case basis. Lastly, I continue to claim the right protected by the First Amendment, to hold press conferences at the sites of my protests and to film all passerby there being questioned as to their opinion of their subject matter. I hope to forestall dangerous misunderstandings and futile litigation bound to be costly and disappointing to your taxpayers by giving you this advance notice of my plan.

My protests will take place, without limitation, at the public grounds adjacent to the following institutions and residences:

New Enterprise Associates (NEA), 2855 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025;
Cisco/WebEx, 3979 Freedom Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054;
Silk Road Software & Services, Inc. (SRS2), One Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94105;
Subrah and Rupar Iyar, 15292 Kennedy Rd, Unit A, Los Gatos, CA 95032
Scott Sandell, 120 Deer Meadow Ln, Portola Valley, CA 94028;
Forest Baskett, 24 Alexander Ave, Sausalito, CA 94965;
Robert J. Garland, 636 Melville Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301;
C. Richard Kramlich, 3699 Washington St, San Francisco, CA 94118;
Jake R. Nunn, 2120 Ashton Ave, Menlo Park, CA 94025;
Arno Allan Penzias, 19 Calle Del Mar, Stinson Beach, CA 94970;
Brooke A. Seawell, 1155 Trinity Dr, Menlo Park, CA 94025;
Peter Sonsini, 350 Olive St, Menlo Park, CA 94025; and
Sigrid Van Bladel, 1338 Masonic Ave, San Francisco, CA 94117.

This list will be extended and updated in future online postings and email communications. My protests will continue until I receive full satisfaction for Min Zhu's offenses against me and my family. All concerned parties may address their communications to my lawyers Michael D. Pinnisi <mpinnisi@pinnisianderson.com>, Pinnisi & Anderson, 410 East Upland Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, phone: (607) 257-8000, and David W. Affeld <dwa@agzlaw.com>, Affeld Grivakes Zucker LLP, 12400 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1180, Los Angeles CA 90025, phone: (310) 979-8700, fax: (310) 979-8701. I may be reached at the number listed below.

Michael@massmeans.com ---- http://larvatus.livejournal.com/ ---- http://www.subrah.com

Zeleny@post.harvard.edu | 7576 Willow Glen Rd, Los Angeles, CA 90046 | 323.363.1860

Wronged by the high and mighty? Cut them down to size with legally safe and ethically sound degradation of unworthy moguls and scrofulous celebrities.

First they came for Gilbert Gottfried
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a shrill comedian
Then they came for Catullus
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Latin poet
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Let me spell it out for you. We are a nation of laws. We are also a charitable nation. If you want our goods and our words within the scope of our foreign aid, ask for it. But as a foreign national, you have no say in our laws. If you are lucky, you have a say over your own goods and words, under your own laws, in your own country, in your own language. Then make and share your own goods and words, under your own laws, or change them to suit. In the meantime, if you break our laws, in our jurisdiction, we will prosecute you to their fullest extent.

Got it?

What is feminism? “Simply the belief that women should be as free as men … Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.” But there is a relevant difference in freedom between the sexes. In a heterosexual population with their equal distribution, on the average men will have the same number of sexual partners as will women. In other words, the average heterosexual woman will be as free to be promiscuous as a heterosexual man. But female promiscuity will randomize biological paternity of offspring in the woman’s own family, whereas the male kind will randomize it in the families of other men. In other words, promiscuous women undermine family stability at home, whereas promiscuous men undermine it abroad. Women who are free to fuck mainly fuck up their own families. Men who are free to fuck mainly fuck up the families of others. How much of this natural inequality can be abolished through legislation remains an open question.

Since 1973, when the U.S. Commissioners on Uniform Laws proposed the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA), which has been adopted by 18 U.S. states, the common law marital paternity presumption that holds that a child born during a marriage is the offspring of the husband, has been complemented by presuming the mother’s husband to be the natural father of a child if the child is born during the marriage or within 300 days after the marriage is terminated, unless his fatherhood has been rebutted by clear and convincing evidence. The revised UPA, published in 2000, retained all of the original presumptions related to marriage, but replaced the clear and convincing evidence standard for rebutting an assumption of paternity with the provision that the presumption of natural fatherhood may be rebutted “only by admissible results of genetic testing excluding that man as the father of the child or identifying another man as the father of the child.” Despite the new emphasis on genetic testing, both the newly revised UPA and most state laws and courts rely on the best interests of the child in determining paternity, whether by upholding the right to refuse genetic tests if it is determined they are not in the best interest of the child, or by requiring that the best interests of the child be taken into account after the genetic testing determines paternity. But other states have passed legislation that allows men proven by DNA testing not to be the father of a child to be released from child support payments.

In sum, promotion of the best interests of the child through the marital paternity presumption empowers feminism by underwriting female promiscuity with a guarantee of child support levied against the cuckolded husband. By contrast, fathers’ right movement that opposes legal accommodations of paternity fraud, qualifies as reactionary antifeminism. In so far as feminism is the belief that women should be as free from the economic consequences of their sexuality as men, no one can be a feminist without denying the interest of children to be supported by their biological fathers and the right of men to be free of supporting fraudulent paternity.

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Subrah Iyar Appreciation Society

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sexual assault, my ass
in praise of edward snowden
chumps of the world, undefeated
scalia on civilian-legal stingers: no longer limited to the likes of osama bin laden?
seul contre tous
stayin’ alive!
the advantages of sodomy over orthogenitalism
notice of peaceful protests in the san francisco bay area
pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo
international conversation
feminism and freedom

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Entries tagged with laws

sexual assault, my ass

in praise of edward snowden

chumps of the world, undefeated

scalia on civilian-legal stingers: no longer limited to the likes of osama bin laden?

seul contre tous

stayin’ alive!

the advantages of sodomy over orthogenitalism

notice of peaceful protests in the san francisco bay area

pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo

international conversation

feminism and freedom