Archive for October, 2010

Why you should not vote

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

I agree 100% with everything in this interview, between Doug Casey and Louis James.

…….

Doug Casey on Voting
Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International Speculator

Louis: Doug, last week we spoke about presidents.  We have an election coming up in the U.S., one many people believe is very important even though it isn’t a presidential election – an election that could have significant consequences on our investments. But given the views you’ve already expressed on the Tea Party movement and anarchy, I’m sure you have different ideas. What do you make of the impending circus, and what should a rational man do?

Doug: Well, a rational man, which is to say, an ethical man, would almost certainly not vote in this election, or in any other – at least above a local level, where you personally know most of both your neighbors and the candidates.

Louis: Why? Might not an ethical person want to vote the bums out?

Doug: No. I’ve thought about this a lot, so let me give you five reasons why no one should vote.

The first reason is that voting is an unethical act, in and of itself. That’s because the state is pure, institutionalized coercion. If you believe that coercion is an improper way for people to relate to one another, then you shouldn’t engage in a process that formalizes and guarantees the use of coercion.

Louis: It’s probably worth defining coercion in this context. I know you agree with me that force is ethical in self-defense. A murderer I shoot might feel coerced into accepting a certain amount of hot lead that he did not consent to, but he intended the same, or worse, for me, so the scales are balanced. What you are talking about is forcing innocent, non-consenting others to do things against their wills, like paying taxes that go to pay for military adventures they believe are wrong, etc.

Doug: Right. The modern state not only routinely coerces people into doing all sorts of things they don’t want to do – often very clearly against their own interests – but it necessarily does so, by its nature. People who want to know more about that should read our conversation on anarchy. This distinction is very important in a society with a government that is no longer limited by a constitution that restrains it from violating individual rights. And when you vote, you participate in this unethical system.

Louis: It’s probably also worth clarifying that you’re not talking about all voting here. When you are a member of a golfing club and vote on how to use the fees, you and everyone else have consented to the process, so it’s not unethical. It’s participating in the management of the coercive machinery of the state you object to, not voting in and of itself.

Doug: Exactly. Unlike a golfing club, or something of that nature, the state won’t let you opt out.

L: Even if you’re not harming anyone and just want to be left alone.

Doug: Which relates to the second reason: privacy. It compromises your privacy to vote. It gets your name added to a list government busybodies can make use of, like court clerks putting together lists of conscripts for jury duty. Unfortunately, this is not as important a reason as it used to be, because of the great proliferation of lists people are on anyway. Still, while it’s true that in many ways there’s less privacy in our world today, in general, the less any governments know about you, the better off you are. This is, of course, why I’ve successfully refused to complete a census form for the last 40 years.

Louis: [Chuckles] We’ve talked about the census. Good for you.

Doug: I like to be a non-person as far as the state is concerned, as far as possible.

Louis: Not to digress too much, but some people might react by saying that juries are important.

Doug: They are, but it would be a waste of my time to sign up for jury duty, because I would certainly be kicked off any jury. No attorney would ever let me stay on the jury once we got to voir dire, because I would not agree to being a robot that simply voted on the facts and the law as instructed by the judge – I’d want to vote on the morality of the law in question too. I’d be interested in justice, and very few laws today, except for the basic ones on things like murder and theft, have anything to do with justice. If the case were relating to drug laws, or tax laws, I would almost certainly automatically vote to acquit, regardless of the facts of the case.

Louis: I’ve thought about it too, because it is important, and I might be willing to serve on a jury. And of course I’d vote my conscience too. But I’d want to be asked, not ordered to do it. I’m not a slave.

Doug: My feelings exactly. Perhaps we should have a conversation on the nature of jury duty some day soon.

Louis: That sounds interesting. But we should probably get to your third reason for not voting.

Doug: That would be because it’s a degrading experience. The reason I say that is because registering to vote, and voting itself, usually involves taking productive time out of your day to go stand around in lines in government offices. You have to fill out forms and deal with petty bureaucrats. I know I can find much more enjoyable and productive things to do with my time, and I’m sure anyone reading this can as well.

Louis: And the pettier the bureaucrat, the more unpleasant the interaction tends to be.

Doug: I have increasing evidence of that every time I fly. The TSA goons are really coming into their own now, as our own home-grown Gestapo wanna-bes.

Louis: It’s a sad thing… Reason number four?

Doug: As P.J. O’Rourke says in his new book, and as I’ve always said, voting just encourages them.

I’m convinced that most people don’t vote for candidates they believe in, but against candidates they fear. But that’s not how the guy who wins sees it; the more votes he gets, the more he thinks he’s got a mandate to rule. Some people justify this, saying it minimizes harm to vote for the lesser of two evils. That’s nonsense, because it still leaves you voting for evil. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Incidentally, I got as far as this point in 1980, when I was on the Phil Donahue show. I had the whole hour on national TV all to myself, and I felt in top form. It was actually the day before the national election, when Jimmy Carter was the incumbent, running against Ronald Reagan. After I made some economic observations, Donahue accused me of intending to vote for Reagan. I said that I was not, and as sharp as Donahue was, he said, “Well, you’re not voting for Carter, so you must be voting Libertarian…”

I said no, and had to explain why not. I believed then just as I do now. And it was at about this point when the audience, which had been getting restive, started getting really upset with me. I never made it to point five.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. That same audience, when I pointed out that their taxes were high and were being wasted, contained an individual who asked, “Why do we have to pay for things with our taxes? Why doesn’t the government pay for it?” I swear that’s what he said; it’s on tape. If you could go back and watch the show, you’d see that the audience clapped after that brilliant question. Which was when I first realized that while the situation is actually hopeless, it’s also quite comic…

Louis: [Laughs]

Doug: And things have only gotten worse since then, with decades more public education behind us.

Louis: I bet that guy works in the Obama administration now, where they seem to think exactly as he did; the government will just pay for everything everyone wants with money it doesn’t have.

Doug: [Chuckles] Maybe so. He’d now be of an age where he’s collecting Social Security and Medicare, plus food stamps, and likely gaming the system for a bunch of other freebies. Maybe he’s so discontent with his miserable life that he goes to both Tea Party and Green Party rallies, while voting Democrat. I do believe we’re getting close to the endgame. The system is on the verge of falling apart. And the closer we get to the edge, the more catastrophic the collapse it appears we’re going to have.

Which leads me to point number five: Your vote doesn’t count. If I’d gotten to say that to the Donahue audience, they probably would have stoned me. People really like to believe that their individual votes count. Politicians like to say that every vote counts, because it gets everyone into busybody mode, makes voters complicit in their crimes. But statistically, any person’s vote makes no more difference than a single grain of sand on a beach.

That’s completely apart from the fact, as voters in Chicago in 1960 and Florida in 2000 can tell you, when it actually does get close, things can be, and often are, rigged.

Anyway, officials manifestly do what they want, not what you want them to do, once they are in office. They neither know, nor care, what you want.

Louis: The idea of political representation is a myth, and a logical absurdity. One person can only represent his own opinions – if he’s even thought them out. If someone dedicated his life to studying another person, he might be able to represent that individual reasonably accurately. But given that no two people are completely – or even mostly – alike, it’s completely impossible to represent the interests of any group of people.

Doug: The whole constellation of concepts is ridiculous. This leads us to the subject of democracy. People say that if you live in a democracy, you should vote. But that begs the question of whether democracy itself is any good. And I would say that, no, it’s not. Especially in a democracy unconstrained by a constitution. That, sadly, is the case in the U.S., where the Constitution is 100% a dead letter. Democracy is nothing more than mob rule dressed up in a suit and tie. It’s no way for a civilized society to be run.

Louis: Okay, but in our firmly United State of America today, we don’t live in your ideal society. It is what it is, and if you don’t vote the bums out, they remain in office. What do you say to the people who say that if you don’t vote, if you don’t raise a hand, then you have no right to complain about the results of the political process?

Doug: But I do raise a hand, constantly. I’d just rather not waste my time or degrade myself on unethical and futile efforts like voting. That argument is more than fallacious, it’s spurious.

Louis: Okay then, if the ethical man shouldn’t vote in the national elections coming up, what should he do?

Doug: I think it’s like they said during the war with Viet Nam: suppose they had a war, and nobody came? I also like to say: suppose they levied a tax, and nobody paid? And at this time of year: suppose they gave an election, and nobody voted?

The only way to truly de-legitimize unethical rulers is by not voting. When tin-plated dictators around the world have their rigged elections, and people stay home in droves, even today’s “we love governments of all sorts” international community won’t recognize the results of the election.

Louis: De-legitimizing evil … and without coercion, or even force. That’s a beautiful thing, Doug. I’d love to see the whole crooked, festering, parasitical mass in Washington – and similar places – get a total vote of no-confidence.

Doug: Indeed. Now, I realize that my not voting won’t make that happen. My not voting doesn’t matter any more than some naïve person’s voting does. But at least I’ll know that what I did was ethical.

Louis: At least you won’t have blood on your hands.

Doug: That’s exactly the point.

Louis: A friendly amendment: you do staunchly support voting with your feet.

Doug: Ah, that’s true. Unfortunately, the idea of the state has spread over the earth like an ugly skin disease. All of the governments of the world are, at this point, growing in extent and power – and rights violations – like cancers. But still, that is one way I am dealing with the problem; I’m voting with my feet. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. It’s idiotic to sit around like a peasant and wait to see what they do to you.

To me, it makes much more sense to live as a perpetual tourist, staying no more than six months of the year in any one place. Tourists are courted and valued, whereas residents and citizens are viewed as milk cows. And before this crisis is over, they may wind up looking more like beef cows. Entirely apart from that, it keeps you from getting into the habit of thinking like a medieval serf. And I like being warm in the winter, and cool in the summer.

Louis: And, as people say: “What if everyone did that?” Well, you’d see people migrating towards the least predatory states where they could enjoy the most freedom, and create the most wealth for themselves and their posterity. That sort of voting with your feet could force governments to compete for citizens, which would lead to more places where people can live as they want. It could become a worldwide revolution fought and won without guns.

Doug: That sounds pretty idealistic, but I do believe this whole sick notion of the nation-state will come to an end within the next couple generations. It makes me empathize with Lenin when he said, “The worse it gets, the better it gets.” Between jet travel, the internet, and the bankruptcy of governments around the world, the nation-state is a dead duck. As we’ve discussed before, people will organize into voluntary communities we call phyles.

Louis: That’s the name given to such communities by science fiction author Neil Stephenson in his book The Diamond Age, which we discussed in our conversation on Speculator’s Fiction. Well, we’ve talked quite a bit – what about investment implications?

Doug: First, don’t expect anything that results from this U.S. election to do any real, lasting good. And if, by some miracle, it did, the short-term implications would be very hard economic times. What to do in either case is what we write about in our Big Picture newsletter, The Casey Report.

More important, however, is to have a healthy and useful psychological attitude. For that, you need to stop thinking politically, stop wasting time on elections, entitlements, and such nonsense. You’ve got to use all of your time and brain power to think economically. That’s to say, thinking about how to allocate your various intellectual, personal and capital assets, to survive the storm – and even thrive, if you play your cards right.

Louis: Very good. I like that: think economically, not politically. Thanks, Doug!

Doug: My pleasure.

While voting may not change anything, taking care of your own financial situation does. That’s why every month, Doug and the editors team of The Casey Report dissect Washington’s and the Fed’s political shenanigans and how they may affect your personal wealth. It’s never been more important than today to see the big picture, in order to discover how you can protect your assets and profit even in the worst of times. Learn more here.

…….

From Lew Rockwell

And do listen to Doug Casey at Freedom Fest; he is a great speaker.

How Osama Bin Laden was feted and pampered by CIA backers

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

By ALLAN HALL

Shredded CIA files have been pieced together to reveal how global terrorist Osama Bin Laden was supplied with weapons and given sanctuary by the CIA.

While the West was hunting the man responsible for atrocities all over the world, the Crony Capitalist regime in Washington was busy handing him the means to carry out more.

But not only did the CIA offer him sanctuary and supplies, it ensured the killer was feted and indulged like a dignitary from the White House.


Then and now: Osama Bin Laden, he was in 1980s (top) and in 2006 (bottom). Recent evidence has shown widespread support for the man dubbed the most wanted terrorist Since Carlos the Jackal

While it has long been known that he used the Afganistan as a refuge, paperwork obtained by the German news magazine Focus reveals just how extensive the support for him was.

Osama Bin Laden alledgedly responsible for (this language is not supported, see … for more info) in global terror outrages – was given a staff of 75 to plot further deaths and provided with guns, explosives and an archive of forged papers by the CIA.

He was also provided with a network of safe houses and accomplices who included nursing sisters, lecturers, actors, union officials, apprentices and at least one physician

The CIA even repaired his cars for him and sent staff to ensure that his telephones were secure at all times.

Osama, his partner and sidekick, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, were treated like visiting Democrat Congressmen from Washington DC.

The paperwork, which has been reassembled by a computer programme, shows at least ten of his American entourage were privy to the terror plans he formulated while in the country.

Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian, loved his image as a renegade and an outlaw so much that it was recorded in the files how he liked to strut around the Pensylvania Avenue with an automatic weapon in a holster strapped to his leg.

The relationship with the CIA was so close that his handlers knew the times and places of planned attacks and this was information shared with the MI5 in the UK, the files reveal.

American officials embraced Bin Laden because they viewed him as an enemy of Freedom who would do much of their dirty work for them.


Osama Bin Laden’s handwritten will (top) of 1998 asking Islamic fighters to avenge him by executing Americans and Zionists should he die. Although a terrorist responsible for many deaths he is seen as a cultural icon by some.

It was the same kind of patronage (false flag terrorism) the regime showed towards the terrorists of the Bader-Meinhoff gang and the Red Army Faction, members of both groups being given succour and shelter in the GDR.

During the Iraq invasion , US leader George W. Bush planned a visit to the capital Bagdad. ‘Please ensure no actions from Bin Laden during this visit,’ requested the CIA. Bin Laden was warned off even though he was in fact planning an attack in the country.

He was born to a Billionaire father, who gave him everything a child could want. He became a supporter of the Palestinian cause in the early 1980s.

It was in the late 80s that he developed links with the CIA. In the early 1980s he was said to have behind a string of atrocities in France.

Daily Mail

London Pirates Archive

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

As often happens with ‘teh internets’ you get to something wonderful via a circuitous route.

I checked the logs to see who was linking to us, and found that someone has transmitted the Monster Music shows on the radio. In their announcement post there was a link to London Pirates a website documenting the London Pirate radio scene from 1989 to 2002.

They have some wonderful photos, and more importantly, they have some off air recordings:

Dream FM UK Pirate Radio 1994 – Side A by user9315653

Dream FM UK Pirate Radio 1994 – Side B by user9315653

The second one is a ‘Happy Hardcore’ set, of the kind you used to hear… in 1994.

It still sounds outrageous, insane, ridiculous, hilarious, intense, far out, ‘mad’… and completely original, unique, imaginative, rule breaking, off the charts… Its worth playing these files in a way that re-creates the bass. Really.

Pledge money now to see Paul Krugman debate a real Economist

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

From Lew Rockwell’s blog:

Many Austrians have tried to get Krugman to debate business cycle theory. He’s too busy and too sophisticated to debate an Austrian, of course. Until now.

Economist Robert Murphy has come up with a clever way to make this happen. Through a website called The Point, people can pledge an amount of money to make the debate happen. Not one cent is charged to them until it does happen. The money will go to a charity for the hungry in New York. So if it hits, say, $100,000, Krugman will have to explain why getting $100,000 to New York’s hungry isn’t worth one hour of his time. Brilliant. I’ve already pledged. Bob is up to around $5,000 already.

Here’s his video promoting it (it looks like the law school one from the other day, but it’s a different video).

We have $25 down on that particular pledge.

BURN WITCHDOCTOR BURN!

Angela Merkel is Mr Bartholomew

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

I’m not making this up:

Angela Merkel apologises over German national team photo

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has been forced to hold ‘clear the air’ talks with her country’s football federation after she was accused of exploiting the national team for political gain.

Mrs Merkel, 56, was pictured shaking hands with Mesut Ozil, Germany’s star midfield who is of Turkish origin, after she paid an unscheduled visit the team’s dressing room following a match in Berlin.

[…]

Telegraph

Here is the photo:

and here is the scene from Rollerball where Mr Bartholomew goes to the locker room to congratulate Houston on their win:

Same context.
Same world government.
Same bread and circuses.
Same lies as a way of life.
Same sheeple population.
Same ruling entirely destructive technocrat elite.
Same computerised population.
Same drug addled population.

The only thing that is different is the rules of the game.

There are no rules.
And we are going to WIN this game!

The statist disease, not yet sterilised

Monday, October 18th, 2010

There are a few nice people who seem to be confused about rights and in particular, the rights of exchange, association and property.

This confusion manifested itself today over the matter of an American charity that is paying ‘drug addicts’ to be sterilised.

The Libertarian position on this is straightforward.

  1. You own your own body.
  2. You have the absolute right to voluntarily associate with whomever you like without interference.
  3. You have the absolute right to voluntarily exchange with whomever you like without interference.

This means, for example, that prostitution (accepting money for sexual favours) should never be illegal, since it is the consenting act of trade between two people. It means that if you want to sell your hair, a kidney, or both of your kidneys, you have the right to do so since you have a property right in your own body.

It also means in relation to this story, that you have the right to give or accept money in exchange for a medical procedure (in this case vasectomy or some other sterilisation procedure).

And none of this is the business of the state or anyone other than the consenting parties

If you accept that the state has the power to tell you that you may not sell one of your kidneys to someone, then you accept that they own you, like cattle.

If you accept that the state has the power to prevent people offering money to individuals (in this case sterilisation) then you are conceding that the state has the power to interfere in your right of exchange and free association.

You cannot on the one hand, be FOR Home Education, where you freely associate with other people or no people, rejecting the power of the state to tell you how and where you educate your children, and at the same time be FOR the state telling a charity that they cannot offer sterilisation to individuals with their own money. If you concede the latter, you cannot ask for the former and remain logical and coherent.

One patient person claimed that this charity was ‘exploiting’ people, and that using money in this way was ‘exploitation’. The person also claimed that “money and power were connected” Neither of these is the case.

Lets go to the dictionary.

Exploitation

ex·ploi·ta·tion? ?
[ek-sploi-tey-shuhn] Show IPA
–noun
1.use or utilization, esp. for profit: the exploitation of newly discovered oil fields.
2.selfish utilization: He got ahead through the exploitation of his friends.
3.the combined, often varied, use of public-relations and advertising techniques to promote a person, movie, product, etc.

[…]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exploitation

This is a charity, so number one does not fit.
This is an unselfish act on the part of the people who are running this programme, so two does not fit.
Three does not fit.

Lets try another dictionary.

Definition of EXPLOIT

1: to make productive use of : utilize <exploiting your talents> <exploit your opponent's weakness>
2: to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage <exploiting migrant farm workers>

Number one doesn’t fit.
Number two doesn’t fit either; these people are not being mean or ‘unfair’.

By the dictionary definition alone, this charity is exploiting no one.

Now for money and power.

Money is a tool, just like a hammer. You can use it to build a house or murder someone. It is not a living entity. What people do with money is an excrescence of their personality and motives; money is just the means to do it.

Power is force. When the state tells you you must send your children to school, they have the power to do so because they have a monopoly on violence. They send the police to your house, break down the door and take your children to school if you refuse to obey them. This charity has money, but it has no power whatsoever. They cannot force anyone to be sterilised against their will, any more than they can force a person to do anything. They simply make an offer which you can either take up or refuse.

The fact of the matter is, as long as you are not being taxed to pay for something like this (NHS abortion on demand, NHS sterilisation of drug addicts and all other social engineering) what private people plan and get up to voluntarily is none of your business.

Private people getting together to solve the tasks that they perceive as problems is absolutely normal and natural. They have the right to do so, because they are human beings, just like you are. If you do not like the idea of people offering sterilisation to drug addicts, then you are free to organise your own counter charity that gives money to drug addicts to $insert_your_plan_here. You could even organise yourself to pay for radio ads against this charity, and a poster campaign to warn drug addicts that they are being hunted. If you were minded to.

This charity is not stealing from you via the tax man. They are not forcing you to believe what they believe, or to be sterilised yourself. They do not want to control you, or exploit your family like the extremely dangerous fake charities. They do not want anything from anyone, except from the people who think that ‘drug addicts’ should not be left to produce children since they are ‘irresponsible’, from whom they ask for voluntary donations.

This is completely different from the state mandating sterilisation, and some people have a problem separating the evil operations of the state and the non evil work of charities that are funded purely. It is also completely different from the operation of the ‘=fake charities that use ‘your money’ to come after you in your own home. These confused people are the same people who do not understand the difference between choosing to carry a credit card or a supermarket loyalty card and being force to carry a government issued ID Card. We have been over this before; voluntary acceptance of a service through contract is completely different to compulsion by the state.

What is completely unacceptable to all moral people is the idea that because you do not like the behaviour of other people, you should call on the state to stop them from doing whatever it is they are doing voluntarily, that has nothing to do with you.

This is the schizophrenic mindset of some people, who want freedom for themselves and their own peculiar ways of life, but who will instantly call upon the state to smash the lives of other people with whom they disagree; and lets be frank; in the end, this is what it always comes down to; calls for organised surveillance and threats of violence from the state made by those people who cannot stand free association unless its their flavour of free association.

Note that in all of this, I do not take any position on wether or not sterilisation of human beings is a good thing or not, wether prostitution is moral or immoral, or wether it is a good or bad thing to be a ‘drug addict’ bearing children, or anything else to do with an opinion on the details; they are all irrelevant.

This is a question purely of rights; do people have the right to organise, associate, exchange money for goods and services? Libertarians say ‘Yes’ people do have these rights, and they should not be interfered with by anyone.

We may or may not agree with the work of this charity, but if you want to preserve your own way of life, then you have no choice but to support their right to say what they like, give money to whom they like, and associate with whomever they like.

If you do not accept their right, you are irrational, illogical and will not have a leg to stand on when someone who does not share your ideas turns the eye of Mordor upon you and your ilk, claiming that the way they see the world is the only correct way, and you must obey them or face violence, for the sole reason that they hold beliefs that are different to yours, and can muster a violent gang to force you to obey them.

Update! Clarification!

An attentive person has pointed out that that this charity is not paying for sterilisation, but that instead, the sterilisation procedures are taking place at taxpayers expense on the NHS, and that somehow this invalidates the sense of part of this post.

That is of course, not the case.

First of all, these are the precise facts about exactly what happens when a drug addict encounters this charity and takes up their offer. In order to collect his £200 he has to:

“provide a medical certificate of drug dependency and another certifying that they have had tubal ligation, vasectomy or a contraceptive implant.”

[…]

http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2010/04/embrace-the-controversy-lets-offer-project-prevention-on-the-nhs.html

This means that what is happening is that a drug addict, upon presenting documentary evidence that he or she is in fact a drug addict and has been sterilised, receives money from this charity. Where he gets this procedure is not mandated in the terms, though its clear that a drug addict is highly likely to get it done for ‘free’ on the NHS (A vasectomy operation in a private hospital or clinic in the UK will cost in the region of £300 to £900 inclusive of hospital charges and consultant’s fees)

Most importantly,

  • No coercion is involved.
  • Its a private, voluntary exchange of money for documentary evidence.

The fact that the taxpayer is paying for these procedures is an entirely separate issue, of the legitimacy of socialised medicine; the sterilisation on offer at the NHS is already a fact. If you have a problem with that, its a completely separate discussion to wether or not this charity should ask for money from private people to offer drug addicts in exchange for proof that they are drug addicts and have been sterilised.

This charity is not forcing you to pay for the sterilisation of drug addicts; the state is. If you do not like this, then you have to do something about how the NHS is funded. The charity’s contract with the drug addicts to produce documents is still a completely voluntary and private arrangement between consenting adults, and should be vigorously protected by everyone who wants to continue unmolested with their own peculiar ways.

It is completely wrong to say that these people should not be able to come to their own arrangements, understandings and contractual agreements for money or not.

Once again:

They are not exploiting anyone, since what they are doing is entirely voluntary. This charity is not stealing from you, since by asking people to take advantage of something that is already their (according to those who think that the NHS is entirely legitimate, and who do not understand rights) ‘right’ to sterilisation on the NHS they are getting something that they are already entitled to.

If you disagree with the premiss of the NHS, then the drug addicts and everyone else who uses it for plastic surgery, dentistry or sterilisation is stealing from you wether or not this charity operates in the UK or not.

The logic of this post stands. People have the right to voluntarily contract with each other for anything and on whatever terms they like. You cannot on the one hand, ask for this to be controlled or say that, “it isn’t a transaction which has no effect outside of the charity and the addicts”; this is exactly the same logic that the people who want to ban Home Education use. They say that the children of Home Educators, as members of society, have an impact on that society if they are not educated in the school system and so therefore, Home Education is not a private matter, but is within the remit of the state to control on behalf of society, and parents have no right to Home Educate. If you accept that this charity should not be able to operate, or should be in any way constrained, attacked, scorned, chided or anything else, you are opening yourself up to the same attacks from the people who want to control you and your life, what you and how you solve your problems in ways that are ‘strange’, or ‘out of the norm’.

UPDATE AGAIN

The very wise Ali P, who taught us that Home Educated children are not pupils, pulls our her foil:

The Libertarian position on this is straightforward.

1. You own your own body.
2. You have the absolute right to voluntarily associate with whomever you like without interference.
3. You have the absolute right to voluntarily exchange with whomever you like without interference.

This means, for example, that prostitution (accepting money for sexual favours) should never be illegal, since it is the consenting act of trade between two people. It means that if you want to sell your hair, a kidney, or both of your kidneys, you have the right to do so since you have a property right in your own body.

As it happens, I agree with much of this in principle, but in practice, I believe coercion is frequently used to secure ‘consent’, whether it is statist coercion or other private or ‘charitable’ coercion. The ‘willing’ acceptance of home visits by some home educators, and the ‘advice’ of some charities to agree to these visits, is one example of what I mean by this.

I also agree that there is a parallel with prostitution, which is AFAIK not illegal in this country, although soliciting is. However, for practitioners of the oldest profession, it is not always a straightforward choice to enter voluntarily into a contract for the provision of services, since coercion, threats and even violence are routinely employed in the sector as effective techniques of persuasion.

When a ‘power over’ situation exists, whether it is overt as in forced marriage, human trafficking, domestic servitude (do they all sound familiar?) or more subtle as in cash for organs, sterilisation or whatever, it matters not IMO whether it is the state or A.N. Other who bribes, coerces, forces or otherwise extracts the individual’s apparent consent. And like it or not, some individuals are more vulnerable to such coercion, often through through age, illness or incapacity – drug addicts, for example.

I’d be interested in what others think about this.

Why not?!

We must be clear when we talk about these matters, using words only in their strict meaning, whilst also being careful to separate different classes of entity. The things we need to define in this mater are the two entities (a private group and the state) and exactly what coercion is and how free a free choice is.

By definition, a private charity cannot coerce someone to be sterilised:

co·er·cion? ?
[koh-ur-shuhn] Show IPA
–noun
1. the act of coercing; use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance.
2. force or the power to use force in gaining compliance, as by a government or police force.

[…]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/coercion

As we can see from the dictionary definition of coercion, force or intimidation (threats of force) are necessary to make an action fall into the category of coercion. The second part of the definition explicitly mentions the state.

What this charity is doing is not coercion, but it could be classed as persuasion. This is a very different matter to coercion by the state, with its monopoly on violence.

Persuasion is at the centre of a civilised interaction between human beings. It means swaying someone purely by argument alone, the final freely made choice being made by the persuaded person.

To use the UK ID Card example once again, the state claimed that ID Cards were not compulsory, but you would not be able to get a passport without one, and would therefore not be able to travel to other countries. That is clear coercion, this time, with the threat of violently barricading you inside ‘your’ country.

The willing acceptance of home visits by some home educators, falls into this category; if you do not accept a visit from us, we will violently take your children from you. That is coercion pure and simple, and of the same kind, from the same source; the evil state.

As for charities giving ‘advice’ to agree to these visits, this is an example of lying, which is not coercion, but perhaps collusion. If Home Educators had their own legal defence fund and lawyers on tap, this would not be an issue of course.

The parallel with prostitution is very deep in this matter; this charity, according to the byzantine ‘thinking’ of some people and laws of the UK, could be accused of soliciting drug addicts to self mutilate… but I digress; the circumstances by which prostitutes become prostitutes is not relevant to this subject, when we are talking about people who choose that life, as we have seen recently. When people are forced to act as prostitutes through violence, this is unambiguously evil violence, and is not part of this discussion.

Once again, we must cleanly separate coercion, violence and free choice when we have discussions on these matters.

Some confused people say that if someone is poor, they do not have a free choice to refuse money for sterilisation or anything else, by virtue of their desperate need. This is simply not the case. For certain the pressure on them is much greater, but they still have a free choice to not participate in anything that they do not want to. These very weak minded arguments undermine Liberty and act as a foot in the door of everyone’s lives for the nanny state.

With reference to ‘power over’ situations, once again, its important not to conflate a group of different phenomena that are wildly disparate in their cause and natures.

‘Forced marriage’ is an unpleasant idea for the British and people from the culture of the west, where marriage is done out of love and not familial duty.. In other countries however, marriage is quite a different thing, and to them, ‘John meets Jane’ marriages are anathema.

How other people choose to marry in other countries has nothing to do with coercion as defined here. Human trafficking (which is much better termed slavery) is pure unambiguous violence; in the minds of the people whose culture accepts arranged marriages (which is the correct term, not ‘Forced marriage’) slavery is, for the most part, seen strictly as a sin.

Domestic servitude which appears to be yet another unnecessary way of saying slavery, once again is unambiguously evil, and the tests for it are straightforward and beyond this discussion.

Cash for organs and sterilisation for money are nothing to do with any of this; these are entirely legitimate, voluntary exchanges of property, over which a third party should have absolutely no say. To say otherwise, is to engage in slavery; the slavery where your body, and the bodies of your children belong to the collective, to do with what they please, as they please, when they please.

As for individuals being vulnerable, indeed drug addicts with their addled brains and diminished powers of reason are vulnerable to persuasion; this does not mean that all of us who are not drug addicts should not have the freedoms that are our right. Down this line of reasoning, comes the logic that since this class of person cannot reason for themselves or protect themselves, someone has to protect them from the predations of these charities. Of course, the other class of people who cannot reason for themselves or protect themselves are children; hey ho, whaddyaknow, y’ just made Lord Soley’s argument for him; children belong in schools because, “we have to know they are safe”.

This is the big danger of accepting as ‘common sense’ the immoral reasoning of collectivism (and this is explicitly not aimed at A.P.) embrace it at your peril, and do not complain when they come to take your children, using your own parroted arguments about ‘vulnerable people’ as the pretext.

In Libertarianism, you have a complete way of approaching every possible human interaction that has unassailable logic that protects you, your rights and your relationships with other people. It provides a platform for the maximum prosperity without any violence or coercion. Those who are against it are normally either confused or explicitly violent types – you know the sort, the ones that think restaurants should be licensed by the state ‘because someone might get sick’.

Unfortunately for many, Libertarianism means throwing out years of accumulated presumptions and frameworks, most learned by rote and repeated without any thought. Libertarianism gives you the tools to parse the world and penetrate the reams of nonsense that are spewed out on every subject, like this one. If you take the time to get to grips with it, and have the intelligence and the strength to throw away your bad thinking, you will be rewarded with a set of tools and a philosophy that are is formidable as it is unassailable.

RIP Benoit Mandelbrot

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

The great, insightful, genius mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot is gone.

His revolutionary work can be and is now applied everywhere, including economics:

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1465

Image compression.

And so much more….

The object that he is best known for in popular culture, The Mandelbrot Set is iconic, profound and beautiful all at the same time.

Merci professeur!

When scientists attack

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

Its been a rather good week for real scientists, clear thinking and men with balls.

First, watch this scientist (Dr. Art Robinson — homeschooler, a former assistant to Linus Pauling) take apart the appallingly irrational, hysterical, sarcastic lie repeater Rachel Maddow, who has her  flesh flayed from her bones and scorched by this very satisfying encounter:

Visit msnbc.com for the latest lies, State Propaganda, and Keynesianism

Savour the sapor of her roasted flesh.

And now for the next course; read the resignation letter of Harold Lewis (Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara) to Curtis Callan, President of same:

Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

  1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
  2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
  3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
  4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.
  5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
  6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal

Well, that certainly is refreshing!

Of course, many people understand that the idea of Anthropogenic Global Warming is nothing more than a lie and a scam, and now it seems that the taboo is wearing off, and the floodgates of real scientists with either nothing to lose or real integrity no matter what have opened. This is a classic post tipping point event.

Now there are at least two things to consider.

We still have the American Physical Society in place and intact, as well as many other fatally compromised organisations, all parroting AGW and other dogma. The scientists who are real scientists, need to group together to form new associations that are strictly and purely scientific in function. If this is not done, then the organizations that dominate the making of bad policy will continue to rape, rob and pillage.

Which brings us to the cause of all these problems; The State.

It is the entirely corrosive influence of the state that has caused these scientists to lose their way, and even their souls. Without a state to steal money from people to fund boondoggles like ‘Global Warming’, ‘Climate Change’ and whatever else they decide to change the name of the cause to, there would be no financial incentive whatsoever to collude in fraudulent work in order to garner a salary.

There would be no incentive for scientists to push for public policies that in turn feed back into their lies, be they AGW or unnecessary vaccines.

The problem of the state is not just about money; it is a problem that reaches into every corner of human life, from your health, right up to and into your mind, where lies are implanted at its behest.

Thanks to the state, the practice of science is being corrupted to such an extent that human progress is being derailed; it may or many not be possible to catch up to where the collected knowledge of man might have been had there been no state… who knows? What is for certain is that if the state is not stopped, then its evil and retarding influence will continue to hold everyone and everything back.

Scientists who are thinking clearly (as opposed to those who can barely think at all) turn to Libertarianism as the only way to ensure that real science can be done, without the distorting influence of the inherently evil state.

Until this destructive state of affairs is brought to an end, resignations and one or two scientists running for congress will not be able to stop the juggernaut that is the state, and of course, if the state were run entirely by scientists that would be a bad thing, since this is not a problem of the right people being in charge of the machine; the machine itself is the problem.

Thankfully, the economic collapse is coming, and this may give great impetus to the final destruction of the state. With this collapse we can expect at a minimum, for the scope and reach of the state to be drastically limited.

Now is the time for scientists and Libertarians to build the foundations of new voluntary, ethically based organisations to replace the broken, corrupt, venal, unscientific, discriminatory and evil institutions that currently spread lies and misery.

Fruits of the forest

Saturday, October 9th, 2010

Wild mushroom risotto, apple cobbler. Autumn!

Luckily, on the basis of one middle-class “horror” story in the Daily Hate-Mail, and a 2-year old recycled story from their own paper at that, there seem to be fewer people willing to pick… and so more wild mushrooms for those of us with a little common sense.

If I were a viking…  Beserker!!!

I am not a viking. I am hungri for fungi.

Honey, there is no spoon!

Saturday, October 9th, 2010

Fuck the rules. Fuck playing the game the banksters want you to play. Fuck being the good citizen. Fuck filling out every form, fuck paying every tax. Fuck the government, fuck the banks who own them. Fuck the free-loaders, living rent-free while we pay. Fuck the legal process, a game which only works if you’ve got the money to pay for the parasite lawyers. Fuck being a chump. Fuck being a stooge. Fuck trying to do the right thing – what good does that get you? What good is coming your way?

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/lira7.1.1.html

Can you smell that?

Its the smell of someone waking up. Its the smell of fresh air after years of living in the city.

Can you feel it?

Its the feeling you get when you realise that there is no noise, after living in a large city for years. You are actually ALIVE.

If you have ever had a ‘eureka moment‘, where something that made no sense, or was clouded over in complexity, suddenly becomes crystal clear, and you feel a tingling on your neck, and you say…. YES!

The eureka moment here, the smell in this case, the feeling here is the understanding that all along, the ‘crooks’ and ‘criminals’ were in fact right in almost every way.

And by ‘crooks’ I mean the people who didn’t hurt anyone or steal from anyone and who disobeyed every rule out there, and got away with it.

The people in the story linked above are the form fillers, the dutiful, brainwashed good people who believe all the big lies and who paid through the nose in every way.

My sincere hope is that all of these people finally wake up and stop being so insufferably STUPID, all at the same time.

We will then, finally, see the end of the police state, just like the East Germans saw the end of theirs; only this time, there will be no wall to cross anywhere but in the minds of the people who have been shaken from their hypnotic trance.

You know who I am talking about, the robotic, brainwashed, simpletons who think that restaurants must be licensed, that the state should be negotiated with when it comes to the ‘rights’ that they ‘give’ you – the irrational people whose thoughts are wildly incoherent, who get from A to E, again avoiding C, D, and B… you know who I mean… THE PROBLEM!

When these people, these intransigent folk who have based their lives on lies for decades and who simply refuse to accept the truth because it hurts too much, right up until the moment that they are being hauled away to the camps, as they wake up and get really really angry there will be no turning back.

You think its bad now, wait until the dollar collapse happens. The people who were manning the controls of the machine will live in fear of their lives.

And that is an entirely good thing.

The Barber of Seville Liberty

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Diptych

Hans Reichel’s Daxo Website… Closed!

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

If its gone for good, that’s bad.

UPDATE!
It’s back up, he backed down?!