The anonymous break-ins that have plagued my life since I moved into my current flat at the beginning of 2011 continue.
There was one on 19 July, which included vandalism, business sabotage and theft.
There was another one today. (I suspect that it happened when I went to the post office. It appears to have been aimed at making me feel unsafe in my own bed as I found out about it late at night.)
As my asswipe hacker(s)/stalker(s) were at it again, I left the place this evening. I mean, what on earth could I still do? Kill myself on the spot, or what?
I had intended to spend the night on a bench because I am sick of this vicious destructive shit in my own home. But I decided that the asswipe person in question is not worth getting that cold over and went on a walk instead. (That’s allowed as it counts as exercise for me and I don’t think that anyone came as close as within 5 metres of me.)
Right after that, I spotted a guy who was behaving very oddly. He was on the lookout for something. But what? He suddenly started walking, then spotted me and veered toward me to as if to check something or test something. My response? My age? My bag?
So I kept my eyes on him and fucking hell, he was following a woman, so I stayed on his tail. He kept looking behind him, too.
At some point, I saw him cross the road and I thought that that was the end of it and I slowed down, but no, he was merely taking a detour, so I sped up again.
As I came closer, I saw that there was a police car there with four officers standing around it, scratching their balls, as usual. So that was likely why the guy had crossed the road.
I kept on his tail, but by then I was too far behind and I lost both him and the woman after they went around a corner. I looked around for a while and listened for screams and the like, but saw and heard nothing that was off.
I initially thought that the danger was sexual assault but it could as well have been robbery. Or both.
Very few people around right now. Makes it easier to corner someone with nobody noticing.
I did spot a burglary on my way back (of the local LibDem office), but hey, burglary? That is 100% okay in Portsmouth. You’re a villain if you dare report a break-in.
Women, be alert! Because you have to fend for yourself. Nobody will come to your aid. Nobody will stand up for you. That’s just how it is.
With so many people losing their income, there have to be quite a few desperate people out there, but circumstances like this lockdown can also encourage more sinister elements, of course.
(I was still fuming over the hacking incident when I came home. I don’t like being messed with in my own home. It makes me feel violated – stepped on – and not safe.)
This man is wearing a cap, but more interestingly, he is wearing a smallish bag on his right hip, with the strap on his left shoulder. He has a beard and a mustache and he walks his dog while holding a flashlight/torch in his left hand. He puts the torch in his mouth to free his hand to open the gate.
He is holding a package or small bag in his right hand.
He is trespassing, for starters. Then it gets worse.
WHAT did he do when he walked to the left after the attack began?
That action strikes me as something that makes this personal. Am I wrong? He walked to the front door of the house, by the looks of it. What did he do there?
.@RickyGervais ~ Please SHARE to help find this SCUMBAG!!!
It may also shatter your illusions, however, if you still believe that police are the good ones, the ones (that you pay for through your council tax, in Britain) to help keep you safe and secure and protect your basic rights.
I suspect that police in England and Wales already are using these “kiosks” that hack into people’s phones and laptops, overriding passwords.
I am sure it can be great fun for some officers to play with these “kiosks”. You can almost hear them talk. “I knew it! She’s a lesbian!” and “Does he really think he stands a chance with that woman?” and “Oh my god! Trying to lose weight? Fat chance!”
Yep, very useful.</end of sarcasm>
We need an alternative to police. Because going to or contacting the police has become one of the worst things to do in almost any situation. (Unless your insurance company wants a copy of a report after a burglary or theft, but leave it at that and do not ask police to do anything else other than give you a copy of the report.) How it got to this point? It’s immaterial. It’s what we have in the here and the now.
As Michael Doherty (a former aircraft engineer who made the mistake of reporting something to police and expecting police to follow up on it) says in the video below, you do have the right to investigate on your own, to try to detect and stop crime on your own. If your investigation is successful, you can also prosecute on your own. (I am talking about England and Wales.)
But before you choose this path, as I have stated several times before, look into the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 because police and others can use this against you, assuming that you are unaware of 1(3)(a), which most people probably are. That means that, before you know it, you can already have confessed to a crime that you didn’t actually commit. To prevent this, you need to know what the law says.
I repeat and highlight:
(3) Subsection (1) [F4 or (1A)] does not applyto a course of conduct if the person who pursued it showsâ
(a) that it was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime,
(b) that it was pursued under any enactment or rule of law or to comply with any condition or requirement imposed by any person under any enactment, or
(c) that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable.
(Whether it says “and” or “or” makes a difference. It means that each of these conditions on its own applies, that they do not have to apply all at once.)
The video below dates back to 2015, is rather academic and particularly in the beginning lacks a logical thread, in my opinion, but does contain useful information.
(Also, if you want to protect yourself from police with a camera, you need to have one that does not have wifi or bluetooth.)
It is possible to resolve many situations or at least make them somewhat liveable without going to police, and much more successfully and/or peacefully. If you try this after you’ve been to police, however, police officers are likely to hold it against you. (This is mean because most people who contacted the police in the past decade will have been told that police wouldn’t investigate and would do nothing with what they told the police owing to a lack of resources and/or will have been referred to their GP and the local civic offices.)
Unfortunately, most of us learn these things the hard way – and you can’t undo having contacted the police.
One might expect mixed feelings about the soldiersâ departure. After all, since the arrival of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in June 2004, after former President Jean-Bertrande Aristide was forced out by a coup, the island has seen neither war nor armed conflict.
Crime and violence levels also remain high in Haiti, particularly in the capital of Port-au-Prince, and until January 2017 the country was leaderless due to repeated delays in holding its presidential election. Haiti is also still recovering from Hurricane Matthew, which caused famine in some hard-hit areas in 2016.
Despite these challenges, reports from the island suggest that most Haitians are ready to see the mission depart. Thatâs because, beyond stabilizing the country during a period of political tumult, the U.N.âs troops have also done harm in Haiti.
The international organization has admitted that its peacekeepers introduced cholera to the island after the devastating 2010 earthquake and sexually abused women who lived near U.N. camps.
What it has not yet acknowledged is that during early efforts to take out gangs in crime-riddled neighborhoods, U.N. troops also unintentionally killed more than 25 of the same citizens they were deployed to protect.
This lethal violence, which has garnered little international press, is the subject of our new film, âIt Stays With You: Use of Force by U.N. Peacekeepers in Haiti,â a 50-minute documentary released in Port-au-Prince in June 2017 and set for its U.S. release on Oct. 30.
But, according to some residents interviewed in âIt Stays with You,â unarmed civilians also died in this raid. Douglas Griffiths, then deputy U.S. ambassador to Haiti, has also confirmed that âcredible sourcesâ have accused U.N. peacekeepers of killing âmore than 20 women and childrenâ in the operation.
Some were shot inside their homes by U.N. soldiers in helicopters, whose bullets easily penetrated their metal rooftops. These accounts have been substantiated by witnesses and international aid workers interviewed for our film, including by one American doctor who saw bullet holes in the roof of a home that he visited while treating a young girl for gunshot wounds.
In 2005, Jean-Marie Guehenno, who was then the U.N.âs undersecretary general for peacekeeping, essentially confirmed these reports. At a press briefing at the U.N. headquarters in New York, he said, âA number of operations have been conducted by MINUSTAH⊠I have to be honest with you, there may have been some civilian casualties.â
The following December, just before Christmas in 2006, the U.N.âs Operation New Forest went through some 10,000 bullets over two days. Numerous people with no connection to gangs, including children, were killed or injured in this raid.
These accusations are not the first to damage the reputation of the U.N.âs vast peacekeeping operation, which currently has soldiers stationed in 15 countries around the world. Rape and other forms of sexual abuse are an endemic problem in multiple missions.
Based on our on-the-ground research, we believe a full accounting would find that the repeated military raids not only killed innocent bystanders but also exacerbated the precariousness of residentsâ already marginal existence. Poor families lost their breadwinners; homes were destroyed; children were made orphans and had to be taken in by neighbors.
Evelyn Myrtil (here with granddaughter) and her family were caught in the crossfire between gangs and MINUSTAH troops. Myrtilâs brother did not survive. Siobhan Wills
After a pot-maker, Nelson Ti Lari, was inadvertently killed in his workshop in 2005, his wife, Veronique, told us that she repeatedly visited the U.N. base at Camp Delta with a photograph of her dead husband, seeking acknowledgment that the breadwinner of her family had been killed. But, she says, the staff there sent her away every time. Eventually, she gave up.
Failing U.N. support â such as medical assistance to those injured in raids or financial support to people who lost their homes or livelihoods in the crossfire â people were compelled to seek help from the cohort of international NGOs that have provided the bulk of citizen services in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake.
Being a police officer can’t be easy these days. My previous post may have sounded pretty harsh to some, but I have had this present post in the works for some time too. Obviously, police officers get to see a lot of bad stuff that most humans could happily do without, but that’s only the beginning.
When I look at police, I always have in my mind the distant memory of when the hotshots of Dutch police got together during several weekends, taking a good look at what was going on in their forces. ( I seem to remember that they did that in their spare time, unpaid.) Then they started to do away with a lot of crazy stuff that was handed down to them by the Ministry without there being any basis in reality for it.
What follows is not an in-depth analysis of what is going on in England & Wales, but a low-resolution snapshot taken from some distance, a bird’s eye perspective. It reveals an interesting landscape. Continue reading →