Can somebody please tell Cameron what party he's supposed to lead

Tories, eh. What's the matter with them? Their only virtue is they're not socialists, but they are so tragically dull-witted, that they are often led by socialists without even noticing. What would it take to make them pay a fucking tention to what their party is, compared to what it is supposed to be?

How about this one? David Cameron is rushing to the defence of Julia Gillard's loony carbon tax that the Australian Labor Party is foisting on the resentful nation, after promising she would not do so at the time of the election. The Telegraph reports:

His letter, congratulating the leader of the Australian Labour Party, said it was a “bold step”.

“Climate change is one of the most pressing threats we face and we need to take urgent action to reduce emissions and put economics on a more sustainable low carbon footing,” he wrote.

That's right, Tory fools. Your comrade leader is weighing in to the domestic political scene of Australia to support the most unpopular, controversial policy its deluded socialist government is attempting. Does that give any of you pause for reflection?

Boden: I have a theory

Johnny Boden, well-healed chum of our potato-headed premier and mail order boss, has launched his expansion into France with an interview slagging off the country and its fair maidens. Not sure that's a good idea, but what do I know about marketing? The Telegraph tells us:

Boden, the successful mail order company that the Eton-educated entrepreneur founded in 1991, will launch a catalogue in France later this month. However in a magazine interview yesterday Mr Boden said that he associates Paris with “stroppy” women and described the South of France as “grim”, comments that may not endear him to his new target audience. Describing the French, Mr Boden said: “I always come back from Paris and say to my wife ‘God, they never smile at me!’ It’s hard work. I try to flirt with them but they’re not having it".

Johnny, maybe it's you.

Peter Schiff: Problem is the debt, not the ceiling

I expect the writer of the Observer's editorial I note below would react to the above as a vampire would to a crucifix or a string of garlic.

Hat tip: Infowars and RT

The incredible chutzpah of the gun-grabbers

The massive gun-running scheme to supply the Mexican drug cartels by the BATFE acting on orders from the Whitehouse is now, as predicted, being used to force through anti-constitutional gun-grabbing legislation by the usual DC vermin.

They never stop. They never will stop, not until the Republic lays smashed under their jackbooted feet. They hate everything America stands for, and they should all fuck off to North Korea where they belong.

Hat tip: Kurt Nimmo at Infowars

The World Turned Upside Down: courtesy of The Observer editorial

There's nothing that the Establishment Left's intellectual whores like more than lynching, metaphorically at least, an American Christian Conservative. It is not a particularly onerous task, as there's usually a good measure of stupidity and malevolence draping itself in that particular banner.

Nevertheless, in its editorial entitled "US economy: The Tea Party is a real threat to America", The Observer shows why it should go straight from the printing press to the budgie cage without anyone wasting their time actually reading it.

What we get from the Establishment Left's intellectual whores in this particular article is a trenchant defence of state power against the will of the people. As the title suggests, those who wish to stop expanding the gargantuan national debt are the threat. The fact that these people were elected with a clear mandate to do this is irrelevant to the Observer. The people exist to serve the state, not the other way around. To the Observer, government is the great benefactor and government spending the solution to everything, the more the better. Keynesianism rides again (a Pale Rider if ever there was one).

There's no reason to stop at $14.3 trillion, or stop at all, and if it all goes wrong, blame it on those impudent Tribunes of the People who tried to restrain the Neronic madness of Washington.

Why is there a campaign for the death penalty going on?

Is it to build some kind of extra-parliamentary pressure group?

Is it because it is an attack on the Establishment, especially the wet-as-water Tory division?

Is it because a couple of bloggers were bored one night?

Is it due to the inherent attack on the foreign institutions which would attempt to block it, and would thus be necessarily swept aside, for such a change in the law?

Is it due to a strongly-held belief that it is necessary, coupled with a belief that it is possible to bring it back?

Is it a sipher for the general, justifiable anger at what has become of our so-called criminal justice system?

Is it a tactical deployment of the democracy card?

Is it to give the rightwing Tories something to fiddle with, rather than actually using their position for something useful?

Lord Ashcroft of Belize only knows.

100 years ago today...

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies.

Senator Barak Obama on March 16, 2006 speaking against raising America's debt ceiling to $8.965 trillion.

Hat tip: Gary North at LewRockwell.com

Ron Paul for President

Hat tip: Calling England.

Reminiscing about Labour in power

Let it never be forgotten just how bad Labour were in power, and how we are still blighted by them, and will be until we take out all their legislation, build a massive pyre and burn it to ashes.

Alas, their cowardly cousins now in charge, who differ oh so very slightly, lack the conviction or desire to do this, but prefer to continue adding to the monstrous statute with their own pet legislative projects, and it falls to a private member to attempt to remove this dune of dunderheaded tyranny one grain at a time. Thus (again from El Reg):

A private member's bill proposing to decriminalise offering musical instruments without a licence received its second reading on Friday. The, er... what? You may well ask.

The Licensing Act of 2003 introduced bans on unlicensed musical instruments appearing in public. The law, intended to promote musical events at small venues, must be one of New Labour's most absurd and bureaucratic legacies. Leaving a piano in a school or church hall without the necessary paperwork and approval risks a £20,000 fine and six months in jail.

Labourites, how are you liking your legacy? Where are you, anyway? Come and defend your stupid laws. Leave a comment. Explain to me what the fuck is the matter with you.

When you're spending other people's money...

... No. It's not that simple. The general 'you' doesn't cover it. If I was spending other people's money, I'd still want to get a decent bargain. I expect I'd have a certain conscience on the matter. But such scruples, common sense and, indeed, recognition of ones own limitations are not the kind of qualities to be found in abundance amongst government bureaucrats. The key to success there is learned idiocy. Thus, according to the Register:

An all-party committee of MPs has found that successive governments' over-reliance on big IT companies and poor in-house skills, has led to a "perverse situation" in which governments have wasted "obscene" amounts of public money.

In its report titled Government and IT – a recipe for rip-offs: time for a new approach, the public administration select committee says that while the government is making cuts in response to the deficit, some Whitehall departments are spending an average of £3,500 on a desktop PC. It describes the situation as "ridiculous".

Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, the chair of the committee, said: "According to some sources, the government pays between seven and 10 times more than the standard commercial rate for its work. However, the government does not collect the information needed to verify these claims."

Catching up with Max

Good stuff from Max here, including info on the Fed audit, and mind-boggling conflicts of interest, with Stacey Herbert and Stefan Molyneux.

The old 'fire in a theatre' fallacy foiled

The basic flaw in the liberal separation of "human rights" and "property rights" is that people are treated as ethereal abstractions. If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his "human right" — or his property rights in his own person — he must also have the property right in the material world, in the objects which he produces. Property rights are human rights, and are essential to the human rights which liberals attempt to maintain. The human right of a free press depends upon the human right of private property in newsprint.

In fact, there are no human rights that are separable from property rights. The human right of free speech is simply the property right to hire an assembly hall from the owners, or to own one oneself; the human right of a free press is the property right to buy materials and then print leaflets or books and to sell them to those who are willing to buy. There is no extra "right of free speech" or free press beyond the property rights we can enumerate in any given case. And furthermore, discovering and identifying the property rights involved will resolve any apparent conflicts of rights that may crop up.

Consider, for example, the classic example where liberals generally concede that a person's "right of freedom of speech" must be curbed in the name of the "public interest": Justice Holmes' famous dictum that no one has the right to cry "fire" falsely in a crowded theater. Holmes and his followers have used this illustration again and again to prove the supposed necessity for all rights to be relative and tentative rather than precise and absolute.

But the problem here is not that rights cannot be pushed too far, but that the whole case is discussed in terms of a vague and wooly "freedom of speech" rather than in terms of the rights of private property. Suppose we analyze the problem under the aspect of property rights. The fellow who brings on a riot by falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is, necessarily, either the owner of the theater (or the owner's agent) or a paying patron. If he is the owner, then he has committed fraud on his customers. He has taken their money in exchange for a promise to put on a movie or play, and now, instead, he disrupts the show by falsely shouting "fire" and breaking up the performance. He has thus welshed on his contractual obligation, and has thereby stolen the property — the money — of his patrons and has violated their property rights.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the shouter is a patron and not the owner. In that case, he is violating the property right of the owner [p. 44] as well as of the other guests to their paid-for performance. As a guest, he has gained access to the property on certain terms, including an obligation not to violate the owner's property or to disrupt the performance the owner is putting on. His malicious act, therefore, violates the property rights of the theater owner and of all the other patrons. There is no need, therefore, for individual rights to be restricted in the case of the false shouter of "fire." The rights of the individual are still absolute; but they are property rights. The fellow who maliciously cried "fire" in a crowded theater is indeed a criminal, but not because his so-called "right of free speech" must be pragmatically restricted on behalf of the "public good"; he is a criminal because he has clearly and obviously violated the property rights of another person.

Murray N. Rothbard; For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, from chapter 2, 'Property and Exchange

Norway terror suspect linked to Johann Hari

... both now accused of plagiarism.

12-Foot Lizard Men Strike Again

The idea that the politicians control everything and everyone is just as whacky as the conspiracists who say its the Vatican or the Freemasons

Most sane conspiracy theory is an historical investigation into the hidden forces in political events

The simple principle is that the official version is not necessarily true, and is often self-contradictory, and anyway the government and the mainstream media wouldn't tell the whole truth, even if they had nothing to hide.

The Yes Minister View

A much-loved British comedy of the 1980s and '90s portrayed life at the heart of government as a battle between a politician, Jim Hacker MP, struggling to assert his short-term, populist agenda in the teeth of a machiavellian mandarin, Sir Humphrey, determined to thwart him at every step and very much committed to a principle: that the job of government was far too serious to be left in the hands of politicians. The true government was that of himself and his fellow servants.

How accurate 'Yes Minister' was, and how this has changed in the meantime, I cannot say. We are given to understand that the Blair years brought in a more presidential 'spoils system', which hemmed in the mandarins. Nevertheless, within the premise of the show are certain facts or assertions that hardly anyone would deny, ergo; that government, in its broadest sense, is big and sprawling, suffering poor communications, is nothing like as efficient as it would have us believe on the outside, and is institutionally secretive, to the extent that the default position with regard to anything likely to cause scandal is; bury it. Additionally, the truth was always multi-layered. Let me give an example:

Hacker makes a public announcement of a bold new policy. Sir Humphrey is furious as it's the first he's heard of it, and the policy is directly contrary to his own interests, so he sets in train a plan to assassinate the policy, or more precisely he must convince the minister to sign the policy's death warrant. Through various underhand means and his extensive network, Sir Humphrey spins a web, entrapping Hacker amongst the vested interests Sir Humphrey is defending, and before he knows what's happened, Hacker's desired-for policy is transformed into a gun pointing at Hacker's own head.

At the final point, all he really needs is a story to tell the public. All he really cares about is what the papers write about him. Sir Humphrey knows this well. It is often the means by which he can entrap Hacker. Sir Humphrey always wins because he always offers Hacker a way out, having previously ensured that there is only one exit available.

What the audience see is that the real reasons given for a change in policy are not those mentioned in the press release, and that there are other forces operating than the politicians. It can be used to support the so-called 'cock-up theory' of politics, that the politicians aren't anything like as all-seeing and all-knowing as they may pretend. But it also supports the 'conspiracy theory' of politics, that they are merely one piece on the chessboard.

Norway's Progress Party

As the Guardian is busy denigrating the second largest party in Norway as a hot-bed of homocidal crazies. I thought I'd see what I could discover about the Progress Party. On this showing, I'd say the Guardian is lying.

According to the text on YouTube for the above (posted May 2011):

"At the recent National Convention for the Progress Party, MP Christian Tybring Gjedde, who`s also leader of the Party`s branch in Oslo, warned against the consequenses of a failed immigration and integration policy in Norway. In this interview MP Tybring- Gjedde explains how the Left has failed, and why it`s natural for classical liberals and conservatives to stand up for freedom values and for an open debate. He warns of the unfortunate if the new brand of nationalistic or patriotic parties is taking over the debate, as one has seen in Sweden with the nationalist Swedish Democrats."

Further, here is Siv Jensen, the leader of the Progress Party speaking to Reason TV in August 2010, with the accompanying text underneath:

"In a country of exceptionally high rates of personal taxation and home to one of the world's most generous welfare states, Norway's Progress Party, which describes itself as a "classical liberal" organization committed to "personal freedom," is something of an anomaly. But it is an increasingly powerful anomaly, now ranking as the country's second biggest political party.

In August, Progress Party leader Siv Jensen sat down with Reason senior editor Michael C. Moynihan and explained that Norwegians are growing tired of "regulation, bureaucracy, and high taxes" and why the Scandinavian health care model is bad for America—and Scandinavia."

See another interview with Siv Jensen here.

Establishment will use Norway terrorism to demonise all opposition

The Guardian sets out the stall very well:

"Norway attacks: we can no longer ignore the far right threat".

What follows is the predictable attempt to identify all those who oppose the establishment consensus, whether on the EU, the banker bail-outs, immigration or global green taxes, as in some way inplicated in the shootings and bombing in Norway. Yeah, and Hitler was a vegetarian, right?

No doubt the establishment will use it to justify grabbing more guns from citizens, even though it is clear that the one and only thing capable of stopping such a killer in his tracks is an armed citizenry.

As with all terror attacks, especially since the exposure of Operation Gladio, we must look very carefully at these events for evidence of puppet strings. We must also consider cui bono? Whether or not this is one crazed guy on a self-appointed mission, it will produce a 'strategy of tension' dividend, as the people turn to the ever-more unpopular establishment to protect them from such 'extremists' as the Norwegian Progress Party, labeled in the Guardian as 'far right'.

We can all play the blame game as I do below, by selectively quoting the supposed words of the suspected killer, generalising outwards from this one man and waving the bloody rags like Mark Anthony at Caesar's funeral.

The chilling mind of a lunatic collectivist

"In many ways, morality has lost its meaning in our struggle... The needs of the many will always surpass the needs of the few."

Anders Behring Breivik, suspected Norwegian mass-murderer

Lib Dem government:: Huhne of the Khmer Vert; Kable the Keynesian

Chris Huhne, the government's energy mascot, is something of a sore loser it seems, as he has launched an inquiry into MEPs who voted down his favoured Pol Pot style, Return to Nature plan to destroy what's left of our industry with a crippling tax on harmless gas carbon dioxide.

Roger Helmer, Tory MEP commented:

"I'm happy for Huhne to investigate whatever the hell he likes. I just wish he'd spend more time investigating the huge economic damage that his green policies will do."

and;

"The prime minister is in no position to 'bring Conservative MEPs into line'. I vote in what I conceive to be the best interests of my country and my constituents: the party whip comes a poor third."

Elsewhere Vince Cable, another from the Mouse that Roared Party, decides to join sides with Barry O in his dramatic struggle with Congress on the debt ceiling. Cable, who laughably has attempted to portray himself as some kind of economic guru, on the basis that a copy of 'The Wealth of Nations' once sat on his bookshelf or some other grounds of similar magnitude, calls the resisters 'rightwing nutters'.

That's fine, Vinny, say what you like. We understand that you wish to draw attention away from the Euro project, that you've slavishly worshipped for your entire political career, and its present woes. It makes sense for you to point the finger at 'rightwing nutters' in America, to bolster your image amongst the down-in-the-mouth social democrats in your party.

It's certainly reassuring to hear Cable speak, as this means at least we know he's not somewhere else, such as near the levers of power. A further quote exposes more of Kable's Keynesiastabatory illogicKal Klusterfuck:

"There is a genuine problem with demand, consumer demand. Again, it is not surprising there have been big shocks, world commodity prices going up has had a big effect on confidence here," he said, adding that quantitative easing (QE) would be the right approach if demand remained suppressed.

Translation: If people won't buy shit because they're skint, we'll print loads of money. Fucking genius.

A Cavalier Concession

A Cavalier Manifesto,

or

Common Sense - Our Anchor

or

The Righteous And Reasonable Reaction To Nonsense Is Resistence

lots of it

Rouse yourselves, my good English men and women, for the puritan bastards are back in power, still in power, at it again, and sneakily so, like a pickpocket they’ve stolen our liberties and rewritten the rules, and now they get to decide everything for themselves and the rest of us.

And that’s the law they say. Pah. That’s the law they wrote. They know nothing, for the Law isn’t written, it’s discovered, if by law we truly mean justice. Law precedes, only a means. Justice the desired end, surely?

Or what else in its absence? Is merely the form sufficient? The semblance? The performance of certain rites and rituals, resembling courts, councils and debating chambers, deciding and disseminating rules, diktats, where, what, when you can drink, smoke, walk your dog?

The signs are everywhere, the shadow of the puritans blots the land. Power has vanished upwards. Laws proliferate but justice slips and slips again. Regulations govern the most minute of matters. Grand schemes of national pomp come and pass, tax money squandered, debts still rising; rules a smothering blanket over past autonomy, we are managed, herded, governed by shrill voices full of vain fears telling us where to go where to stop, purposely united in passivity.

Bound to our seats, our governors enact tragedies before us – wars, economic disasters, blundering corruptions, cold-blooded killings. Appearances and disappearances. The way it is is the way it has to be, rock ‘n’ roll, fate and destiny. Sit still, do nothing until you are told otherwise.

But who are these miserable specimens of fools, who masquerade before us, conspiring to pass themselves off as our legitimate rulers and betters? And where, friends, has the other England been hiding these last hundred years or so, to let such fools beguile us for more than a moment?

Dear friends, there have always been two Englands; one merry, one morose, and while the merry sought their peace, the morose schemed and scraped their way to lofty positions. We, the good people must set aside the short-term, and sacrifice for the long-term, remove these puritans, send them packing for some other place where they can tyrannise over each other to their hearts’ desire, but not over us!

Charles Moore: Dinosaur

Chucky Moore's having a senior moment in the Telegraph: "I'm starting to think that the left might actually be right" he proclaims to widespread head-scratching.

"You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up."

Fifty years too late, Moore comes over all teenage existentialist, grappling, apparently for the first time, with marxoid quandaries, and having forgotten, if indeed he ever knew, the answers. I guess he encapsulates the unthinkingness of being a tribal politico. He's been defending positions not because he thought them right but because he thought them rightist.

Free market economics are not supposed to be surrounded by inverted commas. As someone who supports them, I am well aware that our system is not anything like as free as it could be or as it was, and this is the case in spades for the central-committee, government-monopoly monetary system, but for poor, confused Charles he thinks that's capitalism!

"As for the plight of the eurozone, this could have been designed by a Left-wing propagandist as a satire of how money-power works. A single currency is created. A single bank controls it. No democratic institution with any authority watches over it, and when the zone’s borrowings run into trouble, elected governments must submit to almost any indignity rather than let bankers get hurt. What about the workers?"

Firstly Moore ignores that he is describing a system that is economically socialistic. Secondly he is seemingly ignorant of what alternatives there have been and could be to government monopoly.

Maybe Charles thinks he'll get invited more often on the BBC with this tripe. My advice would be to educate yourself, Charles, you're a little bit too long in the tooth to have such gauchist views.

Pilger on media monoculture

John Pilger, although a leftie, gets it right sometimes, and spells out some home truths on the current media furore, such as:

'... Certainly, there is no “revolution”, as reported in the Guardian, which compared the “fall” of Murdoch with that of the tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania in 1989. The overexcitement is understandable; Nick Davies’ scoop is a great one. The truth is, Britain’s system of elite monopoly control of the media rests not on Murdoch’s News International alone, but on the Mail and the Guardian and the BBC, perhaps the most influential of all. All share a corporate monoculture that sets the agenda of the “news”, defines acceptable politics as maintaining the fiction of distinctive parties, normalises unpopular wars and guards the limits of “free speech”. This will only be strengthened by the allusion that a “bad apple” has been “rooted out”.'
Hat tip: Prison Planet

Poor old Plod

Apparently the cuts to the Police 'Service' will lead to a rise in crime. Maybe. But then, maybe it's time to take a new approach to crime, by which I mean an old approach to crime - you know, the one that actually worked.

As I noted below and have noted similar many times before, you can be A PSYCHOPATHIC MURDERER LITERALLY and they'll let you out of jail to continue your murdering. You can rape children and they'll give you another chance - NOT ONLY THAT THEY'LL LET YOU OUT EARLY, THEY WON'T EVEN HOLD YOU FOR THE FUCKING JOKE SENTENCE THE WIG HANDS DOWN. You can be a career burglar and all the 'justice' system will do is lock you in with your Play Station for a couple of months and out you get. It's not difficult to work out the problem here. There are people lying in comas that are capable of spotting it.

What the police are doing, when they're not filling in forms, is chasing after people they know very well, because they've already arrested them many times before, and each time the fucker gets let go to continue to fuck with other people.

I don't blame the common police for this, of course. It is the fault of the judiciary, the CPS and the Fabian scum who have disemboweled our justice system, to whom I say; You've had your chance. We've tried it your way and it doesn't work. So fuck off back to your ivory tower with your marxist sociology books written by cunts.

I feel better now.

Encyclopedia Rothbardia

One reason for my great love and respect for Murray Rothbard is as follows: he was such a prolific writer, he pretty much covered everything. A true polymath, he wrote volumes of straight history, economic history, economics, history of economic thought, political journalism, film reviews, etc etc. For this reason, whenever I am confronted with something or someone I don't know, all I have to do is type 'Murray Rothbard' and the name of the thing or person into a search engine, and nine times out of ten I'll get at least a reference, if not an essay on the subject.

The example that sparked this post was something Sunny Hundal wrote:

There are two broad elements to Blue Labour. One is economic: it draws on the work of Karl Polanyi and is very much in line with traditions of Labour thinking : it says New Labour commodified people and public services too much, and started treated people like consumers rather than citizens.

Karl Polanyi, eh? Hoodat? I use the above formula, and top of the search engine page is a link to Mises Daily and an unpublished memo: "Down with Primitivism: a thorough critique of Polyani", which starts:

Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is a farrago of confusions, absurdities, fallacies, and distorted attacks on the free market. The temptation is to engage in almost a line-by-line critique. I will abjure this to first set out some of the basic philosophic and economic flaws, before going into some of the detailed criticisms.

One basic philosophic flaw in Polanyi is a common defect of modern intellectuals—a defect which has been rampant since Rousseau and the Romantic Movement: Worship of the Primitive....

I recognise that I still have to think for myself, and shouldn't merely drink in Rothbard's wit and wisdom without engaging my own critical factulties, but as a source of information, he's a one-man encyclopedia.

The martyrdom of Saint Rupert

Those who see politics as a battle between left and right, where the left is good and the right is evil, are seeking to exploit the furore over News of the World to smash Murdoch's empire and silence something they see as an enemy.

They call for regulation, but don't identify who is to do the regulating. They call for objectivity and a lack of bias. Just like the BBC, right? They say they want a free press, but what they mean is that they want a press that is less free than now. They decry the undue influence of Murdoch but won't mention the BBC elephant.

They do not believe in freedom. They are followers of the leftist ideology. Those who do not follow this ideology, in one way or another, are viewed as evil. As such, these evil-doers can and should be silenced. They only spread evil, and the public must be shielded from such influences, due to the appeal of such evil ideas.

Reader, is this you I'm describing? Are you thinking; 'What nonsense! The writer is a typical evil rightwinger sticking up for Murdoch the plutocrat. There's nothing wrong with regulation and anyway the BBC isn't biased.' If so, feel free to argue...

Hat tip for link: Ambush Predator

Another case of corporate manslaughter by the Parole Board

The Daily Mail covers the life sentence passed on a man for a double murder. It also notes he was already sentenced to life in prison some years earlier, but that the Parole Board let him out, leading to at least two further murders.

The control-freak state never ceases to find new ways to 'keep us safe' by spying on us and violating our liberty. What it is never prepared to do is the most simple and obvious things, such as KEEPING CONVICTED PSYCHOPATHIC MURDERERS LOCKED UP FOR THE DURATION OF THEIR SENTENCE.

Thus I propose again that the members of the Parole Board who set this man free be held accountable for the key role they have played in at least two murders. Only when such people are held responsible for the consequences of their actions will they act in a responsible manner.

The Guardian's solution to Africa's problems

In Broad Street, Soho there is an old water pump with a plaque marking it as the source of a cholera outbreak in 1854. Wikipedia notes:

This outbreak is best known for John Snow's study of the outbreak and his discovery that cholera is spread by contaminated water.

Somehow I think if the Guardian, rather than John Snow, had looked into the issue, they would have proclaimed that the Soho residents weren't drinking enough water, that the water from the Broad Street pump was the most appropriate cure for the outbreak. They may also have discovered nefarious links between Dr Snow and the local breweries...

Moving swiftly along, we come to this article from Graun hack Nick Dearden: "Free trade is not what Africa needs". Far from it:

African prosperity relies on a wholesale rejection of the western "free trade" model. It means protecting industries, developing alternative and complementary means of trading, control of food production and banking, progressive tax structures, controlled use of savings, and strong regulation to ensure trade and investment really benefits people.

Now, I'm guessing Mr Dearden hasn't frittered away his time studying economics or history. That would only mess up his thesis, that it's all the problem of plutocratic corporations, pillaging at will. Nothing at all to do with the socialistic and interventionist policies pursued by most of the African governments and encouraged by such globalist institutions as the IMF.

Africa lacks capital, and will continue to do so, until the conditions for capital to grow are in place, such as peace, the rule of law and respect for private property. Dearden is 180 degrees wrong in calling for a rejection of the western free trade model. Nor does he understand the difference between free trade and the mishmash of Keynesian interventionism and corporate cronyism which replaced free trade in the 20th century. The massive level of debt these nations are burdened with has nothing to do with free trade or capitalism, and everything to do with the post-Bretton Woods international system, which purposefully handed out loans with no consideration of the ability to repay.

I do not wish to over-simplify a very complex issue. However it is emphatically not the case that more of the same Keynesian / socialistic medicine that has been spooned down the throat of Africa for the last 60 years will deliver a cure. Free trade in the true sense of the word is the only alternative.

It ain't paranoia if it's true

According to the Mail story Sean Hoare, the ex-NoTW hack found dead, believed he was a marked man. A friend and neighbour revealed:

"Mr Hoare, 47, had become increasingly reclusive and paranoid in recent weeks."

Reading on, we learn:

"Police could not rule out suicide but friends suggested natural causes was also a possibility as he had been suffering from ill health."

However:

"His solicitor David Sonn said: ‘I last spoke to him a week ago and he seemed fine."

Also:

"A friend who saw him more recently described him as ‘sober’ and wanting to rebuild his career."

Hmm.

Bond yields up = bad

I continue to try and educate myself with regard to the murky world of finance. Seeing the news that "Yields soar on Spanish bond auction", I turned to the Khan Academy for clarification:

Pudel or Peper?

... Or to put it another way; Roundhead curr or Cavalier dog?

Via Counting Cats, I learn that the cavalier standard is being raised against the control-freak puritans who infest every organ of the state, intent on inflicting their godless post-millennial piety upon the rest of us. I find myself in a dilemma. Much as I oppose the puritans, identifying myself with the cavaliers sticks in the craw somewhat.

If my understanding of such matters were based on period dramas, I guess it wouldn't be too hard. The cavaliers get to wear the best clobber, and spend their time in drunken revelry, surrounded by bounteous serving wenches in those corset things beloved of all red-blooded men, whilst the roundheads get the small beer and the stern lectures. To what extent this is accurate, I cannot say, but it would go some way to explaining who won the war.

Just as politics today is more complicated than the simple left versus right which we are presented with, so it was then. The original Trooper William Thompson, in whose honour this blog is dedicated, served in Christopher Bethel's troop within Scroope's cavalry regiment of the New Model Army. He was kicked out in 1647, on trumped up charges relating to an incident involving drinking, gambling and fighting - so, for our latter-day civil guerrillas, a good cavalier! After various misadventures, he died fighting Cromwell's loyalists in the aftermath of the last big mutiny, against compulsory service in Ireland, 1649. So, like the greatest radical of this period, John Lilburne, he struggled both against the king and the military junta which replaced him.

Thus, if I were to join with the anti-puritan cavaliers de jour, I will have to look to someone like Edward Sexby as a role model. Sexby distinguished himself at the Putney Debates as one of the more eloquent of the army radicals, later turned against Nol when he dissolved Parliament and spent the last few years of Cromwell's time plotting his assassination and knocking around in exile with his enemy's enemies.

Notes:
Monty Python's Oliver Cromwell song
Edward Sexby's inflamatory anti-Cromwell pamphlet 'Killing Noe Murder'

Stony ground

Jacopo Robusti detto il Tintoretto - Predica di Cristo (1545 - 1547 ca.)
Venezia, Ca' Rezzonico - Museo del Settecento Veneziano

I was arguing with an atheist today. I left it at the point that the Inquisition and the Crusades were being invoked. It's very difficult to convince some people that Christianity contributed anything to western civilisation. So I gave up and listened to Mozart's Requiem instead.

More news for gold bugs

Via the Cobden Centre, I come to Andy Duncan's interview with Thomas Jacob, of the Property and Freedom Society from Zurich Canton and one of the chief proponents of the return of the Swiss gold franc, the plan being to launch a gold-backed currency to run in parallel with the Swiss paper franc.

Herr Jacob makes some interesting remarks on the Swiss system of democracy, and how the people have power to initiate political decisions in the face of united opposition from the political class, such as when the latter tried to disarm the former, who are required by law to keep weapons at home. It put me in mind to check the stats comparing crime in the United Kingdom of disarmed slaves versus Switzerland, which I note on this Canadian blog, where I also find the clip below.

All good things...

John Belushi and Joe Flaherty (pic by Mike Thomas)

I have long searched for this skit to turn up on YouTube: "Brest Litovsk" with John Belushi and Joe Flaherty from Chicago's Second City. The setting is a student trying to get a credit from his history master, after having missed virtually the whole course, this in context of the Vietnam draft.

For history buffs, you can read about the treaty here.

Return of the Gold Standard? We'll see

A friend flagged up this article by Ambrose Evans Pritchard entitled "Return of the Gold Standard as world order unravels". The friend was wondering if maybe after all there was something to my near mono-mania on the subject of honest money.

The piece runs through various facts which the gold bugs have noted...

"The Bank of England wins the booby prize for selling into the bottom at €254 an ounce on Gordon Brown's orders in 1999. But Russia, China, India, the Gulf states, the Philippines, and Kazakhstan have been buying."

And then Pritchard committed a cardinal sin, which hard currency types such as I will not easily forgive.

HE MENTIONED KEYNES!

Talk about the turd in the punchbowl. Where is Keynes? I want that fucker dug up and thrown on the dungheap. I suppose that may be unfair. After all, Keynes isn't really the problem, so much as the legions of wankers who have followed his charlatan fallacies for the last 60 years.

Memo to William Hague: STFU

Alerted by 13th Spitfire, I stumble upon William Hague's piss-poor excuse of a justification for his vile party's treachery vis à vis the EU.

I have no idea who this is aimed at. The Tories' pathetic referendum pledge is worth less than used toilet paper, but I suppose there are a few Stockholm Syndromed ninnies still in the party of Edward Heath, who may convince themselves against all the evidence that Hague and his chums aren't really the bunch of traitors they so clearly are.

Listen to him!

"This is a historic development for the British people and for our Parliament. This law hands back democratic control of the way the EU is developing to the British electorate."

I'm not sure whether to laugh or vomit ... and then I get to this bit, and decide vomiting is definitely the appropriate response:

"The European Union offers a lot for Britain: free markets across Europe that are of great benefit to our businesses, the means to work together closely in foreign affairs to our mutual advantage and the spread and entrenchment of freedom, the rule of law, prosperity and stability across Europe."

Hague: fuck off. No, really: FUCK OFF. You're a cunt. You're a traitor. You're a fucking joke. You're so lacking in credibility, you could almost be on the European Commission.

Onward and upward

Ho ho. The scandal travels up the body politic like snake venom from an ankle bite. May it rise to very top.

Dollar Brand - African Space Program

I'm a bit busy at the moment, so I'll provide my loyal following with this gem from Dollar Brand / Abdullah Ibrahim. The label says 'African Space Program', I couldn't rightly say if that's the tune or the band name, but apparently it's from a performance in Tübingen, 1974.

UPDATE: Here's something else I found; Salah Ragab and The Cairo Jazz Band - Egypt Strut

Stratagem II

The Homonymy. - This trick is to extend a proposition to something which has little or nothing in common with the matter in question but the similarity of the word; then to refute it triumphantly, and so claim credit for having refuted the original statement.

It may be noted here that synonyms are two words for the same conception; homonyms, two conceptions which are covered by the same word. (See Aristotle, Topica, bk. i., c. 13.) "Deep," "cutting," "high," used at one moment of bodies, at another of tones, are homonyms; "honourable" and "honest" are synonyms.

This is a trick which may be regarded as identical with the sophism ex homonymia; although, if the sophism is obvious, it will deceive no one.

Every light can be extinguished.

The intellect is a light.

Therefore it can, be extinguished.

Here it is at once clear that there are four terms in the syllogism, "light" being used both in a real and in a metaphorical sense. But if the sophism takes a subtle form, it is, of course, apt to mislead, especially where the conceptions which are covered by the same word are related, and inclined to be interchangeable. It is never subtle enough to deceive, if it is used intentionally; and therefore cases of it must be collected from actual and individual experience.

It would be a very good thing if every trick could receive some short and obviously appropriate name, so that when a man used this or that particular trick, he could be at once reproached for it.

I will give two examples of the homonymy.

Example 1 -A.: "You are not yet initiated into the mysteries of the Kantian philosophy."

B.: "Oh, if it's mysteries you're talking of, I'll have nothing to do with them."

Are you gonna argue with this guy?

Example 2. - I condemned the principle involved in the word honour as a foolish one; for, according to it, a man loses his honour by receiving all insult, which he cannot wipe out unless he replies with a still greater insult, or by shedding his adversary's blood or his own. I contended that a man's true honour cannot be outraged by what he suffers, but only and alone by what he does; for there is no saying what may befall any one of us. My opponent immediately attacked the reason I had given, and triumphantly proved to me that when a tradesman was falsely accused of misrepresentation, dishonesty, or neglect in his business, it was an attack upon his honour, which in this case was outraged solely by what he suffered, and that he could only retrieve it by punishing his aggressor and making him retract.

Here, by a homonymy, he was foisting civic honour, which is otherwise called good name, and which may be outraged by libel and slander, on to the conception of knightly honour, also called point d'honneur, which may be outraged by insult. And since an attack on the former cannot be disregarded, but must be repelled by public disproof, so, with the same justification, an attack on the latter must not be disregarded either, but it must be defeated by still greater insult and a duel. Here we have a confusion of two essentially different things through the homonymy in the word honour, and a consequent alteration of the point in dispute.

Athur Schopenhauer

AJ Holder nailed in gun-running scandal

The Salem News proclaims:

Holder Lied: DOJ News Release Shows Obama Admin Approved ATF Mexico Weapons Smuggling

Unfortunately for Holder, he "openly proclaimed his connection to the operation in April 2009 during a publicized speech in Mexico" and then two years later told Congress he'd only just found out about it.

The noose tightens...

Hat tip: Infowars

Oz PM Gillard and her 'word games'

When politicians wonder why their profession is ranked by the public somewhere between tax-collector and kiddie-fiddler, they may like to study Australian PM Julia Gillard's campaign to convince us that black is white, up is down and a clear statement that 'there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead' actually means the exact opposite. Whether or not she manages to brush off criticisms of her gross dishonesty as an exercise in 'word games' remains to be seen. We shouldn't put it past her, she's already achieved the seemingly impossible task of making Tony Abbott look like a safe pair of hands.

Naturally, when the BBC reports this, there's not a mention of her pre-election promise, nor any critique of the ludicrous anti-science of calling carbon dioxide 'pollution'. But that's the BBC for you, totally un-biased as long as you are imprisoned in the same fallacy echo-chamber as they are.

HT: The Humble Servant

UPDATE: Via Counting Cats I see this report from renowned scholar (ahem) Andrew Bolt:

The power behind the throne ain't Murdoch

All of a sudden, the British media sans News International have awoken to the notion that there are powerful influences pulling strings behind the politicians. The Independent, for instance, reports on the sleepy Cotswolds village of Chipping Norton:

Within a few square miles, the Prime Minister, the most powerful woman in Britain, the most powerful PR man in Britain and the daughter of the world's leading media magnate can all be found. Anyone who wanted to claim that democracies are a sham could do worse than start here.

And yet this same paper didn't even mention the last meeting of the Bilderberg Club, in Switzerland, a month or so back, and with the exception of the Guardian, neither did anyone else in the establishment media. The only time the BBC ever mentions it is to denigrate those who think it worthy of journalistic investigation. But now we're supposed to believe that Murdoch and his flame-haired enforcer have the power to dictate policy to the PM or something.

Let's not over-egg the pudding. No doubt Murdoch has had influence, mainly due to the politicians of both major parties craving his newspapers' support to peddle pro-government propaganda. As with so much shit, it really goes back to the wertfrei period of the Blair supremacy. To begin with, it was merely political machiavellianism, but by the end Blair's closet was so stuffed with skeletons, he could have been destroyed if Murdoch had turned his hounds loose. The main problem was not Murdoch's power, but why Blair was in its thrall.

When luvvies attack

When celebrities, politicians and the BBC unite against something, riding a wave of popular fury, woe betide anything which gets in their way.

Now it becomes clearer; the fact that there are ample laws to deal with phone-hacking and paying off coppers, we're going to see murder victim Milly become the poster-child for a campaign to muzzle the gutter press.

Looks like the cure will be worse than the disease.

Hot enough

Nora Jones singing and playing 'Cold, Cold Heart' in New Orleans.

A strange Question Time...

... for the following reasons:

All bar the last five minutes was devoted to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

The Labour and Tory panelists were marginal to the debate. The Tory suit got slapped early on, over the government's prevarication on holding an inquiry, and then shut up for the rest of the night, barely making eye contact, and only speaking to criticise the Labour guy on grounds of hypocrisy. The weasly Labourite initially thought he could join in as one of the jury, but was quickly dragged back to the dock beside the Tory, and so he faded from the debate as well.

This left us with Hugh Grant, Shirley Williams and John Gaunt.

Hugh Grant was very sharp, and unlike the usual celeb on QT, had many informed and rational points to make. Where he stumbled, in my view, was in calling for regulations on the tabloid press, which would I think threaten press freedom. John Gaunt served admirably as the populist, standing up for a free press for the right reasons, and even Shirley Williams came across well, whereas usually she annoys the hell out of me.

Then, with five minutes on the clock came a change of subject and a question on the awarding of the train-building contract to a German company and the loss of jobs at Bombardier.

John Gaunt got in a call for us to leave the EU, Shirley gave a defence of free trade (wow, a classical liberal position!) and Hugh, after saying he believed that the benefits of EU membership probably outweighed the losses, made an incredible statement about the nation losing its morale and losing its identity and needing it back. This wasn't incredible in itself, so much as who said it. Could it really be that the educated, 'liberal' middle classes who Hugh seems to personify, are finally grasping the existential problem with the EU? We can but hope.

Other things to note: when the vast influence of the BBC was mentioned once and briefly, there was a slightly embarrassed shuffling of feet, and then we moved on. The role of the police was discussed, but there seemed a slightly simplified understanding of how the media and the establishment, including the state, inter-relate.

I'll come back to this later, I need to step back and clarify my thinking on some of the issues.

Hari generally right, but...

Hari gives a decent defence of free speech, but I will take issue on a couple of points. Firstly, as his speech illustrated, the threat he discusses is not from religion in general, but Islam specifically. Secondly, I don't want to generalise about a long-drawn out affair, but the struggle for freedom of speech and conscience was not originally led by atheists, but by dissenting christians. Going back to the 16th and 17th and to a lesser extent the 18th, it was really only people with a strong faith who were prepared to defy the power of coercion even unto death. In colonial-era New England, for instance, it was the Quakers who willingly sacrificed themselves to the petty puritan tyrants who forced a change of view on the public.

Secularism is correct when it signifies the inability of the state to use its coercive power to enforce religious belief or observance, but for some latter-day atheists it seems they want to place themselves, in the name of Reason, on that vacant throne.

The problems Hari discusses were almost wholly found in predominantly muslim countries. India also gets a mention, which has a very large muslim population, who were the cause of the trouble. In this country we have had a small taste of such islamic nuts, waving their 'behead those who insult islam' placards, usually protected from hostile natives by the thin blue (or rather luminous green) line. We also have another, I would say more serious issue, which doesn't come from these bearded loons: the enforcement of 'hate-speech' laws and other sundry intimidations on free expression from the secular state.

I do not wish to ignore the threat from the extremists who are here amongst us, but the struggle for free speech and conscience in this country is not one of valient atheists facing down the theocratically-minded authorities. This is not Iran or Saudi Arabia. The real struggle is against a secular state enforcing the new official creed, which proclaims inclusion and diversity, and defines the boundaries of 'acceptability' with 'anti-discrimination' and 'hate-speech' laws. Indeed on a number of occasions, religious people, invariably christians, have been persecuted by the authorities. The mistake some of these christians, or rather their vocal defenders have made is to play along with the absurdity, trying to gain their own special 'protected minority' exemption, when they would be better off defending themselves on the grounds of individual liberty.

Still, watch the speech. It ain't bad. (Cross-posted at Orphans)

Have we got (another) smoking gun on the stinking Obama regime?

Uncoverage reports:

Operation “Fast and Furious” is moving slowly, but relentlessly upstream to the desks of Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, both of whom are for now….stonewalling.

The newest information is that, as promised, the director of ATF, Kenneth Melson, is refusing to quit and take the fall for the higher-ups who ordered the investigation. In a surprise move, Melson showed up to testify secretly to a Congressional oversight committee on the 4^th of July…with a personal attorney, not Department of justice legal counsel.

Eric Holder's got a lot of questions to answer, with regard to supplying weapons to the crazy Mexicano drug gangs, cos it looks like he's been lying through his teeth. The plan to demonise the Second Amendment, by blaming the Mexican drug war on the legal gun trade in the US, seems to have gone awry. Something to watch as this unravels, especially as Obama is also up to his neck in this.

Gateway Pundit are also on this one. Fox has this report of one crime south of the border with guns supplied by ATFE.

California's gay history

The Guardian story about the prospect of mandatory gay/lesbian etc history in the schools is one of those straws in the wind that I'll leave to others, but it was this part which sparked my recollection:

During debate about the bill, supporters gave examples of historical figures they said would be featured, including Friedrich von Steuben, a military adviser to George Washington forced out of Prussia because he was gay, and the British mathematics genius Alan Turing.

Hmm, not sure they should be bragging too much about that guy, if they're looking for positive role models ...

... As if the ragged soldiers at Valley Forge did not have enough troubles, they were to be further plagued by the arrival, in February, of a mendacious Prussian braggart and soldier of fortune calling himself "Baron von Steuben." Actually, Captain Steuben was neither a baron nor, as he claimed, a Prussian general; but he managed quickly to be elevated to the post of inspector general of the Continental Army. Steuben set about to Prussianize the American army, and so now the hapless soldiery suffered the infliction of the whole structure of petty and meaningless routine designed to stamp out individuality and transform the free and responsible soldier into an automaton subject to the will of his rulers. Ever since he had embarked on the Philadelphia campaign, Washington had grown ever further away from the guerrilla tactics that had won him victory at Trenton (and had defeated Burgoyne). Washington had no desire to become a guerrilla chieftain; to his aristocratic temper the only path to glory was through open, frontal combat as practiced by the great states of Europe. Washington had tried this formula, and lost dismally at Brandywine and at Germantown, but this experience taught him no real lessons. He was delighted to have Steuben continue the process he himself had begun in the first year of war of imposing petty enslavement upon a body of free men. Until recently, historians have rhapsodized uncritically over the benefits of Steuben's training, of the enormous difference in the army's performance. But Washington's and his army's performance was equally undistinguished before and after Steuben; any differences were scarcely visible.

In the midst of this Prussianizing of the American army, Charles Lee was released in a prisoner exchange in early April. While Washington and Steuben were taking the army in an ever more European direction, Lee in captivity was moving the other way—pursuing his insights into a fullfledged and elaborated proposal for guerrilla warfare. He presented his plan to Congress, as a "Plan for the Formation of the American Army." Bitterly attacking Steuben's training of the army according to the "European Plan," Lee charged that fighting British regulars on their own terms was madness and courted crushing defeat: "If the Americans are servilely kept to the European Plan, they will . . . be laugh'd at as a bad army by their enemy, and defeated in every [encounter]. . . . [The idea] that a decisive action in fair ground may be risqued is talking nonsense." Instead, he declared that "a plan of defense, harassing and impeding canalone succeed," particularly if based on the rough terrain west of the Susquehannah River in Pennsylvania. He also urged the use of cavalry and of light infantry (in the manner of Dan Morgan), both forces highly mobile and eminently suitable for the guerrilla strategy.

This strategic plan was ignored both by Congress and by Washington, all eagerly attuned to the new fashion of Prussianizing and to the attractions of a "real" army. Lee made himself further disliked by expressing yearnings for a negotiated peace, with full autonomy for America within the British empire. During his year in captivity, it seems he had partially reverted to the position of the English Whigs. He did not realize that the United States was now totally committed to independence, and that peace terms that would have been satisfactory three years earlier would no longer do. Too much should not be made of this, however; General Sullivan, in his earlier term of captivity, had also been temporarily persuaded of similar views.

Murray N. Rothbard - Conceived in Liberty volume 4 pp 225-226

Sickening terror hype of the week

The fact that your chances of dying from a bee sting are far higher should not deter you. Be afraid, very afraid and hand over what's left of your dignity and privacy, because those evil teworwists have come up with a new ruse: the internal bomb, surgically placed within the body.

Under the circumstances, if the goons at airports and coming to a highstreet near you some time soon wish to put you through a proctology exam and a radiation-heavy body scan, who could possibly object? Not the establishment media of course, those valiant bulldogs of liberty. The Guardian article does not even raise an eyebrow, let alone call out this bullshit for what it is.

Time to heed the warning of James Madison:

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

1920: The Great Depression that never was

Presented by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., at "The Great Depression: What We Can Learn From It Today," the Mises Circle in Colorado; sponsored by Limited Government Forum of Colorado Springs and hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Recorded Saturday, 4 April 2009.

An excellent speech from Tom Woods, discussing the laissez-faire approach of President Warren Harding to the recession of 1920/21, and how it confounds the Keynesian model of deficit spending and 'stimulus packages'.

Wow

I mentioned below that I was happy to celebrate Mervyn Peake's centenary year, and fully intend to visit the exhibition of his work. Browsing the web I came to this site dedicated to him, where I saw the striking image above: Alice coming through the looking glass.

Regarding that new statue...

I hand over to Rothbard to offer the libertarian critique of Reagan:

The presidency of Ronald Wilson Reagan has been a disaster for libertarianism in the United States, and might yet prove to be catastrophic for the human race. Reagan came to power in 1981 as the chief political spokesman for the Conservative Movement, a movement which took its essential modern form in 1955, with the founding of National Review. Reagan has been the main conservative politician since "The Speech," delivered over nationwide TV during the 1964 Goldwater campaign, established him as the "Great Communicator" of the right wing.

The Conservative Movement of modern times has had three basic, and mutually contradictory, tenets: (1) "Getting Big Government Off Our Backs" by rolling back statism and establishing a free market economy; (2) crushing civil liberties whenever crime, "national security," or "morality" are threatened, i.e. whenever civil liberties become important; and (3) seeking an all-out political and military confrontation with "atheistic world Communism," in particular its satanic headquarters in the Kremlin, up to and including a nuclear showdown.

It is starkly evident that (2) and (3) are, at the very least, inconsistent with (1). For one thing, how does one "Get Big Government Off Our Economic Backs," while at the same time spreading "Big Government" into our bedrooms, and into our private letters and phone calls? How does one secure the right to free trade and free enterprise while outlawing pornography and all commerce with the Soviet bloc? And how does one preserve the right to personal life and property while engaging in the mass murder of civilians required by modern warfare? Whenever the Conservative Movement has become aware of such inconsistencies (e.g. over free trade with sinners, or foreign aid for our "allies," or ever-greater military budgets), it has opted unhesitatingly for (2) and (3) over (1). For conservatives, the State as Theocrat and Moral Enforcer and the State as Mass Murderer have always taken precedence over the feeble goals of freedom and free markets.

Read the whole article at Lew Rockwell's

IMF: repeating past mistakes? More like modus operandi

Jeremy Warner writing in the Telegraph puts forward the idea that the IMF are ignoring the lessons of the past:

The policy review document was originally published in October 2003 and signed off by a then relatively unknown IMF official called Tim Geithner, now the US Treasury Secretary no less.

Strangely enough, he seems entirely to have forgotten about this eight-year-old tome, whose candid and illuminating account of Argentina's descent into economic and fiscal chaos, and the not inconsiderable role the IMF played in the process, provides an object lesson in how not to proceed.

There's no application of its lessons to Greece and the rest of the troubled eurozone periphery; worse, in blind disregard for its own analysis, the IMF is making exactly the same mistakes all over again.

Jeremy, my naive friend, them's not mistakes. It's what they do -hook 'em, let 'em run, then reel 'em in (and btw Jeremy, lose the Karl Marx quotes, you're supposed to be writing about economics).

Judge David Wood: how low can you go?

Judge Wood gives a good headline: "How could you sink so low?" proclaims the Mail, as the man in the silly wig expresses his distaste for a couple of verminious thieves who stole a war memorial and sold it for scrap... and then what does he do?

He lets them go free.

It wouldn't be fair not to also hold up the so-called prosecution lawyers who allowed these two tapeworms to plead to a lesser charge of 'handling stolen goods'. Nevertheless this crime has a maximum sentence of 14 years.

So, Judge, if you were so disgusted, why didn't you throw the book at them, rather than setting them free to continue their thieving? Oh yeah, I remember. You're a typical judge and you haven't got a clue. Still, I'm sure the crooks learnt their lesson: look pitiful, act dumb, hold out your hand for a little slap, and go on your way, laughing.

The Declaration of Independence

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton