Saturday, January 29, 2011

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

The Egyptian government has used its kill switch to shut down the internet, but people are working to obtain access anyway. But Congress is considering giving the president the power  to do the same in the US. No thanks. Are you getting the picture of why the government is seizing control of the internet? They know what's coming. They're orchestrating the collapse of the US, and they're expecting violence and revolution here too. An aristocrat says don't worry about giving the president power over the internet kill switch because it's not the same power Mubarak is using. Trust them. They're from the government. They'd never to anything in their interest against ours.
"'My legislation would provide a mechanism for the government to work with the private sector in the event of a true cyber emergency,' Collins said in an e-mail Friday. 'It would give our nation the best tools available to swiftly respond to a significant threat.'"
What a load of crap. Like government gives us the best tools to do anything but blow stuff up. Nothing will harm internet security more than giving power to secure it to government.

SOCIALISM:

An example of one of the many ways union leaders, because they are granted the power of coercion by government, loot their members.

ECONOMY:

Americans depleting their savings to maintain their lifestyles. Since savings drive economic growth, this means our economy is getting worse, not better.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Jim Rogers recognizes inflation is here, but the government is lying about it.
"Rogers highlighted increasing inflation across a wide spectrum of commodities around the world – in Asia, Europe, the Americas – and, the only place where it’s nowhere in sight is at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the BLS). According to Rogers, “inflation is here, but the Americans lie about it and the British lie about it.”"
The silver lining is the lies delegitimize the government.

EDUCATION:

Thanks to government funding, the college tuition bubble is about to collapse. Here's one of eight list reasons:
"Because student loans are so easy to acquire, enterprising colleges are paying homeless people to enroll.  The math makes sense when you think about it: if paying someone a $2,000 “stipend” gets the college $20,000/year in tuition courtesy of the federal government, that’s money well spent.  Unfortunately, many people who accept such “stipend” offers never graduate, become overwhelmed with student debt, and destroy their already bad financial records."
Have I mentioned that government corrupts everything it touches?

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Emails show that the Met Office's claim to have secretly warned the British government of an exceptionally cold winter is a lie.

USGS studies African drought as if Africa was part of the US. Naturally they blame global warming instead of:
"Disappointingly, there’s no mention of land use change, agricultural practices, or deforestation issues like the one contributing to the glacier melt on Kilimanjaro. Evapotranspiration is a very important issue for local moisture content and convective cloud development."
Our government isn't content with corrupting everything it touches in the US. It wants to corrupt the entire world.

POLICE STATE:

Mundane teenager target of massive police assault.
"“Police vehicles filled the streets of the predominantly African-American neighborhood in Lakeview terrace,” relates one account. “Neighbors were prevented from going into or out of their homes. A next door neighbor had a gun pointed at him for trying to retrieve his children from [the Marks family's] front porch.” Jeremy’s bedroom was trashed by the invaders, who seized computers, cell phones, cameras, and legal documents, many of them “privileged attorney-client communications.” A similar raid reportedly took place at the home of another student who “was targeted because he posted videos of the original incident on YouTube. These videos show that Jeremy did nothing illegal.”"
This is the new normal in the society we created.
"Assuming that the account cited above is accurate, what it describes is the behavior of an occupying army seeking to intimidate and subdue an understandably  hostile population. The SWAT assault on Jeremy Marks’s neighborhood in search of “anti-police” video recordings was strikingly similar to raids carried out in occupied Iraq in search of people distributing “anti-coalition propaganda” or inciting “insurgent activity.”"
Think about the events in Lebanon, Tunisia and Egypt in this context. Think about giving the president the power to shut down the internet in this context.

Will Grigg on the sad reality of the American police state.
"Every week – actually, every day – innocent people across the country are harassedabusedbrutalizedtortured, and murdered by armed strangers in government-issued costumes. Most of theassailants are never held accountable. Often, they are placed on paid vacation (commonly called "administrative leave") while their colleagues devise an official rationalization for their crimes.
According to one very conservative estimate, at least thirty citizens are killed in police shootings every month, many of which occur during paramilitary raids conducted, Soviet-style, at daybreak or nighttime. Innocent people are frequently found among those killed, wounded, or brutalized in those raids; one recent example is 76-year-old New York resident Jose Colon, who was shot in the stomach by a SWAT operator who pulled the trigger trying to operate a flashlight on his tricked-out pistol.
The grim but statistically inescapable fact is that the average American is much more likely to be killed by a cop than by a terrorist."
I always say the most dangerous situation the vast majority of Americans will ever endure is a run-in with the cops.
"Five years ago, Joseph McNamara of Stanford's Hoover Institution, a former NYPD Deputy Inspector (and, unfortunately, an advocate of civilian disarmament), pointed out that police "work" may be safer now than ever before.
In 2005, McNamara noted, fifty-one officers died in the line of duty "out of some 700,000 to 800,000 American cops. That is far fewer than the police fatalities occurring when I patrolled New York’s highest crime precincts, when the total number of cops in the country was half that of today."
Yes, there is a war on the streets of America, McNamara allowed, but it is one waged by the cops, not on them:
"Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on 'officer safety' and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn’t shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed."
Government police agencies were always designed to control the public, rather than to "protect and serve" it. As sociologist David Bayley memorably put it, "The police are to the government as the edge is to the knife." Thanks in no small measure to the proliferation of independent media, the public is coming to understand that fact."
And then there's the steroid abuse. No people in the history of the world have ever dragged their country down from such highs to such lows as we have.

How the government and its corporate agents are making cars that control and spy on us.

WAR:

Disgraced General Stanley McChrystal, in an attempt to rehabilitate his image no doubt, calls on every American to perform national service.
"All of us bear an obligation to serve [the State]—an obligation that goes beyond paying taxes, voting, or adhering to the law."
In other words, we're all slave to the government, and we should bow down and be thankful for all the government give us. What a creep. Stalin and Hitler would been proud of this picture:

That makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Egyptian protesters unimpressed with dictator firing cabinet. They want him to resign. Isn't it funny how when the Iranians cracked down on protesters, they were evil, but not so when a US ally does the same. Video. 62 people have been killed. But the changes in the Middle East aren't limited to Tunisia and Egypt. Lebanon's pro-western government has also been replaced by a pro-Syrian government. Decades of US government bullying and violence in the Middle East is producing this backlash against the west. Interesting comparison: the collapse of these US backed puppet states is like the collapse of the Iron Curtain. We know what happened to the puppet master shortly after. Suggestion that US frustration with Mubarak might have something to do with his troubles. Apparently our government is playing both sides by supporting rebels too.
"The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.
On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011."
He sure met his timetable. This must have been a ploy to pressure Mubarak into towing our government line more tightly. And people wonder why everybody in the Middle East hates us. Report that the army might be sympathetic to the protesters. If so, Mubarak is unlikely to remain in power. The power of direct citizen action:
"In my LRC bestseller, Direct Citizen Action, drawing on the work of de La Boétie and Rothbard, I wrote: “most of the power of the government comes from the perception that it is legitimate. . . History shows that regimes fall when the masses withdraw their “consent.” This can be done by direct action, basically, a national strike until the dictator flees with whatever loot he can carry onto his private plane. Violence is not necessary though usually the state will shoot some protesters and the protesters will throw rocks in response. But as we saw with the Shah, state violence can merely accelerate the death of the regime by arousing even more opposition."
Again, this is a preview of things to come in America as government continues looting us to the point of collapse. This essay focuses in on the most important point:
"Yes, it seems to me that with plans exposed, Western elites may have decided to take credit for the Middle Eastern uprisings. Why is it a desperate maneuver? Because the averge youthful Egyptian or Tunisian is not going to look kindly on the idea that he and his world is being manipulated yet again by ruthless Western powers-that-be. This is the reason that such operations are usually kept quiet. Nobody likes to feel manipulated."
No kidding. I doubt that the manipulations of central planners are responsible for these protests, central planners don't have that much power, but it doesn't matter. Now that the story of US central planners manipulating the situation is out, the extent and influence of the manipulations is irrelevant. The entire Arab world is going to get even more angry at the US.
"We continually document the struggle between the truth-telling of the Internet and the fear-based promotions of the elite. The elite seems increasingly tortured by the Internet, which is a process not an episode. Usually elite promotions take decades to develop. The EU was 50 years in the making. Global warming nearly as long. But everything the elite is trying to do these days regarding its promotional methodologies has a rushed, error-prone feel about it."
That's why the aristocrats are desperate to seize control of the internet.
"It is not going to help relations with the Egyptian man-on-the-street to have the information broadcast that America was behind – and actively planning – the current disturbances. As of this writing, the Egyptian government has lodged a protest against American interference. US Foggy Bottom types have taken to the airwaves blathering about the "values" of American democracy, but after years of reports of American torture, Western rendition, endless drone attacks that kill women and children in Afghanistan, it's certainly an open question as to whether America can effectively pose as a beacon of democratic values."
I'm pretty sure to Arab Muslims, the only value Americans hold is hypocrisy.
"But do the Western powers-that-be really believe they control these uprisings now? A dozen powder kegs have been lit. Blowback – serious blowback – is on the way. In a sense, no matter how the elite's involvement is portrayed, it would seem a botch."
I agree that serious blowback is on its way.
"To claim the world is run by "governments" is to miss the point. It is run by powerful banking families and their allies – mostly out of London – using the levers of power that governments provide to the truly wealthy. The mechanism of this governance is called mercantilism.
Elites are always at war with their middle classes, and the preferred techniques, in this epoch anyway, are the fear-based dominant social themes that the Bell tries to cover every day. By using these fear-based promotions, the elite attempts to stampede the middle class into surrendering both wealth and power. There is pressure for constant convergence of power; the preferred governance is regulatory democracy. In the Middle East, no doubt, the evolution of these revolutions will bring to power moderate Islamic entities that will provide a boon to yet another elite promotion: the so-called war on terror. All these promotions are interlinked."
I agree about the plutocrats, but I wouldn't discount the power of the politicians.
"There are other sorts of promotions that the elite uses as well, mostly to piggyback onto existing trends. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange would seem to be one of them. Aljazeera would seem to be another. Aljazeera was initially staffed by the BBC; Assange has released few leaks that harm Western powers in any significant way. By promoting Assange and Aljazeera, the elite is able to control the larger dialogue. It is a version of the Hegelian dialectic that the elite loves to use. Control both sides of the argument and the results are bound to further one's agenda, whatever it may be."
We see that strategy with the so-called debate between the left and right - Democrats and Republicans - in America.
"In this case, the goal is creating much closer and better-coordinated world government run by the Anglosphere. That's why we've suggested at the Bell that one of the outcomes of the Middle East unrest will likely be Islamic governments of a sort that will polarize public opinion in the West and add credibility to the current war on terror – which definitely needs a pick-me-up. If the West is to continue down the path of authoritarianism, it certainly needs to create a larger Islamic bogeyman.
It also seems to me that these revolutions could be used to destabilize a strong American ally, Saudi Arabia – and thus destabilize the dollar-reserve currency as well. (We've written about that.) Again, this benefits an Anglo-American power elite that is determined to transition from national currencies to one global currency – reason enough for the destruction of the dollar. The wealthiest sheiks won't be damaged were this to occur. They'll simply seek asylum in Britain, (or perhaps France) as so many of the West's wealthiest allies seem to do when they are toppled."
That smacks of paranoia. You can't on the one hand recognize the futility of central planning and on the other attribute incredibly complex world events to the hands of central planners. The idea that central planners are fomenting unrest first in Lebanon, then Tunisia, then Egypt in order to destabilize Saudi Arabia in order to destroy the dollar and replace it with one world currency is laughable. If central planners had that kind of power and control, communism would have ruled the world. These events are more about blowback against US control than being directed by shadowy central planners. The US government is desperately trying to manipulate them to its advantage as best it can, and has been doing so for years, but it's not possible that central planners are controlling events like setting up and knocking over dominoes to achieve a specific goal. It's one thing to strike a match. It's another to control the fire. The Saudis fear destabilization, and it's about time. You'd be hard pressed to discover a ruling class who so successfully looted their people into poverty than the Saudis. It sounds like they're blaming the US government too. This article makes more sense.
"In all the Arab countries in rebellion their governments and their leaders are client states of the U.S. In the name of maintaining stability and our "war on terrorism" we have supported these country's autocrats with military hardware and training of their security forces.
Significantly, none of these indigenous rebellions have anything to do with fundamentalist, Islamic Jihadist terrorism."
I think it's blowback. These are popular revolts, and we have to resist the scare-mongers who paint this as a take-over by jihadists. The outgoing dictator named another US trained CIA partner to replace him.
"Ian Black, Middle East editor for the London Guardian, points out that Suleiman “is the keeper of Egypt’s and the president’s secrets, a behind-the-scenes operator who has been intimately involved in the most sensitive issues of national security and foreign policy for nearly 20 years.” Not only was he was the dungeon master and chief persecutor of Egypt’s political dissidents, but he also coordinated rendition and torture operations with the CIA.According to WikiLeaks, he’s also a dutiful asset of the Pentagon."
This might be why the Egyptian people remain unimpressed. The outgoing government is looting the people.
"When they’re not beating people in the streets or hauling them off to be brutalized and killed, plainclothes thugs from Egypt’s Central Security Services are looting private businesses. Egyptians not employed in the coercive sector have responded by creating private anti-looting patrols. This is a wonderful illustration of the fact that government police agencies are designed to pillage, rather than protect, and the emergence of spontaneous cooperative order may be a hopeful augury for the future."
Of course the government always loots the people. Generally it does so more subtly. The parallel mentioned in the rest of this article is scary. Muslims and Christians united against the government.

I don't like it when people call me an isolationist. There are two ways we can engage the people other countries, through mutually beneficial voluntary exchange and through threats of violence backed by violence issued by government. I want to see more of the former and none of the latter. I'd hardly call that isolationist.

POLITICS:

On Obama's hypocritical claim that governments must be based on consent.
"How often, how long, and how deeply has the U.S. government used coercion to maintain power? How often has the U.S. government used wealth redistribution, payoffs, propaganda, and emotional appeals to manufacture a phony and heavily government-influenced consent? When will the preacher live up to what he preaches?"
Aristocrats steal our money and use it to buy votes to stay in power. They pass regulations that steal our money to buy votes. I'd hardly call that consent.

MISC:

The world's official kilogram standard is losing mass. Oops. What did they expect? Everything changes.

Praise for the autobiographies of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams and the men themselves.

Stone tools found in the UAE show modern humans moved out of Africa at least 55,000 years earlier than previously thought.

A long time ago I wrote a theory that predisposition toward religion was genetic and that it conferred a survival advantage. It seems scientist has done the same and developed a model based on it.

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