Englands Freedome, Souldiers Rights

Fair and balanced

2012-01-21T16:34:00.004Z

This is quite funny, although I fear there are a fair few who might not grasp the joke.

Hat tip: The Daily Paul

Forget Cameron, here's someone who understands the free market

2012-01-20T00:18:00.002Z

The venerable Tom Woods, speaking on 'The Free Market: Fallacies and Facts' at the Mises Circle in Houston, 14th January, 2012.

Khan Academy breaks down tyrannical SOPA

2012-01-20T00:02:00.002Z

Hat tip: Economic Policy Journal

Cameron on capitalism: a curate's egg

2012-01-19T23:14:00.006Z

In commenting on Cameron's speech regarding capitalism, I guess I could go either way, in other words, I could take some solace that he seems at least half right half of the time (presumably to the extent that he is influenced by Steve Hilton), which, in terms of British politicians is about as good as it gets, or I could denounce him for his adherence to interventionist myths about how free markets don't work, unless there's a bunch of cretinous politicians fiddling around with the mechanisms.

Few politicians are able to embrace free market capitalism in its true sense, because to do so would involve accepting that not only should they not interfere, but that their interference is positively malign in effect.

What they never seem to do is hold up the government and the state to the standards they espouse for others. If this government was a business, it would have been declared bankrupt decades, if not centuries ago.

As recommended by Mises

2012-01-18T23:36:00.004Z

I'm reading Benjamin M. Anderson's 'Economics and the Public Welfare' at the moment, recounting the economic history of the period 1914 to 1946, mainly of the United States, but also, and necessarily so, covering events in Europe and the rest of the world. The following observation (at the end) struck me as particularly well said.

France entered the war with bad government finance. She had a national debt of 30 billion gold francs as against an estimated national wealth of 300 billion gold francs at the beginning of the war. France had had chronic deficits for many years before the war. There was governmental extravagance, and there was a great reluctance on the part of the people to submit to direct taxes. They did tolerate very heavy indirect taxes. When Caillaux undertook early in 1914 to introduce an income tax of 2 percent in the effort to balance the French budget, the outcry in France was so extreme that one would have supposed that the end of the world had come. During the war France did relatively little with taxation, and the public debt ran up from 30 billion to 147 billion francs before the war was over.

Then France began to have some real deficits. Adherents of the school of Keynes and Hansen would do well to study the history of French finance from 1918 to 1926. The one difference between the policies followed in France in this period and the polices advocated by the New Deal spenders for the United States is to be found in the fact that the French were ashamed of it and tried to conceal it and to find excusees for it, whereas the New Deal spenders would glorify it and call it "investment".

From chapter 14 - France 1918-24

Joe Lieberman: scumbag maggot who loves tyranny and hates America

2012-01-18T23:22:00.004Z

Listen to the end. The last line gives it away. I ask you America, is this what you want your country to become?

Hat tip: Infowars

Doctors call for MANDATORY participation in clinical trials

2012-01-18T23:12:00.003Z

With every day we seem to descend further into a fabian hell. Via Infowars I read an article from the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics (!?) calling for mandatory participation in drug and vaccine trials.

The argument goes something like; 'well, the state can conscript people and send them off to war, so why the hell not conscript people for medical experiments?'

Read it yourself if you don't believe me.

A republic, if you can keep it

2012-01-15T22:56:00.003Z

I have been reading Garet Garrett's 'People's Pottage' (published under the title 'Ex-America' by Caxton Press), three essays grimly dissecting America's descent from republic to empire. Sadly Garett's lament for lost liberty did not stop the slide, but it is valuable to know better the steps that were taken, most notably by Roosevelt and Truman, to destroy that city on the hill. Here's an extract from the last one, 'Rise of Empire':

PROPERTIES OF EMPIRE
I

If you may have Empire with or without a constitution, even within the form of a republican constitution, and if also you may have Empire with or without an emperor, then how may the true marks of Empire be distinguished with certainty? What are they?

War and conquest? No. Republics may make war and pursue the aims of conquest. Continental conquest did not give the United States the character of Empire. Continental conquest was but the growth of a lively political organism, acting from its own center. Thenatural limits of it were geographic. Notions of Empire did at the same time arise—notions of external conquest — but they were sternly put down by the republican spirit.

Colonies, then? No, not colonies. At least, you have to say what you mean by colonies. They are of many kinds and represent diverse intentions in time and circumstance. An over-populated republic may swarm, as bees do. Colonies did not make Greece an Empire. The Greek colonists were emigrants. As they moved across the Aegean Sea to the shores of Asia Minor they took with them fire from the sacred hearth, and were sometimes subsidized out of the public treasury as if they were children entitled to a farewell portion of the family wealth; but beyond that they were on their own, and when a colony was founded it was a sovereign state, not politically bound to the mother-state.

War, conquest, colonization, expansion—these are political exertions that occur in the history of any kind of state that was ever known, tyrannies, oligarchies, republics or democracies. But let us regard the things that belong only to empire, and set them down. Then we shall see.

The first requisite of Empire is:
The executive power of government shall be dominant.

Read on...

Breaking Cover

2012-01-15T22:18:00.001Z

Goldbug - Whole Lotta Love

I've been away for a few days. I trust y'all have coped.

Stereophonics - Handbags and Gladrags

Come on New Hampshire - be true to your motto ...

2012-01-10T23:20:00.003Z

The one man in this race who understands what freedom means in all its perplexity.

Not that I'm interferring of course...

Hat tip: Lew Rockwell's Political Theater

Everybody Hurts

2012-01-09T22:21:00.002Z

I'm usually a brunette man, but I'm prepared to make exceptions (cor!).

A great song from Duffy - Warwick Avenue

Samizdata attacking Ron Paul again

2012-01-09T21:12:00.006Z

Yeah, that Dr Paul and his apparently ridiculous preference for peace, or failing that, a constitutionally-declared, limited bellum iustum, instead of the present practice of undeclared, endless, bankruptcy-inducing military adventurism in faraway countries, riles up the neo-cons amongst them.

As usual, there's the grudging acknowledgement that some of what he says may be okay, but any bonus points he wins for wanting to cut government expenditure massively, return to constitutional government, institute a sound monetary policy, re-establish the Bill of Rights, end the war on drugs etc., count as nothing, due to his disinclination to bomb the fuck out of the islamofascist ragheads, who are, even now, girding themselves to sweep down from the Hindu Kush into the heartlands of America.

(Brian's alright though, and some of the commenters too, to be fair).

Correcting CBS

2012-01-09T19:29:00.004Z

From Digital Journal:

"Does the mainstream media hate Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul? That's what many of his supporters are asking themselves now. After Jan Crawford of CBS News omitted Dr. Paul from her report and from a polling graphic, many have complained to CBS.

According to the latest Suffolk University poll in the New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney sits in first place with 33 percent, while Dr. Paul polled second with 20 percent. Meanwhile, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who has bet his own campaign on the Granite State, is third with 13 percent. One day before the primary, 12 percent remain undecided."

See the clip below:

Hat tip: Infowars

Jesse Defamed

2012-01-09T00:59:00.009Z

For the second time in barely a fortnight the establishment media is spreading false stories about Jesse Ventura.

First it was about him being in a road-rage incident in California when he was in fact hundreds of miles away in Minnesota, and now, far more maliciously, that he was punched out in a Navy Seals bar for saying that American troops deserved to die, and interestingly the story hit when he had just left the country and would be incommunicado for a couple of days.

Anyone who is remotely familiar with the guy knows this story is a stinking lie. Jesse is proud to the core of his service in the Seals and that of his parents and other members of his family, and although he has been scathing in attacking the wars of recent years, he has never attacked the troops who have been serving.

This is clearly an attempt to blacken his name, and try to silence him. He has spoken in the past of maybe running for the Presidency on the Libertarian Party ticket, and unless Ron Paul is chosen by the GOP, I certainly hope he gives it some serious thought. This kind of dirty, back-stabbing attack is most likely to encourage him to do just that.

Tom Woods in NH

2012-01-09T00:14:00.002Z

Tom Woods, reporting from New Hampshire:

I asked the youngsters in what was predominantly a young crowd how many of them had held different views before encountering Ron Paul, and then after learning about him began to look at the world altogether differently. Huge cheer.

Then I asked, “Now how many people do you think have ever said, ‘My life was changed forever when I first discovered the philosophy of Mitt Romney’?”

Two Definitions of Liberty

2012-01-07T20:44:00.006Z

The above is of course the one I subscribe to. Ron Paul stands up for individual liberty in its true sense, both in the personal and the economic sphere, and he speaks out against the Patriot Act and the recent NDAA, both of which are egregious violations of the principles in the Bill of Rights.

Below we find a different view from Rick Santorum. Part of what he says is reasonable. Few people deny that we have responsibilities to others, especially our nearest and dearest. However, Santorum rejects in principle the notion that we should be free to do as we please, provided we don't harm others. This is one thing to say on a moral level, it is quite another when you are seeking political office in which you will have the power to impose your will on everyone else.

Furthermore, he speaks of devotion to the 'the common good', which the interviewer rightly suggests makes Santorum sound like some kind of crazy collectivist (I paraphrase). According to Santorum, it seems, you are free to do as you're told.

Hat tip: Samizdata (although they block my comments for some reason)

UPDATE: The latest Lew Rockwell podcast talks about Santorum, with a different quote from him in a similar vein, having a pop at libertarians (@ 3:40), which is worth a listen (if only for the quote from one of Santorum's ex-colleagues on his IQ).

Sheffield Connection

2012-01-07T19:41:00.001Z

Following on from the Tony Christie number below, I come to this by the Arctic Monkeys, with whom he collaborated on the album 'Made in Sheffield'.

An Obsession With Language

2012-01-07T17:55:00.006Z

In political discourse, as in communication in general, the choice of words is paramount. In addition to the simple meaning of words there are anciliary associations and implications which the wordsmith uses to reinforce the desired message.

The above is intended to be a statement of the obvious, as a prologue to noting the use of the word 'obsession' with regard to the beliefs and opinions of one's political adversaries. This particular one is often leveled at people like myself, who hold views which are not endorsed by the so-called mainstream. The aim is to convey the idea that the object is something unwholesome, or that the belief or interest in the thing stems not from a rational decision of the intellect, but from an impulse originating in the basal ganglia or some other primitive part of the brain.

Here is exhibit A:

What Is “Austrian Economics”? And why is Ron Paul obsessed with it?

The meaning of obsession from the Free Dictionary is thus:

1. Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety.
2. A compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion.

So, is Ron Paul obsessed with Austrian Economics? If, when you asked him if he wanted a cup of tea, he grabbed your lapels and, with a faraway look in his eyes, uttered:

There are certain unsettled questions in economic theory that have been handed down as a sort of legacy from one generation to another. The discussion of these questions is revived twenty or it may be a hundred times in the course of a decade, and each time the disputants exhaust their intellectual resources in the endeavor to impress their views upon their contemporaries. Not infrequently the discussion is carried far beyond the limits of weariness and satiety, so that it may well be regarded as an offence against good taste to again recur to so well-worn a theme. And yet these questions return again and again, like troubled spirits doomed restlessly to wander until the hour of their deliverance shall appear. It may be that since the last discussion of the question we have made some real or fancied discoveries in the science, and some may think that these throw new light upon the old question. Instantly the old strife breaks forth anew, with the same liveliness as if it possessed the charm of entire novelty, and so it continues year after year, and will continue, until the troubled spirit is at last set free. In this class we find the question -- What is the "ultimate standard of value"?

... then you may have reason to suggest that the Good Doctor is obsessed. As this is certainly not the case, and that, going by the thousands of Ron Paul clips on the internet, he is quite capable of confining his discussion of Austrian Economics to occasions when it is indeed relevant, we can safely surmise that the writer's use of the word 'obsessed' is rhetorical sleight-of-hand.

So, in order to encourage the correct use of the word 'obsession' I offer the following examples to Matthew Yglesias of poor and misleading usage:

If I like a book that you don't like, it does not follow that I am obsessed with the book.

If I like 'The Godfather' and you don't, it does not follow that I am obsessed with gangster movies.

If I come home and find you robbing my television, and I object, it does not follow that I am obsessed with private property or material possessions.

If a woman discovers you have stolen a pair of her high-heeled slippers and you are currently masturbating furiously to the point of ejaculation all over them, and she objects, it does not follow that she's obsessed with hygiene, or indeed preventing the perfidious sin of Onan.

I hope this helps.

Hat tip: Lew Rockwell's Political Theater.

Brand New Retro ...

2012-01-07T16:59:00.003Z

... at least to me. I heard this on the radio yesterday; Tony Christie - 'Avenues and Alleyways'. I don't know where it's been hiding all these years. The video's cool, mining the same seam as the Beastie Boys 'Sabotage', which I'm just about old enough to remember in its original format.

How to misunderstand Lockean property rights

2012-01-07T14:35:00.006Z

As noted below, George Monbiot's most recent feeble attack on libertarianism and property rights built its rickety frame upon something written by one Matt Bruenig, so let us turn to Matt Bruenig and see if he has anything that may disturb our settled views on the subject of property. Here are some 'pearls of wisdom' from Bruenig:

"Unfortunately, many — even on the left — will concede that property rights exist, and that the institution of property makes sense... I think this is the wrong move: the issue of property should be attacked head on for the incoherent mess that it is... You cannot justify ownership based on free exchange because ownership necessarily does not originate from free exchange: at some initial point, someone had to just grab some piece of land without exchanging with anybody. This is logically unavoidable."

What Bruenig is pointing out here is hardly revelatory. He seems to think that he's spotted a flaw, but in reality he is merely working his way back to the starting point of Locke's principle of ownership. He is correct that it is logically unavoidable, which may explain why neither Locke nor any other thinker of note avoided it.

"Now, there are all sorts of efforts to explain how that initial appropriation can occur. Philosophers like John Locke, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Nozick give famous accounts, and there is significant amounts of literature explaining just how spectacularly they all fail."

So Bruenig drops the names of Locke, Rothbard and Nozick, but where I might find the 'significant amounts of literature' which disprove such thinkers remains a mystery. I shall charitably presume for the moment that Bruenig has sated himself on such wisdom. Perhaps he will provide the knowledge for his readers?

"But the easiest way to understand how original appropriation cannot be justified within a conservative/libertarian framework is by focusing on the idea of opportunity loss. When an individual declares perpetual ownership of some piece of unowned land, every other human being on earth suffers an opportunity loss: their opportunity to use that land has now disappeared. Opportunity losses are real economic harms.
To be concrete about this, consider an example. The piece of land down by the river is owned by no one; so everyone can use it. Sarah declares — on whatever property theory she prefers — that the piece of land by the river now belongs to her exclusively. But, wait a minute. The previous ability of others to use the land by the river has now vanished! They have been hit with opportunity losses. If one of the dispossessed were to say “this is silly, I do not consent to giving up my pre-existing opportunity to use the land down by the river,” Sarah uses violence (typically state violence) to keep the dispossessed out.
Unless unanimous consent exists, the original grabbing up of property results in violent, non-consensual theft from others. It is really just that simple. What follows from that conclusion is that the conservative/libertarian positions that depend on the sanctity of property rights are totally bogus."

Okay, so now we have Bruenig's argument. Let's start with his conception of 'opportunity loss'.

"When an individual declares perpetual ownership of some piece of unowned land, every other human being on earth suffers an opportunity loss: their opportunity to use that land has now disappeared. Opportunity losses are real economic harms. "

On the face of it, this is a ridiculous statement, which declares that it is wrong for anyone to do anything, because this will harm everyone else. Bruenig is talking about land, but the same principle could be applied to any other property. If I eat an apple, in doing so I deprive everyone else of eating that apple. If we accept this notion, let us not forget that I at least have benefited from eating the apple. Therefore, let Bruenig's cosmic ledger record on one side the benefit I received balanced against the sum of loss to the rest of mankind thus deprived, and suppose that these sums are equal.

Bruenig must realise that one apple cannot be divided between 7 billion people, and that any particular 'opportunity loss' which such an individual action imposes is infinitesimally small to any other individual. He must also accept that if such an action is forbidden due to the 'real economic harm' that it imposes on others, then we must all starve to death. I would suggest that any philosophical principle which leads to the annihilation of humanity should be rejected for that reason alone! Moving on...

"To be concrete about this, consider an example. The piece of land down by the river is owned by no one; so everyone can use it. Sarah declares — on whatever property theory she prefers — that the piece of land by the river now belongs to her exclusively. But, wait a minute. The previous ability of others to use the land by the river has now vanished! "

Here we find how Bruenig has completely misunderstood the Lockean principle. His example does not address the principle at all. He states: "The piece of land down by the river is owned by no one; so everyone can use it." However the Lockean principle deals with land which neither owned nor used by anyone. Indeed it is the use of the land which confers ownership. If the land is already in use, say as common land, then its ownership has been thus established.

What Bruenig is failing to distinguish between is actual use and potential use. Indeed he is dishonestly, it seems, switching between these different states. He then hammers home his crooked nail with this statement:

"If one of the dispossessed were to say “this is silly, I do not consent to giving up my pre-existing opportunity to use the land down by the river,” Sarah uses violence (typically state violence) to keep the dispossessed out."

If he is now describing someone who was a prior actual user, this is a fine example of self-refutation. He uses the term 'dispossessed' - dispossessed of what? A prior property right! In other words, the dispossessed person needs to assert the very principle Bruenig wishes to deny. If however Bruenig is describing not a prior actual user, but merely a potential user now excluded, we are back to the starvation scenario above. Therefore, if only on pragmatic grounds, property rights must be defended if we are to avoid extinction.

Having failed to refute Locke's argument, Bruenig's further deductions are hardly worthy of consideration, and it will be no surprise to learn what he prefers to put in its place, nor the language he uses to obscure the harsh reality of his position. He talks of a "democratic decision-making process about resource use ", which sounds so much nicer than collectivist tyranny.

If I wasn't losing interest at this point, I would start applying Bruenig's fallacious reasoning and dubious word definitions to his own position. If all property resolves to the collective, what about the 'opportunity cost' to the individual? Furthermore, how are we to ensure that the democratic decision-making process will represent everyone? If, in his example, the collective swings into action to prevent Sarah's land enclosure and reasserts the common ownership of that parcel of land, how can we be sure that those acting in the collective interest are properly consulting the 7 billion humans who have, apparently, just as much ownership in the piece of land as anyone else?

In closing I will mention 'the tragedy of the commons'. If Bruenig and his fan George Monbiot are truly concerned with the environment, they would park their ideological inanities for a moment and consider the pragmatic benefits of property rights. They should also bear in mind that if the totalitarian system they espouse were ever put in place, there is no guarantee that the dictators whose boots they dream of licking will share their particular vision of utopia.

Cross-posted at Libertarian Home

Monbiot swings fist at libertarianism, misses, ends in crumpled heap on floor in puddle of own urine

2012-01-07T12:56:00.010Z

George Monbiot obviously hasn't learnt from his mistakes. He has again launched a feeble attack on libertarianism, using as a jumping-off point a piece by someone called Matt Bruenig, who is some kind of communist as far as I can tell. I may write something separate on him later, if I feel like playing whack-a-mole on his sixth-form level sophisms.

The attack from these two is based on the following:

A complete rejection of property rights.

A claim that property rights are untenable when faced by issues of environmental pollution.

A claim that because they are untenable, libertarians are forced to reject environmentalism.

On the first point; readers, please feel free to occupy and make use of George's palatial residence, seeing that, according to him, property rights are laughable. I suspect, if anyone of us were to move in, start watching his telly, eating the food out of his fridge, sleeping in his beds etc he would very swiftly rediscover his understanding of property rights, which, when he's sitting in his intellectual ivory tower, strangely deserts him.

On the second point, libertarian property rights with regard to environmental issues are not at all untenable, and actually provide the means to address such matters and bring redress where justice dictates. As I noted last time George decided to parade his hostile ignorance, it was the refusal of 19th century courts, i.e., the organs of the state, to uphold property rights with regard to industrial pollution on the spurious grounds of a collectivist 'greater good' which prevented the law from dealing with the issue, and, anecdotally, I pointed out to George how, in the socialist countries of the Soviet bloc, environmental degradation was often worse, due to them sharing George's collectivism and hatred for property rights.

On the third point, it is not the case that libertarians are constrained to reject environmentalism, only that we are constrained to address such matters from what we consider the correct and just starting point, that being individual liberty, property rights and the non-aggression principle.

Leaving aside the science for a moment, George Monbiot and those of the environmental movement who mill around his tattered standard, are so inherently hostile to libertarian ideas and so slavishly in thrall to an ideological mish-mash of collectivism, state-worship and neo-pastoral utopianism, that we are duty-bound to fight back against his poisonous views.

This would be the case, even if every doomsday prediction he trots out was 100% veritas, because the solutions he proposes are monstrously illiberal. What we would support are solutions that adhere to the principles I note above; individual liberty, property rights and non-aggression.

Yet again, Monbiot refuses to engage with actual libertarian philosophy and prefers to duff up a strawman version, which may satisfy his unthinking followers. It is, I suppose, somewhat gratifying that he has identified libertarianism as the main enemy, in other words, the most consistent and rational antidote to his sub-marxoid, misanthropic madness.

Hat tip: An Englishman's Castle

Cross-posted at Libertarian Home

Ashdown: dirty statist

2012-01-06T00:31:00.003Z

Avuncular 'liberalism'; that's what you get with Paddy Ashdown. Boiling it down, the message is; the nation state is finished, thus we should commit ourselves to a centuries-long struggle to democratising the power structures that will prevail.

Ashdown may strike some as a visionary thinker. To me, he's an old hack. Interspersed with the nonsense is the occasional home truth about interdependence etc., but what is his essential message, if not to worship the state? His whole philosophy drips with the treacle of trusting our wise governors - not one word for individual liberty.

I'd call him a commie bastard, but people would misunderstand.

Sequoyah: the state that never was

2012-01-05T00:25:00.004Z

Listening to Lew Rockwell's latest podcast, an interview with historian Charles Burris discussing, amongst other things, the history of third parties in American politics, I learnt of the following:

The State of Sequoyah was a proposed state to be established in the eastern part of present-day Oklahoma. In 1905, faced by proposals to end their tribal governments, Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory proposed such a state as a means to retain some control of their land. Their intention was to have a state under Native American constitution and rule.[1] The proposed state was named in honor of Sequoyah, the Cherokee who created a writing system in 1825 for the Cherokee language.

So much history, so little time. From the blurb at LRC:

Lew Rockwell talks to Charles Burris about political revisionism (and a little Kennedy assassination revisionism, too).
Charles A. Burris: Archives
The CIA and The Media Article by Carl Bernstein

Il a raison, ce monsieur Bastiat

2012-01-04T23:40:00.004Z

Justice and fraternity, in Journal des Économistes, 15 June 1848, page 313

"[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth.

Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ... But is it possible? ... Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?

...Finally...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success."

Found at Wikiquote Frédéric Bastiat

Mises for the lazy

2012-01-04T00:11:00.003Z

I was reading the excellent Mises collection of essays and addresses "Planning For Freedom", and it occurred to me that I could kick back and let someone else take the trouble, in this case Gennady Stolyarov II. Thw lecture was originally presented to the University Club of New York, April 18, 1950, and bears the title 'Middle-of-the-road leads to socialism' - also found in the Mises Institute publication "Two Essays".

History, but not for the faint-hearted

2012-01-02T21:29:00.005Z

Mature readers click through to see this grisly image in better detail. It is of the execution of François Ravaillac, the assassin of Henri IV of France, in the manner reserved for regicides. You will see there are various stages of the execution played out in the picture, so you get to see before and after the horses tear him limb from limb.

Interesting, huh?

Joanna who?

2012-01-02T16:19:00.004Z

Joanna of Naples - I like her already! Here's Nany Goldstone discussing "The Lady Queen: the notorious reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem & Sicily". I have not read this book, but it certainly strikes me as an interesting piece of the historical jigsaw that has hereto for been lurking down the back of the scholarly sofa.

The last word on the newsletters

2012-01-02T16:16:00.001Z

Hat tip: Economic Policy Journal

Happy New Year

2012-01-02T01:06:00.003Z

Sir Walter Raleigh and his son

Happy New Year, dear readers.

It's the faux-moralistic tone that grates

2011-12-28T01:57:00.004Z

According to reports, David Cameron is calling for minimum alcohol price legislation. This will apparently claw in additional loot to the Treasury of £70 million, which is reason enough for the greedy scum to want to do it, but it's the pretence that this is to help us poor, miserable sinners, to protect us from ourselves in the face of a drinking epidemic that doesn't exist, that sticks in the craw.

A Whitehall source told [the Telegraph]: "The Prime Minister has decided that when it comes to alcohol, something pretty radical now has to be done and he is keen on the minimum price.

Be honest, you thieving fucker, you want more money, you want to dip your sticky fingers into the pockets and purses of the public. You can't possibly stack up a factually-based case that we're drinking more, because we aren't, whatever photos of comatose girls and pools of vomit the Daily Mail can provide.

Maybe it's just a plan to make the EU look good.

Orthodox Truth

2011-12-26T20:17:00.008Z

The following is a quotation from Ludwig von Mises, taken from a lecture he gave in 1945 on the subject of state intervention in the economy. Plus ca change!

Interventionism the Cause of Depression

It is true, many people believe that economic policy should not bother at all about long-run consequences. They quote a dictum of Lord Keynes: "In the long run we are all dead." I do not question the truth of this statement; I even consider it as the only correct declaration of the neo-British Cambridge school. But the conclusions drawn from this truism are entirely fallacious. The exact diagnosis of the economic evils of our age is: we have outlived the short-run and are suffering from the long-run consequences of policies which did not take them into consideration. The interventionists have silenced the warning voices of the economists. But things developed precisely as these much abused orthodox scholars had predicted. Depression is the aftermath of credit expansion; mass unemployment prolonged year after year is the inextricable effect of attempts to keep wage rates above the level which the unhampered market would have fixed. All those evils which the progressives interpret as evidence of the failure of capitalism are the necessary outcome of allegedly social interference with the market. It is true that many authors who advocated these measures and many statesmen and politicians who executed them were impelled by good intentions and wanted to make people more prosperous. But the means chosen for the attainment of the ends aimed at were inappropriate. However good intentions may be, they can never render unsuitable means any more suitable.

It must be emphasized that we are discussing means and measures, not ends. The matter at issue is not whether the policies advocated by the self-styled progressives are to be recommended or condemned from any arbitrary preconceived point of view. The essential problem is whether such policies can really attain the ends aimed at.

It is beside the mark to confuse the debate by referring to accidental and irrelevant matters. It is useless to divert attention from the main problem by vilifying capitalists and entrepreneurs and by glorifying the virtues of the common man. Precisely because the common man is worthy of all consideration, it is necessary to avoid policies detrimental to his welfare.

The market economy is an integrated system of intertwined factors that mutually condition and determine one another. The social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, i.e., the state, certainly has the might to interfere with the market. The government or agencies in which the government, either by legal privilege or by indulgence, has vested the power to apply violent pressure with impunity, are in a position to decree that certain market phenomena are illegal. But such measures do not bring about the results which the interfering power wants to attain. They not only render conditions more unsatisfactory for the interfering authority. They disintegrate the market system altogether, they paralyze its operation, they bring about chaos.

If one considers the working of the market system as unsatisfactory, one must try to substitute another system for it. This is what the socialists aim at. But socialism is not the subject matter of this meeting's discussion. I was invited to deal with interventionism, i.e., with various measures designed to improve the operation of the market system, not to abolish it altogether. And what I contend is that such measures must needs bring about results which from the point of view of their supporters are more undesirable than the previous state of affairs they wanted to alter.

Taken from 'Planning for Freedom'

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

Extra helpings of Schiff

2011-12-26T16:47:00.003Z

Peter Schiff Part 2. After listening to the clip below, I came to this, which is definitely worth checking out. From the blurb:

"Peter Schiff, CEO and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, discusses how excessive government intervention hinders economic recovery and growth, during a Fraser Institute policy briefing on Thursday, Oct. 13 at the University Club of Montreal. "

I also listened to this pithy dissection of a recent Obama speech on the economy.

Peter Schiff schools New Dealer Gingrich

2011-12-26T15:36:00.004Z

It's difficult to work out how a man - Newt Gingrich - can be viewed as a conservative in any way, whilst praising FDR to the rafters. Peter Schiff lays it out, with some interesting background on Grover Cleveland.

Stossel on free speech

2011-12-26T14:57:00.005Z

Juan Williams talks to John Stossel (from a while back, I think) about the assault on free speech by the Americans refer to as liberals (i.e. leftwingers).

Posted by Liberty Pen

Bill Hicks on the Waco Massacre

2011-12-26T01:42:00.003Z

The fuss about Ron Paul's newsletters has got me thinking about the period that the controversial newsletters were written, that being the period between the Waco massacre and the OKC bombing. Bill Hicks, with his squeegied third eye and public access television, knew what had happened at Waco - the feds had murdered over 90 people in cold blood. Sadly he was gone by the time OKC came along.

Rest in peace, Bill. Gone but not forgotten. Here's a longer piece from him, from the album "Rant in E Minor".

Judge Nap on Reason TV

2011-12-25T19:56:00.001Z

Reason's Nick Gillespie speaks to the Judge about religion, abortion, Occupy Wall Street and various other matters of import.

France, Turkey and various genocides

2011-12-25T17:32:00.003Z

The French plan to criminalise denying that the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks was genocide is foolish and wrong. I suppose the logic they are using is; 'if denying the genocide of Jews by the Nazis is a crime, then so should other genocides", which makes sense, but then denying the Holocaust should not be a crime in any society which values freedom.

Now they're in a diplomatic spat with the Turks, whose position is, I believe, historically indefensible - and I guess I better say that, given the European Arrest Warrant - as they go further than denying genocide into complete whitewash. Now they're kettling the French pot with counter-accusations that Marianne has more than a spot of genocidal blood on her hands vis à vis la guerre d'Algérie.

Matters of historical controversy should not be dealt with through criminalising opinion, no matter how demonstrably false such opinions are or how offensive some find them. It is no business of the state to be ruling on what did and did not happen in the past.

Digging through the Ron Paul archives

2011-12-25T15:39:00.011Z

Below are various links to the Ron Paul newsletters, which his enemies have been making such a song and dance over. Readers, make up your own minds. I've gone through all the links below, and find very little dirt, and certainly nothing to justify the slurs being leveled at him.

My advice to the Ron Paul camp is gather them all together and publish them. Your enemies want to cherry-pick. Give 'em the whole tree!

The titles of the documents are given by the file names. I cannot vouch that they are correct.

Freedom April 1978 - A three-page extract, regarding the Canal Treaty. Nothing untoward, as far as I can see.
Freedom May 1979 - A one-page extract, regarding nuclear power. Nothing untoward, as far as I can see.
Freedom August 1983 - A one-page extract, regarding tax enforcement and big government. Nothing untoward, as far as I can see.
? January 1988 - A one-page extract, reporting, but not endorsing, William C. Douglass M.D's claims that AIDS is man-made.
Ron Paul Political Report September 1988 - A three-page extract. discussing Rockefeller and the Tri-Laterals, plus a mention of Scorsese's 'Last Temptation' movie.
Ron Paul Investment Letter April 1988 - A one-page extract. Nothing untoward, as far as I can see.
Ron Paul Investment Letter May 1988 - A one-page extract. Nothing untoward, as far as I can see.
Ron Paul Political Report April 1989 - A two-page extract. Quite interesting. It mentions the drug war, gun bans, Salman Rushdie, David Duke and skinheads, amongst other things.
Ron Paul Political Report, November 1989 - A three-page extract, reporting on Spy Magazine crashing Bohemian Grove.
Ron Paul Political Report, December 1989 - A seven-page extract (page 3 is missing, and possibly later pages). This is worth viewing as it discusses racism and homosexuality, and is one of documents that Dr Paul's foes are mining.
? January 1990 - A one-page extract, mentioning drug legalisation and criticising gay rights activists for their actions against the Catholic church.
? July 1990 - A one-page extract, mentions gay lobby attacking Tom Clancy
Ron Paul Political Report January 1992 - A two-page extract, endorsing Pat Buchanan's presidential run, despite not agreeing with him on everything.
Ron Paul Investment Letter February 1992 - A two-page extract. Nothing untoward, as far as I can see.
? July 1992 - Five pages of extracts, pages missing in between. Plenty of race stuff here. As ever, judge for yourselves.
Ron Paul Investment Letter October 1992 - A one-page extract, with comments on car-jacking. Racist? Shocking? You decide.
? November 1992 - A two-page extract. Nothing untoward, as far as I can see.
Survival Report January 1993 - A one-page extract, with a mention of demographics and race.
Survival Report April 1993 - A one-page extract, containing the reference to the 1993 attack on the WTC. It's worth comparing what actually was written and how this is being misrepresented, for instance in the CNN interview below. The writer does not accuse Mossad of involvement, but merely notes that a friend of his thinks so.
Survival Report September 1994 - A one-page extract, mentioning AIDS.
Survival Report September 1995 - A one-page extract, mentioning foreign troops on US soil.
Survival Report May 1996 - A one-page extract. Nothing untoward, as far as I can see.

Update: Some intelligent comment here from Proteanview.

Ron Paul uncut interview

2011-12-25T14:33:00.004Z

The attacks on Ron Paul will be focusing on this one issue of the newsletters and making all kinds of dubious associations with people like George Wallace and David Duke. There will be plenty of guilt by association on display, of the 'Hitler was a vegetarian' kind.

Tied to this will be the attempt to misrepresent the standard libertarian position with regard to freedom of speech and freedom of association. We defend such principles, irrespective of whether the views expressed or the aims of association are ones we agree with or believe in. The enemies of liberty will forever tar us with the same brush as those they wish to silence.

In my roamings, I came to a particularly over-the-top attack on Dr Paul, which contained many links to the newsletters. I am assuming that the writer did not expect anyone to bother clicking through to the links. Having done so, I discover that the majority of the newsletter pages have no content whatsoever that could be used against Dr Paul. Instead, it's pretty standard fare for a libertarian, anti-state goldbug - hardly likely to put me off!

(I shall put the links in a separate post shortly.)

Nevertheless, Ron Paul's campaign are going to have to tackle this issue. If they do so, there's an opportunity not to spike the enemy guns, but to haul them off and turn them back on the enemy! At present the attacks are coming from the GOP establishment and their foot-soldiers (many of whom seem to have arrived very late in the day to such hyper-ventilating anti-racism), but the Democrats will also make use of them if Dr Paul stays in the fight, so they can't be ducked.

By the way, the last, almost inaudible comment from Dr Paul is; 'I understand how the system works'.

Hat tip: Activist Post

SOPA Dope

2011-12-25T12:55:00.005Z

Check out this video for the truth behind the attempt to use copyright infringement to castrate the internet. In this case it's the USA, but these things are always getting arranged at treaty level.

Video uploaded by JeepersMedia on 22 Dec 2011.

Go to http://onecandleinthedark.blogspot.com and http://www.cbsyousuck.com for thousands of pages of evidence and links to the original source research on the Internet Wayback Machine.

Hat tip: Aangirfan

Happy Christmas

2011-12-24T23:45:00.006Z

Happy Christmas to all my readers.

Excerpts from Arcangelo Corelli's Christmas Concerto for two violins, cello, strings and basso continuo in G Minor "Fatto per la notte di Natale," Op. 6 No. 8. Performed on original instruments by San Francisco Early Music Ensemble Voices of Music.

Ron Paul: Phase 3 is well and truly underway

2011-12-24T20:43:00.010Z

As in the oft-repeated Gandhi quote.

His enemies still have nothing on him, bar this one issue with the newsletters, but when the order goes out to roll it 24/7, it could almost look - if you squint with your head at an angle - like a real story. Anything to avoid talking about the issues he's raising. The strategy is to brand him a racist, even though he clearly is not, and also to describe him as insane. He must be marginalised, discredited and destroyed as soon as possible, and the weight of the establishment is now swinging round against him.

This should surprise no one. Ron Paul represents a clear and present danger to the powers that be in Washington. He exposes the Republican High Command for what it is; a party of big government, deficit-spending and intervention in the economy, diametrically opposed to the liberties set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and the limitations placed on the federal government by the Constitution. Ron Paul shows them up by their own purported values. How can they masquerade as small-government, low taxation conservatives as long as Ron Paul is hanging around?

This time the other candidates are at least prepared to nod in his direction when it comes to cutting spending and auditing the Fed. They don't mean it, of course, but they recognise a large proportion of their voters like to hear this kind of stuff, and if they can get him out of the race, then they can relax back into the conservative rhetoric, safe in the knowledge that the one man who will call them on the gulf between what they say on the campaign trail and what they have done in Washington will be out of the picture.

But he's not out of the picture. He's sticking around. He's got the money to continue his run and he has a support base that no other GOP candidate can hope for, and it's not bought and paid for by big contributors, but rather from a great many small donations.

We should take heart. They still have nothing on him, but this non-issue of the newsletters. We might as well get used to it, because they will be running with it as long as he stays in the race. Every moment the pundits can be talking about the newsletters is a moment they don't have to talk about ending the war on drugs, bringing the troops back home, balancing the budget and switching off the Fed's Mandrake money machine.

This first wave of attacks tell us all we need to know about the fake conservatives who dominate the GOP and the right side of the establishment media. They will never support Ron Paul. In the event of him winning the nomination, they will be supporting Obama against him. They will close ranks, not with the conservative, constitutionalist libertarian in their own party, but with the big government, anti-liberty statists in the other one.

Whatever Ron Paul has achieved, it has been done in spite of the media and political establishment. Expect no change there. This is going to be a long and dirty fight, and it's no time for summer souldiers.

Thomas Jefferson
Ask yourself: who would he support?

The one desperate smear they have

2011-12-24T15:51:00.004Z

If you want to check how dishonest and desperate the establishment is at the prospect of Ron Paul winning Iowa, look no further than the Telegraph's story here.

Anyone familiar with Ron Paul will note how the Telegraph's claims that this is in any way a new story is utterly untrue. It begins:

Ron Paul, the fringe Republican hopeful (sic) who is threatening an upset victory in Iowa, was today engulfed in a political storm following the emergence of a series of racist newsletters that he published.

Following the emergence? This clearly implies that this is news, and yet this is exactly the same smear they used against him in 2008, as evidenced in this CCN post from January of that year, stating:

A series of newsletters in the name of GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul contain several racist remarks -- including one that says order was restored to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots when blacks went "to pick up their welfare checks."
CNN recently obtained the newsletters -- written in the 1990s and one from the late 1980s -- after a report was published about their existence in The New Republic.
None of the newsletters CNN found says who wrote them, but each was published under Paul's name between his stints as a U.S. congressman from Texas.

Also, here's Ron Paul responding to it at that time. Nevertheless, the Telegraph is happy to peddle a misleading hatchet-job that has been rebutted a hundred times, or else is essentially ignorant of the subject matter upon which reports. Either way, it shows why the establishment media is dying on its arse.

Brecht on Iowa Primary

2011-12-24T11:33:00.003Z

Following a state crackdown on worker unrest in the DDR early years, dramatist Bertolt Brecht, at that time Secretary of the Writers Union, distributed a leaflet with the ironic message:

"The people have forfeited the confidence of the government, and can win it back only by redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier in this case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?"

For some reason I was reminded of it by the desperate rush by GOP pundits and politicos to quarantine the Iowa Primary in case of an outbreak of CLC -

Constitutional Libertarian Conservatism

May the Iowans take heart at the shudder going through the establishment - it's a shudder of realisation that The People really do still have The Power, if only they know it.

Alex on Ron Paul etc.

2011-12-24T11:29:00.002Z

Alex discussing the panic seizing the impure hearts of the GOP establishment in the face of Ron Paul's pole position in the Iowa primary, together with the nature and purpose of the Nanny State, growing in America exactly as it is growing here.

Provisional MI5

2011-12-21T22:53:00.003Z

The Belfast Telegraph has published an interesting article under the title "Half of all top IRA men 'worked for security services'". I have no particular knowledge of such matters, but it is worth reading.

War is a dirty business, and I'm sure the British state intends to keep the public in the dark over just how involved its agents were in 'the troubles' for at least 100 years.

Hat tip: Aangirfan

In response to Monbiot

2011-12-21T18:26:00.011Z

Alerted by the venerable Dr Gabb, I discover George Monbiot's catty attack on libertarianism, published (where else?) in the Graun. It begins:

"Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation ... the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?"

Libertarianism, he tells us, was once a 'noble impulse'. Not a political philosophy, refined out of the ideas which enlightened Western civilisation from the time of the Greek city states onwards, forged through reflection and debate, but rather, for Monbiot, a knee jerk, albeit a noble one, an altruistic spasm, but now it has become synonymous with injustice and roguery for Monbiot and gang, as dread liberty has always been hated and feared by some. He continues:

"Rightwing libertarianism recognises few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others."

Now Monbiot is refining his attack. Libertarian may be too broad. He must introduce the qualification 'rightwing', to give the target the required designation as 'other', and to allow his readers to relax, safe in the knowledge that he's talking about someone else.

What does he even mean by 'few legitimate constraints'? As any libertarian could have informed him, the very first principle of the creed is non-aggression; live and let live. Liberty means that you have a right to do as you please with your own life, your own self and your own property, COMMA, provided, of course, you don't harm anyone else or their property.

The reason for the part after the comma is to make it that little bit more difficult for the meaning to be misunderstood or misrepresented. It should go without saying that you are not free to harm other people.

On top of this basic principle, libertarians, like most people, understand there are additional constraints of one kind and another, such as those dictated by the laws of physics and economics, moral principle and good sense, but leaving all others aside, and sticking only with the non-aggression axiom set forth above, it represents a considerable constraint.

After name-checking the IEA, ASI and TPA he states:

"Their concept of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed. So why have we been been so slow to challenge this concept of liberty?"

Ignoring the canard of greed, it is difficult to grasp how Monbiot has arrived at the view that no one have taken the trouble to challenge the concept of liberty, as understood by those groups he mentions. Did he sleep through the 20th Century? If reality were allowed to intrude, the question would read:

how have we failed to extirpate the last remnants of economic liberalism?

Poor Georgie. The statue of Cobden still stands mocking him!

Manchester City Galleries

And on we go into the utter tedium of Isaiah Berlin and his tiresome 'positive and negative liberties'. I will be harsh. I have not read the man. He may have heen a thoroughly good chap, he may have stood his round and lit up a room with his presence, but his 'positive and negative liberty' concept is wrong from the very naming, misleading and unenlightening. We are under no obligation to doff our cap in his direction. The man has furnished intellectual weapons against liberty, whatever his intentions. As Murray Rothbard explains:

Berlin's fundamental flaw was his failure to define negative liberty as the absence of physical interference with an individual's person and property, with his just property rights broadly defined. Failing to hit on this definition, Berlin fell into confusion, and ended by virtually abandoning the very negative liberty he had tried to establish and to fall, willy-nilly, into the "positive liberty" camp.

Back to Monbiot:

"As Berlin noted: "No man's activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way. 'Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows'."

Pikes? Minnows? We are dealing with human society, not pond life. Freedom means nothing to the pike or the minnow. Libertarians do not claim the right to practice cannibalism. As the PM would say: 'I refer the honorable gentlemen to the statement I gave moments ago', as the non-aggression axiom deals with the matter.

But let us consider the first part of the statement, that we all 'obstruct' the lives of others in our daily lives. Monbiot continues by way of a poem to give an example of the kind of obstruction he means. It concerns a landlord cutting down a tree, that his tenant took pleasure in.

"The landlord was exercising his freedom to cut the tree down. In doing so, he was intruding on [the tenant] Clare's freedom to delight in the tree, whose existence enhanced his life... But rightwing libertarians do not recognise this conflict. They speak, like Clare's landlord, as if the same freedom affects everybody in the same way. They assert their freedom to pollute, exploit, even – among the gun nuts – to kill, as if these were fundamental human rights. "

Certainly libertarians do not recognise any conflict between the freedom of the landlord and that of the tenant in this case, because the tree belongs to the landlord, and this means he can do as he pleases with it. We can recognise that the tenant may be saddened by the loss of the tree, but this is immaterial. The matter is resolved on the basis of property rights, unless the tenant can peacefully persuade the landlord otherwise. But by this stage, Monbiot is losing all sense and coherence, as evidence in his claim that libertarians claim the right to kill. Really, George? I'm aware we call for drugs to be legalised, but manslaughter too?

Argumentum Ad Arborum

Monbiot tells the parable of the tree-loving tenant and the mean old landlord. He talks of the tenant's pleasure in the tree's existence as a freedom, but it cannot be described as such under any definition used thus far.

This story cries out to be counter-couped with absurd parallel situations, of other things the tenant takes pleasure in, such as the landlord's wife sunbathing in a bikini.- who knows? Maybe the tenant was climbing the tree to get a better look!

It's hard to see how far he'd take the argument on principle. Such as, what if the tenant cut down the tree? Would George refute that the landlord had a claim of damages against the tenant? Surely not. What is that claim based on, if not the ownership of the tree? Monbiot's attack here is not against libertarian theory, but simple common law, the means of settling disputes between individuals. His real message is to extoll the modern power of the state to order a man not to cut down his own tree.

Who is Monbiot writing for? Does he really think that libertarians believe we have the freedom to go round raping, looting and destroying with gay abandon? If not, does he instead think that it has never occurred to us to consider, when advocating liberty for all, that some people may wish to do harm to others? Is he really this ignorant of libertarianism, or is it more the case that he is writing for people who themselves are ignorant of libertarianism?

Finally (thank God) comes Monbiot's piece de resistance, the apparent failure of Claire Fox, of the BBC's 'Moral Maze', to furnish a straightforward answer to his straightforward question about whether a factory is 'free to pollute'? I have not heard the dialogue, but clearly the answer is; no, the factory is not free to pollute the property of other people.

But, what good is such an answer to Monbiot, given his seeming contempt for property rights? What good is it to explain to him that it was the state, in the form of the courts during the 19th century which chose to repudiate property rights in cases regarding this very issue of pollution? It was his beloved, godlike state, which cast aside individual liberty and property in the interests of the purported common good.

Rejecting individual liberty, misunderstanding the inherent limitations on action which no libertarian denies, Monbiot throws himself down at the altar of the state, deluding himself that the state will protect him from these wicked creatures, Man.

Who does he think controls, directs and administers this mysterious entity, if not individuals? Do they somehow lose their natural fallibility once brought together, and given power, uniforms and weaponry? Does he believe the Soviet Union to have been free from pollution, given that it was spared the scourge of libertarian individualism?

Monbiot misses. Rather than play to the tribal gallery, he could have challenged these rightwing ogres of his on libertarian grounds. By exposing, if it were possible, the contradiction between their political stance and the principles they claim to hold, he may even have won over a few of them to seeing his point of view. After all, I agree with him about the lead-smelting plant. The rest is very largely nonsense.

Cross-posted at Libertarian Home.

Judge get it wrong again

2011-12-20T21:40:00.004Z

Three and a half years for breaking into a house and holding a family hostage with a machete is not sufficient.

Elsewhere in our judicial car-crash, award for most ridiculous defence plea goes to Christopher Millington QC who told the court that Jayden Copeland-Marks (nickname 'Murder'), who gate-crashed a party and shot the host in the face with a sawn-off shotgun:

'He was a virtual stranger at this party and had no ill feeling towards anybody. He has shown genuine remorse.'

I would suggest that shooting someone in the face was a pretty sure indication of ill-will.

Update: I could go on all day. Here's another monstrous sentence: 3 years for beating a two year old child to death. Unbelievable.

Jonestown x 1,000,000

2011-12-19T23:55:00.005Z

Browsing YouTube, I came across this clip from the time of Kim I's death, which, if it weren't for the quality of the footage, could easily be substituted for that of the current events.

At first, viewing the scenes of mass grief, I must confess I was laughing, but after a while that laughter dies away.

Graun spinning its usual web of fabian claptrap

2011-12-18T11:47:00.005Z

I'm not too hot on the heels of this story, as it was published a couple of weeks back, but I came to it via another education article in the Graun. Here's the headline:

"Public favours choice - but won't pay for it"

Given the subject matter - state schools, the headline suggests that the public, lazy and fickle as they are, wants to have its cake and eat it too. In other words, that it wants choice but isn't prepared to stump up the cash for it. But does it say that?

Not really.

As the British Social Attitudes survey shows, public opinion favours school choice. More than two-thirds (68%) agreed that parents should have this right.

But the study found that opinions had hardened when it came to making choices easier for poorer families.
Researchers sketched out the scenario of a parent on a low income who couldn't afford the bus fare to send their child to a more desirable school that was further from home. What should happen?
In 2007, 49% said the government should pay the bus fare. In 2010, just 33% supported this intervention.
More than six in ten said the child should go to his or her local school.

So, when the Graun says the public isn't prepared to pay for choice, it is really saying, or at least two thirds of it is saying, it isn't prepared to pay somebody else's kid's bus fare. The proggers at the BSA Survey try to twist this as follows:

The study says: "One explanation for this change might be that, while people think facilitating choice in this way is desirable during times of economic prosperity, they see it as a luxury and do not think it should be a priority during times of economic downturn, where cuts to public services are being made elsewhere."

You can almost hear the metal-on-metal, as the study-wonks try to shift gears from the clearly-expressed individual point of view to the collectivist group-think in which they operate. Suddenly a straightforward question - do you want choice? - becomes something else - do you think facilitating choice is desirable?

The is something else to note, here left unmentioned; the presumption that choice must cost more than the current model. The opposite is the case. Choice is the natural state of things, when you have many schools. It is conformity, uniformity, ensuring every child gets the same dumbed-down meagre measure of state-endorsed propaganda which costs the fortune. If the schools were all independent, then no action would be needed to ensure choice, and the removal of the bloated educational establishment which rides along on the back of the schools would bring a massive cost reduction. Imagine how many bus fares you could pay then?

New European flag revealed

2011-12-18T11:35:00.004Z

The longer this goes on, the more likely that it will take a war to get us out of the Brussels EU state, so I thought I might as well get us a battle flag for the Confederate States of Europe.

Paying my respects

2011-12-18T02:02:00.007Z

Although I have at times criticised Peter Hitchens, this doesn't change my respect for him. His diagnosis of the problem is almost invariably correct. It is his recommended course of treatment that I must sometimes take issue with. I am a libertarian free trade liberal, he is a conservative (an actual, proper conservative!). As such, we start and end in different places, but part of that journey is down the same roads.

So, my thoughts are with Peter on the sad news of his brother's passing, and with Christopher's family. Peter has written a piece in memory of his brother, which is, unsurprisingly, touching. As the author at Witterings from Witney notes, thank heavens we still have one Hitchens left.

Here's Peter in action at a recent debate on national independence at Policy Exchange. As always, he's worth the price of admission alone. His first speech starts @24:38, and, in addition to various other points, he sums up well at the end @ 1:16:10.

(I will avoid his contribution to the debate on legalising drugs further down the page for the moment).

When the Democrats were the good guys

2011-12-18T01:42:00.003Z

There is an interesting, albeit tragic, watershed in American politics in the last decade of the 19th century, when the Democratic Party went from being the champions of free trade, laissez-faire, individual liberty and sound money, fighting the good fight against the protectionist, prohibitionist, statist Republicans, to being a busted flush disaster.

Seeking to learn more, I came across this essay by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, entitled; "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Laissez-Faire 1896-1900", which discusses the attempts by the righteous remnant to keep alive the Party of Jefferson, Jackson and Grover Cleveland.

I commend it to you, dear readers.

Clegg, in desperation, calls adversaries 'xenophobes'

2011-12-17T16:26:00.009Z

Dear Mr Clegg,

I wish to take issue with your labeling of those who call for a return to national independence and democratically-accountable government in this country as 'xenophobes'.

It is not at all the case that the desire to reassert our sovereignty is motivated by a fear or hatred of foreigners. Even if such sentiments were to be found, they would not negate the legitimate wish for liberty. I do not believe you would make the same ad hominem argument with regard to the desire of the people of Britain's former colonies to gain their independence from Britain, or of those living in the countries of central and eastern Europe under the dominance of the old Soviet Union to shake off that yoke.

Furthermore, one of the main arguments for leaving the EU is so that we will be open to the world, rather than imprisoned within a trade bloc, which, although comprising a number of different nations, is essentially following a model of economic nationalism.

It is also disingenuous, to say the least, to claim that the desire to have a government that is accountable to the people inhabiting this country, in preference to an unaccountable government with its seat of power in a foreign country, is based on an irrational fear, as is inherent in the term xenophobia.

These principles of democratic accountability are ones which you would claim to believe in, indeed you even have the word 'democratic' in your party's title! Sadly, your actions and the policies you espouse run utterly counter to these principles, and as the autocratic nature of the Brussels state becomes ever-clearer, the contrast between high-flown rhetoric and reality also becomes increasingly evident.

The debate you, and the other politicians and bureaucrats who favour the rule of Brussels, have strenuously tried to suppress, partly through the use of such inflammatory language to demonise your adversaries, is now taking place. If you wish to preserve the Brussels state, you will need better arguments than the ones you have used to date.

Now f*** off.

Yours etc., etc.

Nick Clegg: stop deluding yourself, you are no liberal

2011-12-17T15:59:00.004Z

How dare Nick Clegg claim to have anything to do with the liberal tradition? Indeed, how dare his stinking party even use the word in their title? Why can't they admit what they are?

The closest term, I would say, is Fabian Socialists. Admittedly, they don't call for disabled people to be gassed, as the earlier Fabians did, but everything else the Fabians stand for is embraced by Nick Clegg and his band.

Can anyone think of a policy of state-control that the falsely-named Liberal Democratic Party does not support? Is it not in fact the case that they champion paternalistic welfarism and creepy control-freakery at every turn?

To their credit, the Lib Dems have shown a scattering of sense in recent years, with ID cards and the like, but these echoes of the liberal tradition seem incongruous now. What a shame the few true liberals who remain do not separate themselves and thereby save their souls from political damnation.

(N.B. I am not prepared to surrender the word 'liberal' to the enemies of liberty. Americans may use it as a synonym for socialist - but they shouldn't!)

More Joe Rogan

2011-12-17T13:47:00.002Z

Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell discussing Obama's Enabling Act, the National Defence Authorization Act.

Hat tip: Infowars

Ron Paul on Jay Leno

2011-12-17T12:37:00.001Z

Obama signs NDAA - the capstone on a pyramid of tyranny

2011-12-17T12:02:00.006Z

According to Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio, Obama has now signed the National Defence Authorization Act - including the suspension of habeas corpus, the destruction of Possse Commitatus (the law which forbids the army being used as police) and the final adjustments needed to swing round the state machinery of tyranny to point at the American people.

Hat tip: Activist Post

Psst...

2011-12-16T22:39:00.001Z

Here's a rare treat - a real old classic of British cinema.

A Noble Lie - a must-see documentary

2011-12-16T22:03:00.003Z

Truth-seekers, take note of this new documentary; A Noble Lie. The OKC bombing has all the hallmarks of a textbook Gladio-style operation, and this documentary, full of witness interviews, will no doubt lay it bare.

Forget history, and be condemned to repeat it.

A couple of tunes

2011-12-16T15:35:00.003Z

The Andrew Oldham Orchestra's version of 'The Last Time', which Verve sampled in 'Bitter Sweet Symphony', put together with some strange images from 'Mirror Animations' (1957), according to the note at YouTube:

Marlena Shaw doing Ashford and Simpson's California Soul:

Lord Hunt: flying a kite for state crackdown on free internet

2011-12-16T14:05:00.009Z

Peck off, Hunt!

Lord Hunt, out-going Press Complaints Commission major domo, has put forth the notion that the blogging world needs regulation. Purely voluntary of course, at least as long as it takes to squeeze the thin end of the wedge into place. His idea is that we bloggers should apply, with fee attached, for a 'kite mark' asserting our accuracy and trustworthiness. Needless to say I won't be applying.

Hunt is pushing the old myth that the blogging world is like the Wild West. In fact, we are accountable the same as anyone else, and those of us who pay attention are very much aware of how the state can and does take action to silence dissent and the free circulation of ideas when it feels threatened or else thinks it can get away with it, and how it has furnished the oligarchs with the legal tools to do the same (mind you, at this point of descent, is there any distinction between the corporations and the state?). Only yesterday I was reading of a police raid on someone in connection to the release of Climategate II emails.

No kite-mark here: William Munny violates terms and conditions at the Big Whiskey, Wyoming Bloggers Bash

The establishment hates the internet and would like to carve it up and control it, to boost their flagging credibility and sales. As a blogger, I take no lectures from the mainstream media on accuracy and telling the truth. You may get no more than the worm's eye view round here, but at least it's an honest worm, not some loose-arsed shill for the klepto-oligarchy and their control-freak minions.

(The pic is of a Mississippi Kite, found at Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies.)

The freedom to make mistakes

2011-12-16T11:05:00.002Z

I'm reading a relatively short work by Ludwig von Mises, "Economic Policy; thoughts for today and tomorrow", which is the transcription of a series of lectures he gave in 1959 in Buenos Aires. It is a very good introduction to his works, as it lays down in simple terms his overall views. Here's an extract from the lecture on socialism:

The fact is that, under the capitalistic system, the ultimate bosses are the consumers. The sovereign is not the state, it is the people. And the proof that they are the sovereign is borne out by the fact that they have the right to be foolish. This is the privilege of the sovereign. He has the right to make mistakes, no one can prevent him from making them, but of course he has to pay for his mistakes. If we say the consumer is supreme or that the consumer is sovereign, we do not say that the consumer is free from faults, that the consumer is a man who always knows what would be best for him. The consumers very often buy things or consume things they ought not to buy or ought not to consume.

But the notion that a capitalist form of government can prevent people from hurting themselves by controlling their consumption is false. The idea of government as a paternal authority, as a guardian for everybody, is the idea of those who favor socialism. In the United States some years ago, the government tried what was called "a noble experiment." This noble experiment was a law making it illegal to buy or sell intoxicating beverages. It is certainly true that many people drink too much brandy and whiskey, and that they may hurt themselves by doing so. Some authorities in the United States are even opposed to smoking. Certainly there are many people who smoke too much and who smoke in spite of the fact that it would be better for them not to smoke. This raises a question which goes far beyond economic discussion: it shows what freedom really means.

Granted, that it is good to keep people from hurting themselves by drinking or smoking too much. But once you have admitted this, other people will say: Is the body everything? Is not the mind of man much more important? Is not the mind of man the real human endowment, the real human quality? If you give the government the right to determine the consumption of the human body, to determine whether one should smoke or not smoke, drink or not drink, there is no good reply you can give to people who say: "More important than the body is the mind and the soul, and man hurts himself much more by reading bad books, by listening to bad music and looking at bad movies. Therefore it is the duty of the government to prevent people from committing these faults."

And, as you know, for many hundreds of years governments and authorities believed that this really was their duty. Nor did this happen in far distant ages only; not long ago, there was a government in Germany that considered it a governmental duty to distinguish between good and bad paintings—which of course meant good and bad from the point of view of a man who, in his youth, had failed the entrance examination at the Academy of Art in Vienna; good and bad from the point of view of a picture-postcard painter, Adolf Hitler. And it became illegal for people to utter other views about art and paintings than his, the Supreme Führer's.

Once you begin to admit that it is the duty of the government to control your consumption of alcohol, what can you reply to those who say the control of books and ideas is much more important?

Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes. This we have to realize. We may be highly critical with regard to the way in which our fellow citizens are spending their money and living their lives. We may believe that what they are doing is absolutely foolish and bad, but in a free society, there are many ways for people to air their opinions on how their fellow citizens should change their ways of life. They can write books; they can write articles; they can make speeches; they can even preach at street corners if they want—and they do this in many countries. But they must not try to police other people in order to prevent them from doing certain things simply because they themselves do not want these other people to have the freedom to do it.

This is the difference between slavery and freedom. The slave must do what his superior orders him to do, but the free citizen—and this is what freedom means—is in a position to choose his own way of life. Certainly this capitalistic system can be abused, and is abused, by some people. It is certainly possible to do things which ought not to be done. But if these things are approved by a majority of the people, a disapproving person always has a way to attempt to change the minds of his fellow citizens. He can try to persuade them, to convince them, but he may not try to force them by the use of power, of governmental police power.

Listen carefully

2011-12-16T01:38:00.001Z

Elle est de retour: BB - Contact.

Leave the EU: Join the World

2011-12-16T01:22:00.003Z

The EU dreamers are confounded by their very own logic. If we derive benefit from membership of the EU trade bloc, i.e., that holding open trade with these nations benefits us, how can they argue that trade with the world outside does not also benefit us?

Why enforce barriers with any country other than what the plain law dictates?

Let us be open to the world, not banged up in the Brussels Motel.

An Epitome - but of what?

2011-12-15T23:33:00.011Z

Saint Didier no less

Arguing for free trade you will be assailed by false accusations. First an example of cut-throat business is given, this being so-called free trade. Free trade does not work (and is evil en realité).

You parry by saying that what is being described is not free trade, but rather a manifestation on a market under the weight of regulation, taxation, intervention, corruption and crime, and that this example will most likely be caused not by free trade, but by its abuse, its circumvention and its flouting.

Aha, they say, it just goes to show: there's no such thing as free trade. It cannot exist, therefore it is wrong. This is somewhat contradictory to the earlier assertion that so-called free trade was the cause of many a woe - now par contrast it does not nor cannot exist.

What is the answer?

Free trade, amongst other things, is a theoretical model, showing an unhampered market is the point of highest efficiency and satisfaction, all round, at least in the long-run, which should be something we can all unite in favour of, friends?

Many people misunderstand, the left, the right and the rest.

The left who were so enraged by Maggie's maxim: there's no such thing as society, only individuals, cannot connect themselves with the concept of the market as they do with the concept of society. But what is society, but the collective term for us human beings, i.e., more than one of us. The market is these same individuals, including us all, in action.

With the right I guess it's a weakness for guys in uniforms.

EU Referendum Poll Update: Overwhelming Support for National Independence

2011-12-15T23:19:00.007Z

The house poll currently conducted here below has landed yet another crushing blow on the tattered remnants of the dreams of those conniving mandarin traitors and their daft and greedy political henchmen and the furtive work of fifty years.

The EU could not be reached for comment, although a politically-minded commenter might think that now it's just a matter of time that we will, soberly and somberly and in all seriousness, step out of the economic union and declare ourselves open to the world!

So ... stealing ain't against the law?

2011-12-15T07:18:00.004Z

We've all heard about the increase in theft of metal, including the abhorrent theft of war memorials. Now I read at MiniTrue:

Tougher regulations on the scrap metal trade are needed to combat "soaring" theft, including that of plaques from war memorials, say town hall chiefs.
The LGA proposals also include installation of CCTV with automatic number plate recognition in scrapyards, and the requirement that dealers keep a log of sellers' details.

They also want scrapyards to renew their licences every year.

Now, I'm not an expert in these matters, but I was under the impression that theft and receiving stolen goods were both against the law. The notion, therefore, that new regulations are needed to take action against perpetrators is absurd. What is being proposed is using the current situation to increase state interference and increase the protection money rake-off the state imposes on that industry.

All because the state, in its operation of the so-called justice system, has neglected to enforce the law against thievery (perhaps from a guilty conscience). Rather than do its job for once, the state exploits the situation to grab more power and money from the public.

Somebody needs to capture these thieves and their accomplices, give them due process and then hammer them into the ground, and make them pay the cost they have inflicted on the victims of their crimes.

Is that so much to ask? Is the law to be left unenforced in the matter of plundering metal? Are you perhaps too busy arresting children for taking pictures of a parade?

Bleeding Heart BBC: the looters' friend

2011-12-13T00:42:00.003Z

Of all the vile scum who trashed London and other cities back in the summer, the BBC has little to say, they've been too busy scouring the courts for someone to hold up as a victim of harsh justice. The poor little lamb served 6 days.

Yes, we can all recognise that this particular individual is not much of a menace to society. What we cannot do is ignore the reality that the worst of the looters should have been under lock and key at the time of the riots, because they had already been convicted of serious offences (serious as far as the public is concerned, regrettable consequences of disadvantage and inequality in the eyes of the contemptible establishment). Neither should we neglect to note that, with a handful of exceptions, the courts have done what they always do - let the fuckers go with a slap on the wrist, to continue their predation on the rest of society.

As I've said before, the best way to solve the problem of looting is to give the shopkeepers shotguns, and hand out cash prizes.

Vince Cable - you can fuck off too

2011-12-12T23:49:00.004Z

Vince Cable to launch an offensive? That fucker is offensive; to the eye; to the ear; to the brain and to the beating heart of a freeborn English patriot, such as myself. Here's the news:

Vince Cable has vowed to launch a fresh offensive to keep Britain in the [hated] EU.

Mr Cable said: 'What the country needs is confidence we're still part of the [hated] EU

And what weapons will he be wheeling out to launch this offensive against his own country? Quake thee not, my dear patriot friends. Imagine a 50p rocket that got dropped accidently and unseen into a puddle and left outside for a couple of nights - that's about as much fire-power that Colonel Cable can muster. Specifically he goes with the old hand-shandy favourite; he states how much trade this nation has with the [hated] EU and tries to imply that all this would evaporate if we dared to reclaim our birthright sovereignty. He can't make the argument outright, which is essentially that the [hated] EU would declare a trade war, because then even the fluoridated head of a BBC agit-propster might have to dribble; 'hang on a mo... is that really likely?'

The answer is; No, of course not, Cable you fucking twat. Why would they? And if it were the case, it would be yet another reason to take back our independence as soon as possible. If they can't keep us with love, they sure as hell won't keep us with threats of violence.

So, Cable, if you're reading, please let me know when this offensive of yours is getting started, I'd hate to miss it.

Time Machine: A Reality

2011-12-12T23:05:00.002Z

Well, it's an aeroplane really, bound for Saudi Arabia.

If they had a brain, they'd be dangerous

2011-12-12T22:58:00.002Z

There should be a law against being a copper and being this dumb, but I must say, young Jules does his generation proud, standing up for his liberty like a true Englishman.

EU Referendum Ballot Paper

2011-12-12T22:23:00.016Z

Isolation: the current definition

2011-12-12T19:03:00.007Z

They're throwing the word around like confetti at a wedding.

"The fear is we will be increasingly isolated from our EU partners (sic)"

or a variation on this theme.

Readers, please note: When they say 'we', they don't mean us, they mean them.

The isolation they fear is their own isolation from the Brussels bubble, from the euro-trough. No more soirées, no more canapés, no more junket conferences, no more late-night boozing sessions on the tax-payer tab.

Et alors? None of this has anything to do with trade, commerce and culture for the rest of us, who are already excluded from the gravy train. The pro-Brussels camp is driven by narrow self-interest masquarading as grand purpose.

Isolation, John Lennon's definition:

Toasted Gingrich

2011-12-12T18:59:00.001Z

Good to see Ron's boys are ready to mix it up a bit.

Clegg, do us all a favour: fuck off

2011-12-12T00:31:00.005Z

What a joke this coalition is. The best we can hope for is a handful of marginal tory backbenchers, whilst the clowns in government stagger around, tripping over their over-long shoes and landing in custard pies.

And as for Clegg, what a lowly turd. He has nothing but contempt for this country. I'm sure he regrets his parents decision to settle over here. He'd probably be far happier back in the old country, over the water, and off this island, given his 'continental' point of view.

Clegg's comments referring to this country as a 'pygmy nation' shows not only his hatred of us all, but the vainglory of the political parasite class, who crave nothing more than red carpets and bowing flunkies. He wants to be in the front row for the photo shoot. I'd rather put him in the front row of the firing squad shoot. Fuck him, fuck his anti-democratic, anti-liberal party and fuck the coalition. We need none of them.

Alan Partridge illustrates the correct response to Nick Clegg

Something that struck me today

2011-12-11T19:49:00.002Z

N.B. I am using the word 'liberalism' in its original sense, as standing for liberty, property, peace and free trade, not the modern American usage, when I say:

When a leftwinger attacks liberalism, they call it rightwing.

What prompted me to this realisation was the trashy article by state-worshipper Joan Smith. Before asserting that the state has a right to tell you what to eat and drink, she sneers; "Conservative politicians hate the nanny state. So do right-wing columnists".

This has the intention of identifying those who will disagree with her hateful, state-worshipping, boot-licking views as 'rightwing' or conservative. However, it is the liberal position, neither rightwing nor leftwing, which stands utterly opposed to her vile viewpoint.

Liberalism is founded on a principle of individual liberty and self-ownership. She does not want to attack liberalism openly, but rather seeks to paint it as rightwing and thus discredit it to those who are tribally left.

Joan Smith has filled her head with popcorn ...

2011-12-11T18:47:00.004Z

... or something similar, because whatever matter occupies her cranial dome, it sure ain't brains.

Alerted by a weary Longrider, I come across her vicious diatribe against liberty, squatting beneath the headline: Filling your face with popcorn is not a human right.

This is as much disguise and distortion she manages to apply to this position: the state owns you body and soul. As such, in the puritanical purgatory she would impose upon us all, the state can tell you what to eat and drink. Naturally, she claims this is for our own good, and that the state wishes to protect us from ourselves. But if the principle of her argument is accepted, and the authority over such matters is ceded to the state, it makes no difference whether the state's decrees are intended to be beneficial or the opposite.

If the state has a right - an ownership right - to tell us to eat our broccoli, it can use the same right to order us to drink whiskey for breakfast and smoke Marlboro reds all day.

Rather than wring my hands at such naked state-worshipping stupidity, I take solace that perhaps Ms Smith has only written this piece to get some attention. Poor dear - it must be a cry for help. Perhaps it's her with the popcorn problem and what she's really trying to say is: "Please wire my trap shut, I can't stop munching".

May her plea be granted.

Ron Paul debate highlights

2011-12-11T17:59:00.002Z

Some great answers here, especially @ 04:53 on personal morality.

Libyan update

2011-12-11T17:37:00.002Z

From an editorial from the Hindu:

Libya's interim government, the National Transitional Council (NTC), is getting no international help over the enormous problems it faces. To start with, the NTC has failed to restrain the militias that hold several areas and have killed thousands of people in attacks on alleged or real former supporters of Muammar al-Qadhafi. Reliable Libyan observers have likened the arbitrary killings, arrests, and torture to the former regime's brutalities. There have also been racist lynchings of African migrant labourers mistaken for mercenaries. A recent United Nations report characterises the militias as a major challenge to the NTC; it points out that women whom they detain are at particular risk. The NTC also faces political problems with Libya's severely divided society; five Amazigh or Berber leaders boycotted the November 24 swearing-in of the cabinet, saying that their ethnic group had not got enough posts. Nato, which deployed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 ostensibly to protect civilians but in reality to cause violent regime change, is making no attempt to intervene. The U.N. mandate ended on October 27, and the Atlantic alliance has rejected Tripoli's request that it protect Libyan frontiers against possible re-entry by Qadhafi loyalists who fled the country as the regime disintegrated.

Read the whole article.

Hat tip: Aangirfan

The difference between a Eurosceptic and a Europhile...

2011-12-11T16:01:00.005Z

... I've worked it out:

The Europhile does the wrong things for the right reasons.

The Eurosceptic does the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

This is from the point of view of someone who wants independence from the EU. The policies pursued by both Europhiles and Eurosceptics are essentially the same. The difference is the latter pursues them with conviction. Utterly misplaced conviction, but conviction nonetheless. The Eurosceptic drags along reluctantly, occasionally, mule-like, stopping and objecting, but has nothing to offer as an alternative and nowhere else to go than with the herd he's roped to.

As long as the Eurosceptic remains imprisoned in a loop of fallacy, going round and round in circles, they will be of only randomly incidental advantage to the independence movement. They bang their heads against the brick wall of treaty, shouting the abracadabra of 'renegotiation'. We can only look on with pity - for their foolishness if they are sincere and for their moral degeneracy if they are not.

Let the Eurosceptic be assailed by a withering fire from both sides. As long as they camp in the no-man's land between independence and a federal union, they shall have no rest. Let them choose their trench, either with their Europhile fellow travellers or with the forces for a free and independent nation outside the European Union.

Longest sentence yet for rioter! Not long enough

2011-12-10T18:43:00.004Z

Some piece of trash looter has been handed two and a half years for his crimes. The Guardian reports this using the judicial slang of 'five years', which we all know means something less than half of that.

This is apparently the longest sentence yet, which just goes to show that for all the bluster about getting tough, the justice system has done what it always does: treat the criminals as victims of a cruel, unequal society.

These scum are lucky I'm not major of London. I'd have handed out guns to the shop-keepers and paid a bounty for every looter.

Whistling Dixie

2011-12-10T17:43:00.006Z

Having watched 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' for the umpteenth time last night, here's Un-Reconstructed giving a somewhat chaotic but nevertheless joyful rendition of Josey's favourite tune:

Brussels: The Naked Lunch

2011-12-10T15:27:00.004Z

As William S. Burroughs explained the title of his most famous book:

"Naked lunch; a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

We are now in such a frozen moment. Cameron's veto, and what this represents to the German and French governments, and their respective media, reveals the oft-obscured driving force in the 'European Project' - obscured at least in our country, by politicians who do not wish to deal with the fundamental issues at stake.

Considering comment from Le Monde and from Der Spiegel, the line both are taking is this:

The EU is a road towards the promised land of a Europe united under one government.

Britain has shown itself once again to be the reluctant partner.

We must forge ahead, and leave the faint-hearted islanders behind.

Fair enough. Assuming that the rest of Europe wants ever-closer union, that is their business. Good luck to them, just as long as we are not included. That is, however, an assumption. Let us not forget that two of the Eurozone countries are represented by governments installed by banker putch rather than popular election.

What can we (the pro-independence patriots) hope to gain from this current furore? Well, the big prize is out there, but we must keep focused on that prize, and be very wary of being sucked into the sideshow disputes amongst the main political parties and their factions.

The recent referendum debate in Parliament illustrated the danger very clearly. The referendum then proposed would have been utterly hoist by the insertion of the third option, namely 'renegotiation'.

Leave the politicos to their bickering. We must use this precious time for strengthening and clarifying a cast-iron case for independence, and one that is first and foremost rational.

As the smoke clears...

2011-12-10T14:25:00.003Z

The EU is top of the news for once, and our membership is being openly discussed. The political positions of the various factions of the political establishment are being wheeled out once more, but is the case for independence going to be heard?

Those of us who believe in Britain reclaiming our independence must be clear that most of the 'eurosceptics' do not support us. They call for an unrealistic 'renegotiation', which, at best would give the British PM a 'Chamberlain Moment', i.e., coming back from Brussels with some concessions scribbled on a piece of paper.

The pro-tory grandee line will wish to stress how Cameron stood up for British interests, and that the veto is merely an example of Britain playing its part inside the EU - 'making it work for us'. The main tory 'eurosceptic' position seems to agree with this, but only call for more of the same. The main labour attack seems to be a self-contradicting one, that by saying 'no', Cameron has forfeited his seat at the table - the contradiction being; if he only has a seat at the table, as long as he says 'yes', well then the seat doesn't amount to anything much, does it?

The Downing Street strategists will be looking for echoes not of Chamberlain, but of his replacement in all this, and no doubt the lazy press will provide these in abundance, as 'we stand alone', illustrated with a nice pic of a solitary Dave looking pensive, staring into the middle distance. We must guard against all such fallacious arguments, and keep our sights set on the one and only importance: regaining our independence from Brussels.

Ron Paul: Mr Consistent on those other candidates

2011-12-09T15:39:00.004Z

Take a trip through Ron Paul's past, and see for yourself how consistent he has been in advocating freedom, prosperity and peace.

I could post clips all day, but here's another great speech from Dr Paul.

EU conference: a barrel of red herrings

2011-12-08T19:27:00.004Z

No doubt this EU conference is very significant, but we must guard against getting caught up in the establishment media version of events. I suggest we innoculate ourselves against the following:

The narrative about Cameron and whether he's a great leader. In a time of adversity, will he stand firm against the massed ranks of Johnny foreigner and the crazies in his own party? Remember, people, this is far more important than his image.

How we're isolated. This will be one for the leftists to play upon, as it allows them to attack Cameron's performance, but the reality is that the British government is festooned with hardcore EU peope, who implement every ridiculous diktat from Brussels to a far greater extent than most other countries. It is merely illusion that Britain is the curmudgeon. The French, for instance, have always held agreements to ransom far more than the servile British.

The focus on internal discord within the Tory Party. Naturally, there is disagreeement, but it is not the case that we (the pro-independence patriots) have one side we can join up to. Most of Cameron's Tory critics cannot be trusted at all.

The opportunity to repatriate powers. Do not be fooled. The renegotiation shuffle is only a means to quieten down the rising pro-independence sentiment. It enables the savvy traitors to proclaim victory, whilst we stay within the confines of the Brussels state.

We must keep our eyes on the real issue - that is our lost independence and the necessity to take it back.

Boris: Homo Populi

2011-12-08T00:17:00.003Z

Feel free, Boris, to drop by and correct the grammar of that title.

The mayor of London has been a stalwart on the issue, and it's gratifying to see him speaking out again for a referendum. I'm not entirely sure he's reliable in the actual matter of reclaiming our independence and sovereignty, but credit where credit's due.

Self-congratulation

2011-12-07T22:17:00.004Z

There are, at most, two people out there who know why I am posting this tune. Well done, both of you!

British Social Attitudes Survey reveals public tiring of Big Government

2011-12-07T21:48:00.003Z

To the sound of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the self-named progressives, the public is, it seems, finally waking up to the reality that government is not the solution, it's the problem.

Here's the New State-Worshipper, sorry I mean New Statesman, stifling a tear:

The latest British Social Attitudes survey makes grim reading for progressives. The public are increasingly individualistic and less concerned with inequality and climate change than they were a decade ago.
Most voters (74 per cent) continue to believe that inequality is too large (down from 82 per cent in 2000) but just 34 per cent believe the government should redistribute more to solve the problem. Elsewhere, the percentage who believe that benefits for the unemployed are too high has risen from 37 per cent in 2000 to 55 per cent in 2010. This is all the more galling since inequality has continued to rise and benefits have failed to keep pace with earnings.
Worst of all, the left has lost the argument won by Tony Blair - that taxes should be increased to fund higher spending on health, education and social benefits. Just 30 per cent now believe that they should, down from 61 per cent in 2002. However, this undoubtedly reflects the fact that spending increased significantly during the Labour years. In other words, the NHS should now prioritise greater efficiency. Satisfaction with the health service (70%) is at its highest level ever recorded by the survey.
On climate change, just 26 per cent now say they would be willing to pay "much higher prices" to protect the environment, down from 43 per cent a decade ago, while just 22 per cent say they would be willing to pay "much higher taxes", down from 31 per cent a decade ago. In addition, 37 per cent think many claims about environmental threats are exaggerated, up from 24 per cent in 2000.

The prog prognostication is that austerity has made us all selfish. However, it's not selfishness to work out that the government can't solve these social problems by taxing us harder and spending more wildly - it's common sense.

Libertarians should take heart at this survey. It should be analysed from a strategic point of view with regard to getting our message across. It also reveals the people have a grasp on reality, which they are going to need during these tough times.

Tram woman: unlikely martyr

2011-12-07T00:43:00.003Z

Talk about over-doing it. The woman who mouthed off on the Croydon tram is now remanded in custody, after being detained for a number of days, for what? Being rude and abusive in public, no more, no less. Big fucking deal.

A fitting punishment would be for her to have been kicked off the tram and banned by the tram company. They would be well within their rights to safeguard their customers from foul-mouthed tirades. That should be the end of the story. If an additional slap on the wrist for breach of the pease or what have you were deemed necessary, then so be it, but are there not bigger fish to fry?

According to the beak, she's being remanded in custody for her own protection. Now, what does that say about the matter? It seems almost to condone violence against her, to imply that violence would be an understandable response.

We all know that the legal establishment doesn't give a flying fuck to protect the public from real criminals. Whenever you read of someone getting stabbed to death, you can guarantee that the perpetrators have criminal records as long as your arm, but they are set free until such a point as they force the hand of our indulgent authorities.

The only laws that matter are the common laws, not the bullshit that recent governments have instigated. As such, as noted, she is no doubt liable to be found in breach of the peace, but anything over and above that is politically-motivated social engineering.

Vive de Gaulle!

2011-12-04T01:28:00.002Z

Here's a short clip of President de Gaulle, calling for a return to the Gold Standard. In 1965, aided by the great economist Jacques Rueff, he could see clearly that the Bretton Woods Agreement was doomed to collapse, due to the inflationist policies of the US government and the Federal Reserve. That collapse came in 1971, when Nixon 'closed the gold window' and repudiated the debts it could no longer pretend it could cover.

When intellectuals collide

2011-12-03T17:11:00.006Z

Here's a debate between neo-con pope Bill Buckley and Noam Chomsky from 1969. Very interesting, if you can bear Buckley's patrician drawl. I haven't watched it all, my sympathies are running strongly with Noam.

Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7.

Also I find this interview with Ron Paul from his Libertarian Party presidential run in 1988. Unlike crooked frauds like Gingrich, Romney and the other poster boys for the establishment, Ron Paul is speaking the same message then as now.

G. Edward Griffin on monstrous Monsanto

2011-12-03T13:51:00.004Z

From Activist Post:

G. Edward Griffin, author of 'The Creature From Jekyll Island', and numerous other books and documentary films, and Anthony Patchett, retired assistant Head Deputy District Attorney, Los Angeles County Environmental Crimes/ OSHA Division explain the consequences of the Monsanto contract in the video below.

This matter details another key reason why farmers should keep the hell away from Monsanto and other GM crops.

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

2011-12-02T14:43:00.006Z

My memory is defective. Or my education. Or both. I thought of the line above, and connected it with the clip below, Richard E. Grant reciting from Hamlet at the end of 'Withnail & I':

My more erudite readers will know that the title of the post comes from Macbeth act 5 scene 5:

MACBETH:

... Wherefore was that cry?

SEYTON

The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

But wherefore, wondereth thou, dear reader, mention I this?

Take your own pick, but for me it is the 'furore' over Jeremy Clarkson's comment and the ever-more irritating Lady Gaga and her latest piece of shit video and song, two examples from a multitude of meaningless trivia we are supposed to think important, whilst the world lurches around like a drunk on a parapet.

Goodnight Vienna

2011-12-02T12:50:00.006Z

I see my fellow blogger Goodnight Vienna, host of Calling England, has slipped away in the dark of night - from the blog I mean, not her mortal coil I hope!

I'm sorry to learn this, and wish her well. She is always welcome to stop by my humble blogging abode.

All you need to know about Newt Gingrich ...

2011-12-02T11:44:00.006Z

... is contained in this one quote from him:

"I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism."

As Tom Woods remarks; "In other words, not conservative at all".

One does not need to be a marksman of, say, Aaron Burr's calibre, to hit the fish of duplicity in Gingrich's barrel - so to speak.

Aaron Burr indicates the correct response to Hamiltonianism

Ambrose Evans Ex Cathedra Pritchard

2011-12-02T10:08:00.004Z

Apparently I should be enraged. In an article entitled 'You are all wrong, printing money can halt Europe's crisis', Ambrose declares:

'This will enrage many readers — especially the "Austrian" internet vigilantes — but I have to say it. A near universal view has emerged that Europe's crisis can only be solved by governments and fiscal policy, with varying views over the proper dosage of pain. I beg to differ ...'

I'm actually quite pleased. I didn't know anyone in the establishment media had heard of Austrian economics, or if they had, were allowed to mention it. Not that he seems to grasp what Austrian economics teaches on the subject of money and government policy, over and above the simple conclusion that its acolytes are against inflationism.

Austrian economics is 'wertfrei' - value free. It doesn't deal with ends, only with means to those ends. So it doesn't say printing up warehouses full of pallets stacked with $100,000,000 notes is right or wrong. It only tells you what the likely effects of that will be, and points out that these effects are no doubt contrary to your stated goals.

The problem for Austrian economists is knowing what to suggest at this point in time, given that the political world has been blithely ignoring their prognoses for many decades and has now arrived at the place the Austrians told them they would, teetering over the brink of utter monetary disaster.

We've been hanging on to a rising balloon. The Austrians told us that, but it's one thing to take that into account and act accordingly when you are three feet in the air, and another when you are 300 feet up. Austrianism should not allow itself to be used as the banner for austerity measures, which punish the people but leave untouched, or rather entrenched, the forces which engendered the crisis.

I shall end with a quote from Ludwig von Mises, taken from an essay entitled 'The stabilization of the monetary unit', which notes the interrelation between inflationism and the ideologies in which it is enmeshed. This does not, I recognise, give a simple answer to the question of what 'we' should do in the current crisis, but it may help illuminate the nature of the crisis.

VIII The ideological meaning of reform

1. The ideological conflict

The purely materialistic doctrine now used to explain every event looks on monetary depreciation as a phenomenon brought about by certain “material” causes. Attempts are made to counteract these imagined causes by various monetary techniques. People ignore, perhaps knowingly, that the roots of monetary depreciation are ideological in nature. It is always an inflationist policy, not “economic conditions,” which brings about the monetary depreciation. The evil is philosophical in character. The state of affairs, universally deplored today, was created by a misunderstanding of the nature of money and an incorrect judgment as to the consequences of monetary depreciation.

Inflationism, however, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is only one piece in the total framework of politico-economic and socio-philosophical ideas of our time. Just as the sound money policy of gold standard advocates went hand in hand with liberalism, free trade, capitalism and peace, so is inflationism part and parcel of imperialism, militarism, protectionism, statism and socialism. Just as the world catastrophe, which has swept over mankind since 1914, is not a natural phenomenon but the necessary outcome of the ideas which dominate our time, so also is the monetary crisis nothing but the inevitable consequence of the supremacy of certain ideologies concerning monetary policy.

Statist Theory has tried to explain every social phenomenon by the operation of mysterious power factors. It has disputed the possibility that economic laws for the formation of prices could be demonstrated. Failing to recognize the significance of commodity prices for the development of exchange relationships among various moneys, it has tried to distinguish between the domestic and foreign values of money. It has tried to attribute changes in exchange rates to various causes—the balance of payments, speculative activity, and political factors. Ignoring completely the Currency Theory’s important criticism of the Banking Theory, Statist Theory has actually prescribed the Banking Theory. It has moreover even revived the doctrine of the canonists and of the legal authorities of the Middle Ages to the effect that money is a creature of the government and the legal order. Thus, Statist Theory prepared the philosophical groundwork from which the inflationism of recent years developed.

The belief that a sound monetary system can once again be attained without making substantial changes in economic policy is a serious error. What is needed first and foremost is to renounce all inflationist fallacies. This renunciation cannot last, however, if it is not firmly grounded on a full and complete divorce of ideology from all imperialist, militarist, protectionist, statist, and socialist ideas.

Chavez wants the gold back - watch out for a 'Venezuelan Spring'

2011-12-02T01:20:00.004Z

If there's one thing likely to get a president killed or overthrown, it's demanding the banksters turn over the gold they owe you. That's what did for Gaddafi. Now Chavez is calling in the deposits from the Whore of Threadneedle Street and JP Morgan.

Here's Zero Hedge:

In addition to the nationalization of his gold insutry, Chavez earlier also announced that he would recover virtually all gold that Venezuela hold abroad, starting with 99 tons of gold at the Bank of England. As the WSJ reported earlier, "The Bank of England recently received a request from the Venezuelan government about transferring the 99 tons of gold Venezuela holds in the bank back to Venezuela, said a person familiar with the matter. A spokesman from the Bank of England declined to comment whether Venezuela had any gold on deposit at the bank." That's great, but not really a gamechanger. After all the BOE should have said gold. What could well be a gamechanger is that according to an update from Bloomberg, Venezuela has gold with, you guessed it, JP Morgan, Barclays, and Bank Of Nova Scotia. As most know, JPM is one of the 5 vault banks. The fun begins if Chavez demands physical delivery of more than 10.6 tons of physical because as today's CME update of metal depository statistics, JPM only has 338,303 ounces of registered gold in storage. Or roughly 10.6 tons. A modest deposit of this size would cause some serious white hair at JPM as the bank scrambles to find the replacement gold, which has already been pledged about 100 times across the various paper markets. Keep an eye on gold in the illiquid after hour market. The overdue scramble for delivery may be about to begin.

Chavez better double and triple his guards, and make sure they're all close family members, and if I were him, I'd make sure that gold is gold, and not gold-plated tungsten.

Now, Chavez, being a socialist, is not exactly my ideal leader. But I could say the same about a lot of leaders, being both socialist and far from ideal. At least he knows he's a socialist.

Stewart Rhodes on Alex Jones

2011-12-02T00:23:00.002Z

Stewart Rhodes, constitutional scholar, veteran paratrooper and founder of Oath Keepers, speaks to Alex Jones on the Senate Bill, mentioned below, which takes what's left of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and tears it to shreds.

As long as there are good Americans like Stewart and Alex, there is hope.

... if I was writing the questions:
	Do you wish your nation to reclaim its freedom, independence and sovereignty, with a democratically accountable, limited government that respects the individual liberties we claim as our birthright? In short, are you a proud and upstanding patriot?
	Or do you wish instead, shameful though it is, to give up the birthright your forebears shed blood to protect, and hand over the nation to be ruled by a gang of failed politicians, ex-maoists, corrupt bureaucrats and child-molesters over yonder in a town called Brussels? In short, are you a despicable traitor? A servile wretch of the lowest kind? Well? Answer me, damnit!

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