The Greedy Capitalist

Censorship in China

After attempting to shut down or censor most of its cyber cafés, China has launched another effort to shut down cybercafes “because of fears that the Net could corrupt the minds of youngsters....”

"We must take utmost resolutions and make utmost efforts in the clean-up campaign to achieve our anticipated goal, for Internet cafe management has an important bearing on the healthy growing of juveniles."
…
As if to prove a point, Xinhuanet cites the tragic case of two youths who were crushed to death by a train when they fell asleep on a railway track after spending 48 hours in a cybercafe.
...
He cites the case of a 19-year old who, after surfing the next for five to six hours everyday for five years who had come to believe that “invisible pairs of eyes in cyber-space were peeping at him and examining him all the time”

"They have brought great harm to the mental health of teenagers and interfered with the school teaching, which has aroused strong reactions from the public."

U.S. Government Censorship

The U.S. government concocted a brilliant plan a few years ago: Why not give Internet surfers in China and Iran the ability to bypass their nations' notoriously restrictive blocks on Web sites? ... But an independent report released Monday reveals that the U.S. government also censors what Chinese and Iranian citizens can see online. Technology used by the IBB, which puts out the Voice of America broadcasts, prevents them from visiting Web addresses that include a peculiar list of verboten keywords. The list includes "ass" (which inadvertently bans usembassy.state.gov), "breast" (breastcancer.com), "hot" (hotmail.com and hotels.com), "pic" (epic.noaa.gov) and "teen" (teens.drugabuse.gov). ... That's the sad irony in the OpenNet Initiative's findings: A government agency charged with fighting Internet censorship is quietly censoring the Web itself.

Bush: Moral Retard

A controversial college professor who thinks parents should be able to kill disabled children says though President Bush makes himself out to be a good Christian leader, he has the moral development of a 13-year-old boy. ... A truly Christian leader, he said, would have "turned the other cheek" when the United States was attacked by terrorists Sept. 11, 2001, because the response led to the loss of innocent life.

Cuba’s Forgotten Prisoners

The New York Sun:

The 41-year-old man sits in a filthy 18-by-24-foot cell that he shares with 10 other prisoners. He knows he is fortunate because up to 18 men are routinely squeezed in cells of that size.... The water is rationed and the little that is available is contaminated. His food rations are meager and substandard. He suffers from chronic gastrointestinal conditions, which have worsened since his imprisonment. He now suffers from parasites, high cholesterol, hypertension, and has lost 20 pounds.

Jorge Olivera Castillo is one of the 300 political prisoners inside Cuba's jails, yet the world seems blind to their plight.

There is no international outcry about his living conditions.

No visits from the International Red Cross since 1989.

No congressional delegations or pop-ins from Greek Orthodox patriarchs or Robert Redford, Sean Penn,
Danny Glover, Oliver Stone, or Harry Belafonte.

Nor--even though he is black--any support from the NAACP, whose leader Kweise Mfume visited Cuba in 2002 on a "goodwill mission."

There is no outcry from the National Writer's Union, whose pet prisoner is Mumia Abul Jamal.

Mr. Olivera was arrested on March 18, 2003, during Cuba's greatest crackdown on independent journalists and dissidents, when 75 persons were arrested. This occurred the day after the 59th Session of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights convened in Geneva....

Cuba denies that it holds any prisoners of conscience and says that all inmates described as political prisoners are merely common criminals.

San Francisco U. Purge Reversed

In a victory for intellectual freedom, Tatiana Menaker’s expulsion from San Francisco State University has been reversed. She was expelled from school after protesting the same Marxist and Anti-Semitic attitude she escaped the USSR from in 1986. You can read her editorial about the anti-Americanism she encountered in academia, and an account of her story at the Students for Academic Freedom website.

McCain calls for un-bundling cable packages

Slashdot: Senator John McCain wants to force cable companies to sell cable channels a la carte, so you only pay for the channels you want. He argues that "When I go to the grocery store to buy a quart of milk, I don't have to buy a package of celery and a bunch of broccoli," McCain said. "I don't like broccoli."

McCain refuses to understand that the whole cable package is more than the sum of its parts: the more successful cable channels subsidize the less popular ones in order to provide a well rounded package that provides a better value that the individual channels – just as the Microsoft Office Suite provides a better value that the individual applications that compose it. If politicians were really concerned about cable prices, then they would remove the government monopolies, price controls, preferential treatment, and the legion of regulations imposed and granted to cable companies. Till then, their approach to industry can only be described as a see-saw between government-enforced “competition” and government-enforced regulations – when one fails, they resort to other – never considering that freedom from government might be the answer.

The "F Scale:" a test for fascist tendencies

Shortly after WWII, it was in vogue among leftist types to call people who’s politics they disagreed with “fascist” while “freedom and democracy” were used to designate favorable positions and governments, regardless of actual policy. Since this trend is on the rise again, I though a 1946-era quiz would be of interest:

The F Scale, is "an instrument that would yield an estimate of fascist receptivity at the personality level."

I disagree with a number of questions, but I still find the test a much better indicator of Fascist tendencies than today’s leftist rants. (I scored 2.3, mostly because of Q’s 2-4. 1950 avg was 3.84.)
(Link found here.)

Carving up the loot

I don't need to mention what I think of the EU ruling to fine Microsoft €497.2 million ($605 mil U.S.) for having the audacity to make superior software. However I was curious how the loot would be split it up. Turns out that it will be a trickle into the €100bn EU budget, which is allocated as follows:

Almost half of this is spent on agricultural aid, for subsidising farmers and their produce, and for improving rural development.

The second biggest portion - about one-third - goes on EU funding, which supports the poorer countries in the union. Currently Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece benefit most from this fund.

Money has also been allocated for the 10 countries set to join the union - some 40bn euros in the first three years of enlargement, in which time these countries will pay 15bn euros into the EU budget.

The remainder goes on research and educational programmes, aid to regions outside the EU such as Africa and the Balkans, and administration costs...

Rattling the Chains of Slavery

From "Rattling the Chains of Slavery" by Thomas Sowell:

Europeans enslaved other Europeans for centuries before the drying up of that supply led them to turn to Africa as a source of slaves for the Western Hemisphere. Julius Caesar marched in triumph through Rome in a procession that included British slaves he had captured. There were white slaves still being sold in Egypt two decades after blacks were freed in the United States.

It was the same story in Asia, Africa, and among the Polynesians and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. No race, country, or civilization had clean hands.

What makes the current reparations movement a fraud, whether at Brown University or in the country at large, is the attempt to depict slavery as something uniquely done to blacks by whites. Reparations advocates are doing this for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks: That's where the money is.

No one expects Qaddafi to pay reparations to the descendants of Europeans whom his ancestors captured on the Mediterranean coast or Western Europeans to pay reparations to Slavs who were enslaved on such a scale that the very word slave derived from their name.

Still less does anyone expect Africans to pay reparations to black Americans whose ancestors they sold to white men who took them across the Atlantic. Only in America can guilt be turned into cash.

"Overcoming Affirmative Action"

The Young Republicans group at Roger Williams University recently offered a $250 “why you are proud of your white heritage” scholarship contest. Following up on their lead, the Young Conservatives at my own Texas A&M have created a $10,000 “Overcoming Affirmative Action Essay Contest” that open to everyone.

The scholarship follows up on an “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” and other provocative actions by conservative groups across the nation. Such demonstrations rely on a strategy of reductio ad absurdum, “a type of logical argument where we assume a claim for the sake of argument, arrive at an absurd result, and then conclude the original assumption must have been wrong, since it gave us this absurd result.” The assumed claim is that an individual’s identity and personal worth are determined by ethnic/racial membership. The absurd conclusion is that Caucasians are just as entitled to ethnic pride and entitlements as other ethnicities. Therefore, one should conclude that neither whites nor any other group is entitled to racial pride or entitlements based on un-chosen traits.

While reductio ad absurdum can make a powerful emotional impact, it has a major pitfall as a method of persuasion: it requires that one’s opponent rejects the “absurd” conclusion -- and that they do so for the same reasons. It is not a logical argument, as much as a means of getting someone to see the inconsistency of his own position. In this case, the shared idea is that racism is wrong. White-only entitlements are meant to make people realize that racism is wrong no matter which group it favors. The problem is that advocates of multiculturalism do not reject the “absurd” conclusion for the same reasons because they do not hold a proper definition of “racism.”

Liberals are incapable of recognizing that one’s mind determines one’s identity and achievements, not his social/racial/ethnic group. Because of this basic premise, they cannot imagine an alternative to class or race-based discrimination. Hence, they reject white-only entitlements not because they are racist, but because they favor the wrong ethnic group. Their concept of “racism” means, “discrimination based on the belief that some groups are superior to others.” This definition fails to recognize the distinction between discrimination based on superior values and discrimination based on inherited traits. In practice, this means that the only “racism” that they recognize is that directed by a dominant group towards a weaker one – whether it is whites against blacks or Israel against the PLO, or successful businessmen “against” bums or the terrorists against America. Decades of public-school indoctrination has embedded such collectivist attitudes in the American public. Conservatives themselves are unable to recognize the root of racism because they accept their own collectivist doctrine of “original sin.”

While the Young Conservative’s protests are effective means of bringing attention to the multiculturalism that dominates our schools, only an explicit recognition of the individual’s mind and a rejection of collectivism can provide the intellectual ammunition necessary to combat it.

Foreign Leaders for John Kerry

I got an interesting email today from Orkut: Foreign Leaders for John Kerry

Martha Stewart convicted

Martha Stewart has been convicted on all four counts. I have nothing else to add to the matter other than this: a country that destroys its best, most productive minds does not survive for very long. If 30 years from now, all that is left of America is a broken-down starving dictatorship, today will be the day that finally doomed it. With the media in a witch-hunting frenzy, politicians of all stripes trying to beat one another to the next socialist regulation, and the courts going along, the thugs at the DOJ have nothing left in their way.

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen. -Ayn Rand

Top Twelve Reasons Not to Support Gay Marriage

I came across "Top Twelve Reasons Not to Support Gay Marriage" at Neurosophy and would like to include it here, since the list seems to be in the public domain. (The only one I disagree with is #8.)

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can't legally get married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are property, blacks can't marry whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
10. Children can never suceed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to cars or longer lifespans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "seperate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Seperate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as seperate marriages for gays and lesbians will.

The "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act"

One of the main reasons the Internet has been so successful in the last decade is the fierce resistance given in response to meddling politicians who want to protect us from ourselves. Most of the laws that have been passed to regulate the web have either been ruled unconstitutional, or were completely useless and ineffective.
There is one bill however that has been particularly destructive and dishonest – the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. Most of it was overturned by the Supreme Court, but one of the provisions that remained is TITLE XIII, which requires parental permission to collect personal information from any child under 13 years of age. “Parental permission” means that a parent must submit their personal information, and a verification of their age using something like a valid credit card. Most websites cannot afford to install such a complex verification system – nor can they afford the legal liability if ingenious kids circumvent that system. Neither will the parents of most 13 year olds submit their credit card numbers to an unknown website. In practice, the majority of community websites that require some information for participation simply say “By Federal Law, ALL applicants MUST be 13 years of age or older.”

When faced with such a notice, 99% of kids will simply lie about their age. This is fine for them, but not for the website operators, who are forced to either not collect any information at all, or to ban children from using their website (and hence not be able to market to them.) This is why there are no child-oriented online communities on the web that I’m aware of. There are many child-oriented sites of course, but by “community,” I mean a place where individuals can interact with each other and build online personas – something that requires at least a username and email address. The few websites that can afford to spend millions on the technical and legal challenges necessary for children to register usually ban children from its online forums and communities anyway – encouraging them to lie even when parental consent is possible.

In short, the government’s attempt to “protect” children has wiped out a major market niche, taught children to lie from an early age, and forced them to move their communities to underground IRC channels and general audience sites – exposing them to much more risk then a properly moderated child-oriented site would. It has also set a precedent for online censorship, one that the Supreme Court has mostly rebuffed, but may not do so in the future.

Go CIA!

I can't say how true this is, but it's certainly a great story:

In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.

Anti-China Protest in Taiwan

Wow:

More than 2.5 million people joined hands to form a 500-kilometre (310-mile) human chain stretching the length of Taiwan in a huge anti-China protest ahead of the island's presidential elections next month, organisers said.

Limbaugh warns of danger to free speech

Well, I never expected this from the conservatives, but I'm glad that one of them finally had enough sense to say it:

The nation's top radio host Rush Limbaugh warned of growing government intervention in broadcasting content.
Limbaugh made the comments after his parent company clear channel dropped Viacom's Howard Stern from its stations.
'Smut on tv gets praised. Smut on TV wins Emmys. On radio, there seems to be different standards,' Limbaugh explained.
'I've never heard Howard Stern. But when the federal government gets involved in this, i get a little frightened.
'If we are going to sit by and let the federal government get involved in this, if the government is going to 'censor' what they think is right and wrong... What happens if a whole bunch of john Kerry’s, or terry McAuliffe’s start running this country. And decide conservative views are leading to violence?
'I am in the free speech business. Its one thing for a company to determine if they are going to be party to it. Its another thing for the government to do it.'

Comanche Helicopter Scrapped

The Comanche helicopter program was scrapped today after $6.8 billion, 20 years of development, and not a single operational model. The helicopter was intended to oppose non-existent Soviet super-weapons, and after 1990, a non-existent Soviet empire. It took 13 years for the program to catch up with political reality. The helicopter has been featured in numerous movies, computer games, and television shows as the future of military technology. I think an observation made by my IT professor last week is appropriate: “Military contractors operate in a totally different universe. They have absolutely no conception of business reality, budget constraints, or product marketing -- and thus have a very hard time applying military technology to civilian applications.”
While the military does need to develop new hardware, the current pork-driven ménage a trois between politicians, local constituencies, and defense contractors is not the right way to do it.

Gay Marriages in San Franscisco

Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to take a stand against the orgy of gay marriages coming out of San Francisco City Hall. Whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of gay marriage, I think this is a brilliant move for City Hall and a win-win situation for everyone. The San Fran authorities obviously have a wonderful PR campaign on their hands. The media gets a controversial story full of suspense and intrigue. When will the courts stop the marriages? (Any day now.) Will they be declared null and void? (Probably.) Will there be a huge uprising with protests and mock marriages all over the nation? You bet! Conservatives aren’t left out in the cold either. Neo-fascist conservatives like Bill O’Reilly will score bonus points by decrying the “moral decay of America,” and the shadowy liberal conspiracy known as the “secular/humanist movement.”

I’m pleased with the move too -- the hippies are too busy attacking “the institution of marriage” to protest capitalism and war on terror, and the conservatives are too distracted fighting a battle they lost 40 years ago to wage their campaign of FCC censorship. Meanwhile, politicians of both parties will be busy announcing "pro-marriage" bills and amendments (which have zero chance of long-term success) to figure out new ways to divorce me from my money. Since national politicians of both parties cannot afford to alienate a large percentage of their electorate, no kind of coherent stand for or against gay marriage will come out of Congress. The only loser in the whole thing is the rule of law, which City Hall has blatantly ignored – but then California laws are so screwed up as it is that it might not be such a bad thing.

"An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World"

Check out Charles Krauthammer's awesome speech: "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World". This is definitely one of the best and most insightful foreign policy talks I’ve ever read.

All of whom "just turned 18", I'm sure...

Harvard University voted yesterday to approve a student-run magazine that will feature nude pictures of Harvard undergraduates and articles about sexual issues.

At this point, I could write a brilliant philosophical rant on how the vote was a liberal echo of the FCC’s “anti-indecency” jihad, ultimately stemming from a corruption of the concept of “censorship” by both sides, but uh, where do I send for my subscription??

Kerry's Hypocrisy

Kerry said that the United Nations should have control over most of our foreign military operations. "I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."
On other issues, Kerry wants "to almost eliminate CIA activity. The CIA is fighting its own war in Laos and nobody seems to care." He also favors a negative income tax and keeping unemployment at a very low level, "even if it means selective economic controls."

Return of the KGB

Leading challengers to Putin’s re-election are quietly disappearing, with murder investigations being shut down by the Kremlin, and the state media keeping mum. Putin has already silenced and nationalized the media, secretely shot opposition politicians in cold blood, and all but assumed his former KGB role. Anyone doubting that Putin is capable of any of these things should remember that the KGB (now FSB) had no qualms about killing 30 million people in the gulags, by starvation, and outright -- and no reason to behave now, especially now that it firmly controls the media. The Russians themselves are united in supporting a return of dictatorship, and their opposition to liberal (as in pro-liberty) candidates .
Despite the dark path to a return of Soviet-era tyranny, there remain major differences between today's Russia and the Soviets: with communism discredited worldwide, the new tyrants lack an ideology to excuse their power grab, and have no "noble experiment" they can use to solicit sanction and aid from the rest of the world. Not that the Russians arren’t eager to accept a new religion – here are the current “science” headlines on the Pravda website, the former official Party paper:
“A Girl with an X-ray vision”
“Remedy for Evil”
“Soviet Army fought UFOs”
“Are Dragons for real?”
For more, I highly recommend visiting the Center for the Future of Russia.
Update: Rybkin says he was drugged and kidnapped.

Sorry, the "land of the free" is now closed to the opressed.

Cubans hoping to 'drive' to freedom aboard a converted Buick are stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard near the Florida Keys -- and now face repatriation, exile leaders say. You can find a discussion of the issue here.

Death By Environmentalism

There are four well-known cases of environmental regulations that forced engineers to use ineffective flame-retardant compounds and may have led to loss of life: the Columbia space shuttle, which had to use the less-efficient foam insulation rather that Freon (see this, this, and this), the Challenger space shuttle, which had to use defective O-ring putty after the original was banned by the EPA for containing asbestos, and the World Trade Center, which was the first major skyscraper not to use asbestos, and hence collapsed sooner than it otherwise would have. Here is another case with less drastic but much more widespread consequences:

If your hard drive failed recently, an "environmentally friendly" flame-retardant compound may be to blame:

Red phosphorus is believed to accelerate the failures, but why did the semiconductor industry begin using red phosphorus as a flame retardant instead of the Br-based compound it had used for years? The answer lies with the equipment and materials manufacturers, who must stress environmental considerations.

The flame retardant most commonly used in encapsulation resins is a combination of Br-based compounds with additive Sb 2 O 3 (antimony trichloride). This mixture is extremely effective, and an encapsulation resin with 2 to 3% content will clear the American UL94-V0 standard for flame retarding performance. It also has a long record of successful performance in the field.

Br-based compounds, however, have been cited as potential sources of dioxins and other toxic gases when combusted, and this eventually led to restrictions on their use from about 1990, primarily in Europe. This accelerated the trend toward halogen-free material development, not only in encapsulation resins but in all types of applications.

Materials manufacturers developed environment-friendly semiconductor encapsulation resins by adding red phosphorus, but now that this failure problem has occurred, the IC and equipment manufacturers are rapidly changing their stance. Materials manufacturers are being forced to develop new materials.

Incidentally, there is no evidence that asbestos poses any kind of health risk when used for insulation – especially on space shuttles. However, it’s a great example of what happens to human lives when politicians get involved. The most deadly example of environmentalism in action is the banning of DDT, which has caused 10-30 million malaria deaths because of a lack of adequate pesticides.

"Lebanon: The Real 'Occupied Territory'"

Here's one cause you won't ever see the pinkos take up: Lebanon: The Real
'Occupied Territory'

Chinese Censorship

Chinese dissidents say that despite the government's best efforts to stop them, they are successfully using the internet to spread their messages ever more widely through the world's most populous country. But despite the help of several major international corporations and the use of the most sophisticated equipment, the Chinese government is finding the worldwide web much harder to censor than traditional media.

Whether immediate efforts to prevent coordination among dissidents are successful, China’s attempts at censorship are bound to fail in the long run. Because the Internet’s value as a commercial and research tool are bound to grow, and are closely intertwined with alternative uses, the costs of preventing access to any particular material is bound to become prohibitively expensive, especially with the rapid and exponential growth of Internet users in China. Meanwhile, the best strategy democratic nations can follow is to make China’s censorship policy as costly as possible by sponsoring the development of circumvention technologies.

Plans to build a major new medical laboratory in England were scrapped Tuesday in the face of protests by animal rights groups, who claimed the decision as a major victory….Cambridge University said the project, which would have used monkeys for neurological testing, would no longer go ahead and cited spiraling costs over security needed to keep out anti-vivisectionist groups. ...The university and the publicly funded Medical Research Council (MRC), said the decision was a great disappointment as the laboratory would have attracted scientists from around the world to work on diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's...."The research is vital and 'vital' means likely to save lives," he said. "This research will go on elsewhere...in the world.”

Goodbye to the Big Apple

• New York has a “Department of Homeless Services,” which, among it’s other activities, is giving away $10 million in cash to the “homeless.”
• Washington DC “will soon install plain white condom dispensers in select government offices and begin distributing the contraceptives for free.” The city “plans to pass out about 550,000 male condoms, 45,000 latex dental dams and about 30,000 female condoms in a variety of venues, including the public school system, which gives out 50,000 condoms a year.”
• I will pay 50.8% more in state and local taxes in New York than I will in other states.
• And finally, due to a new law sponsored by Governor Pataki, I risk a jail term of up to 25 years if I take my gun to New York. (It's illegal to sell even a toy gun!)

If you’ve noticed how harsh I’ve been on Dean, you might think that I would be pleased to see him to go ape on national television. Not so – I’d rather see him run against Bush than any of the other leading candidate. Since they are all equally communist, I’d at least like to see the candidate with the least chance of beating Bush win the primary. Just to cover my bets, I had better stick to bashing the leftists in general:

Larry Elder: The left supported the war in Iraq, then flip-flopped when it was politically advantageous.

Thomas Sowell: The Left’s problem is “that they are running out of the poor, who serve as a justification of the left's drive to extend their power over all the rest of us.”

Dean is taking grassroots to a whole new level: "Team Dean Racing". In the words of Tim Blair, it's "the only race vehicle in the world actually designed to spin."

I recently received an email (too long to show here) from a reader of my blog criticizing me from calling Dean a socialist. He gave Dean's “goal of diversifying our media” as an example of his non-socialist, pro-American stance and “one of the main reasons I will support him in this year's election.”
Well hell, if Dean can claim that Bush is a Fascist, that the world isn’t safer without Saddam, and “diversifying” the media is pro-American, then maybe he deservers my “support:”

As I recall, both Stalin and Hitler made “diversifying the media” major goals of their rule shortly after their gained power.

After asking voters not to focus on “guns, God and gays,” Howard Dean is using Jesus in his campaign rhetoric – but only in the South. Dean is a “Congregationalist” (wtf is that?) and has a Jewish wife and children. Methinks that (a) Dean is too pragmatic to hold any kind of explicit abstract belief, and (b) Dean already has his bases loaded with deities to worship – like the environment and the “common good.” Cox and Forkum comments:

In other news, Dean thinks Bin Laden should be presumed innocent until a jury decides otherwise:

I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found," Dean said. "I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials.

CATO: "The sad truth is that the best purpose for the homeland security advisory system is for the federal bureaucracy to be seen as "doing something," to prove to the public that politicians and government officials are not asleep at the wheel-if something actually does happen, they can claim they gave fair warning."

"presidential candidate selector poll"

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Libertarian Candidate (71%)
3. Bush, President George W. - Republican (69%)
4. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (43%)
5. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (42%)
6. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (37%)
7. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (33%)
8. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (31%)
9. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (25%)
10. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (23%)

Comments on gay marriage

A recent poll shows strong that 55 percent of Americans support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Whatever one thinks of gay marriage itself, a Constitutional amendment banning it is ludicrous. A constitution is a framework for a nation’s government, not a means by which trendy political disputes are resolved. There is no constitutionally justified reason why gay marriage should even be a federal issue, and hence no justification for the federal government to have any say on what marriage is or is not. Having said that, the policy that states should enact is such: gay marriage should be recognized, but it should be recognized as just that: gay marriage. Allow me to explain:

In a free society, adult individuals are free to engage in any consensual activity they desire. In a rational government, they are also able to form any contract between them and have it be legally recognizable and binding – assuming that the contract does not impose obligations on anyone else and is enforceable. Ignoring its social and moral ramifications, marriage is just such a contract. Certainly there is more to marriage than a legal contract, but from the government’s perspective, that’s all it should be seen as – a contract to share finances, certain legal obligations, and custodial rights. Legally, marriage is a special kind of contract –a standardized way of creating a complex legal entity. It certainly would not be feasible for the courts or for couples to have to draw up their own unique marriage contract, with all the details covering all potential eventualities. It would take dozens of lawyers, and it still wouldn’t have hundreds of years of precedent to cover all the possibilities. To simplify all that, we have a standard marriage contract that can be handled by a single public notary. Are there any valid reasons not to extend this contract to couples of the same sex?

On the face of it, the answer is no -- there is nothing particularly special about the sex of the people entering into a marriage. Now some might cite a harm to children of such relationships, social harms, etc – but that is nonsense I will not go into here. There is clearly a demand for such a contract, and it is the function of government to provide it. Given the above arguments, there is clearly a valid reason to legalize gay marriage.

There is a problem however. The fact of marriage is used by many private entities to provide various privileges when entering into various legal contracts. Examples are spousal benefits provided by employers, insurance firms, and other private business that take marriage into consideration. If no distinction is made between traditional and same-sex marriages, then the firms would not be able to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In fact, this is precisely what the gay lobby wants. If traditional and same-sex marriages are not delineated, then all private (and public) entities that consider marital status would be forced to use the government’s definition of marriage. Now some companies (like Disney) might be fine with that – but many others clearly will not be – and for good reasons, since homosexuality, for example, (is statistically at least) very bad for your health. There are many other valid and invalid reasons to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but whatever they are, it’s not the job of government to judge them. Individuals own their lives and may choose to engage or not to engage in trade with whomsoever they please for whatsoever reason. The “homosexual agenda” – if there is such a thing – does not recognize this. Their goal is to use government coercion to impose a certain non-discriminatory social view on the public. Whether you believe that homosexuality is moral or immoral, using government to force that view on everyone else is clearly wrong.

What’s the solution? The solution is to create a new marriage contract for homosexual couples and treat as such – a separate legal contract. Private individuals will then be free to recognize it -- and provide the same benefits to gay couples or not to. Government should not provide special benefits to anyone – whether they are single, or in a traditional or non-traditional marriage. Since it respects contracts however, partners of gay marriages would still retain the same custodial and inheritance rights as those of straight ones.

Cornered like a rat

From Cox and Forkum

A Russian Student Encounters Marxist Indoctrination—at San Francisco State University

Howard Dean Vows to 'BREAK UP GIANT MEDIA ENTERPRISES'

Check out this masterpiece of evasion by Howard Dean on the Drudge Report. Observe how he expects the media companies to offer themselves as willing sacrifices for the sake of “democracy,” and that he defines “censorship” not as the absence of governmental control of the press, but as the active use of government coercion to provide “information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.” Note also the New Deal justification of “saving capitalism from itself.”

Dean is right about one thing -- "The essence of capitalism, which the right-wing never understands -- it always baffles me -- is, you got to have some rules." What socialists like Dean will never understand however, is that the basic rule of capitalism is not the adoption of socialism, but the removal of force from men’s relationships.

If elected president, Howard Dean vows to "break up giant media enterprises" out of a concern "how deeply media companies can penetrate every single community" in America.

The Dem hopeful made the comments on GENERAL ELECTRIC-owned MSNBC during HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS.

"The essence of capitalism, which the right-wing never understands -- it always baffles me -- is, you got to have some rules," Dean explained to Matthews and students at Harvard.

MATTHEWS: Well, would you break up GE?

(APPLAUSE)

DEAN: I can`t -- you...

MATTHEWS: GE just buys Universal. Would you do something there about that? Would you stop that from happening?

DEAN: You can`t say -- you can`t ask me right now and get an answer, would I break up X corp...

MATTHEWS: We`ve got to do it now, because now is the only chance we can ask you, because, once you are in, we have got to live with you.

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: No.

MATTHEWS: So, if you are going to do it, you have got to tell us now.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Are you going to break up the giant media enterprises in this country?

DEAN: Yes, we`re going to break up giant media enterprises. That doesn`t mean we`re going to break up all of GE.

What we`re going to do is say that media enterprises can`t be as big as they are today. I don`t think we actually have to break them up, which Teddy Roosevelt had to do with the leftovers from the McKinley administration.

Dean explained how "11 companies in this country control 90 percent of what ordinary people are able to read and watch on their television. That`s wrong. We need to have a wide variety of opinions in every community. We don`t have that because of Michael Powell and what George Bush has tried to do to the FCC."

Matthews continued:

"Would you break up Fox?"

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: I`m serious.

DEAN: I`m keeping a...

MATTHEWS: Would you break it up? Rupert Murdoch has "The Weekly Standard." It has got a lot of other interests. It has got "The New York Post." Would you break it up?

DEAN: On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but...

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: No, seriously. As a public policy, would you bring industrial policy to bear and break up these conglomerations of power?

DEAN: I don`t want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not, because, obviously

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, how about large media enterprises?

DEAN: Let me -- yes, let me get...

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: The answer to that is yes.

I would say that there is too much penetration by single corporations in media markets all over this country. We need locally-owned radio stations. There are only two or three radio stations left in the state of Vermont where you can get local news anymore. The rest of it is read and ripped from the AP.

MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You`re going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?

DEAN: What I`m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.

China's communist authorities are training "Internet police" to trace political dissidents using the world wide web to evade state censorship.

Kyoto is Dead

Russia has rejected the Kyoto Protocol. As TCS points out, Russia's real motivations have more to do with pragmatic politicking than any regard for the sound science, but with the EU itself falling far behind its own Kyoto goals, this environmentalist wet dream (and economic nightmare) is finished. Good riddance!

Bush has decided to repeal the steel tariffs that caught him so much criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. See my earlier comments on the tariff. Looks like the commies will have one less issue to riot about.

What comes up....

Did you ever wonder about that story of a penny dropped from a skyscraper on a pedestrian's head?

A bullet fired in the air during a Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony came down and struck a participant in the head, critically injuring him, authorities said. [The]bullet struck...on the top of the head and exited at the bottom of his skull...

Sold Brides Endure And (Barely) Survive: To flee oppression, many North Korean women escape to marry Chinese men. Here are two tales of desperation.

Bin Laden in Iran

Fox News analyst Mansoor Ijaz:

Al-Zawahiri was seen within the last two weeks, and bin Laden was spotted in July, says the network's foreign affairs analyst Mansoor Ijaz.
...
Iran's provision of safe harbor, finances and logistical support for al-Qaida is a measure to counter the possibility that U.S. action in that region could result in democracies on both sides of the country, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ijaz said a warlord who controls Afghanistan's western provinces, Gulbuddin Hektmayer, is working with al-Qaida on a plan to bring a large army of Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops into Afghanistan during the winter months to attack U.S. interests and to try to take control of the entire country.

Iran does not want to see us succeed in building a democracy in Afghanistan under any circumstances,' he said.
...
'But it was my judgment,' he said, 'that it was vitally important for the broader part of our government's decision-making apparatus to know exactly what it is that's going on there, because it's very clear that the Iranians are trying desperately to not only hang on to power, but to fuel the terrorist enterprise in that part of the world.'

Hillary in '04?

Mike Mazza reports that Hillary's filed a report with the FEC for the presidential vote in '04. Could it be? I wouldn't put it past her. May God have mercy on us all.

North Korea

The United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union decided today to suspend construction of two nuclear reactors in North Korea. The nuclear reactors being built for North Korea are extortion payments by western nations meant to delay plutonium production at North Korea’s other nuclear plants (built with western aid as well, of course.) The suspension comes several months after North Korea announced that it was building nukes aimed at annihilating the United States because Bush called it “evil.” Not to worry, the suspension is only for a year, after which our government will resume helping North Korea develop the technology aimed at our destruction.

Meanwhile, aid shipments to support North Korea’s army are continuing by the west. CNN explains why a nice little communist dictatorship like North Korea is in such dire straights:

The isolated, hardline Communist state of 23 million people -- branded part of an "axis of evil" by U.S. President George W. Bush -- has been hard hit by several years of natural disasters, chronic food and energy shortages, and economic mismanagement.

Not everyone is lining up to support everyone's favorite dictator – “Japan suspended food aid after relations soured over the North Korean government's handling of conflicts between the sides, especially the kidnappings of Japanese citizens to train North Korean spies.” How dare they think that the kidnapping and torture of their citizens and a few ballistic missiles lobbed at them justifies taking aid from millions of starting Korean soldier..err farmers. North Korea has responded by demanding that it is Japan that is responsible for atrocities because “all the crimes committed by Japan [before WWII] were war crimes and the most hideous human rights abuses which should be punished irrespective of the then domestic law or the statute of limitation.”

The Glorious Leader himself is sticking to his usual line: “This shows that it is only right for us to increase the nuclear deterrent force.” Wow, this guy can’t go wrong. He threatens to build nukes, and gets free nuclear plants. The more millions he starves to death, the more aid he gets for his military. He kidnaps and tortures Japanese citizens and he gets media sympathy for Japanese century war crimes. The more he shows the world what totalitarianism is really about, the more sympathy, pity and aid he gets. There’s never been a better time to be a communist dictator.

U.S. takes hard line on Greenpeace

Looks like the FBI is finally prosecuting eco-terrorist organizations for being the criminal conspiracies they are.

Trade is not a zero-sum game

The Bush administration is getting a lot of heat for the steel tariffs Bush agreed to impose on foreign steel importers, and rightly so. In granting the tariffs, Bush betrayed his alleged free-trade principles in a pragmatic move that is costing him much more than he bargained for. I hope not only for Bush’s sake, but much more for the sake of the economy that my income depends on, that he sticks to his principles on free trade. (And on national security, if that’s not asking too much.)

While the case against steel tariffs should be obvious, the bigger lesson is lost on the nations and organizations (such as WTO) threatening “retaliatory” tariffs. Their assumption is that trade is a zero-sum game, where the tariffs of one nation somehow “steal” the wealth of another. In retaliation, they threaten their own tariffs, won’t return the stolen wealth, but are supposed to put a stop to the leakage of any more. This is mercantilist nonsense, of course. Just like trade between any two individuals within a country, international trade is a case of voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. Tariffs imposed by any nation harm the producers of foreign exports in addition to the consumers within that nation. This applies equally to “first-strike” tariffs as well as to retaliatory tariffs. While retaliatory tariffs are a politically effective move because they can be targeted at politically nimble exporters to generate opposition within the “enemy” nation, the proper policy of any free country is to establish unconditional, unilateral, and permanent free trade. (With the exception of countries that pose a military threat, that is.)

As an aside, it is often argued that American steel manufacturers should get special treatment because European steel manufacturers get massive aid from the government. People fail to realize that European taxpayers are in effect paying for a large chunk of the steel we import from Europe. High American tariffs on imported steel are in effect a wealth transfer directly from the pockets of European taxpayers into the vault of the U.S. treasury dept, which has gained $650 million of hard-earned European money from imported steel tariffs since March 2002. On the down side, $680 million has been lost by American consumers due to the higher price of steel at home.

In a related note, check out Bruce Bartlett's latest article, which explains why “the existence of a surplus or deficit may tell us exactly the opposite of what the mercantilists believed. Deficits may be a sign of strength, while surpluses are a sign of weakness.”

Opposing Online Sales Taxes is futile and counter-productive

Mike has published an editorial in the Batt deriding the proposed tax on Internet sales. His argument is that “if the government break[s] the barrier of taxation into the realm of the Internet, there is no reason for them to stop… Rather than seek new areas to tax or increase old ones, the government needs to cut back its current spending and programs.”

Mike fails to point out that consumers already pay taxes on the Internet whenever purchasing from online vendors based in state. (Or at least they are legally required to.) However, the bigger hole in his argument is that there is no essential difference between online and traditional sales. Any argument for or against sales taxes applies equally to both traditional and online sales. Given this fact, any attempt to carve out an exception for online taxes is bound to fail in the long run, just as any attempt to defend hunting on the grounds that they animals don’t suffer when they die is bound to fall apart.
The fatal flaw in both cases is that in arguing that the Internet should be *excluded* from sales taxes one implicitly acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with sales taxes per se. This turns the question of taxation into merely a question whether online commerce deserves any special treatment over traditional commerce. It does not.

Excluding online sales from taxation in effect amounts to giving special favors to a particular industry, and as such, is unjustified. Its exactly equivalent to giving tax breaks to politically nimble industries. In fact, that is exactly what is happening. Online-based companies are lining politician’s pockets and lobbying Washington in a hopeless attempt to carve out an exception for their industry. Because there is no rational reason why the tax law should apply to one group and not another, their effort is bound to fail. Besides, income taxes collected by the IRS, not sales taxes or the state tax agencies actually represent the most heinous and destructive form of taxation.

I say this as a partner of a web hosting service that has a lot to lose by the imposition of e-taxes – the service has a very low margin, and I’d rather close our doors than pay the accounting costs of charging taxes for the tiny transactions we deal with, since our current business is entirely under the table. There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of similar micro - e-tailers who exist only because running a small business on the internet carries little or no bureaucratic overhead. Even a 1% tax would carry enough regulatory baggage to either shut them down, or discourage new ventures from ever starting up.

In short, if any protest against taxation is going to succeed, it will not be by carving out exclusions to popular or powerful industries. One must attack the root of the disease – the collectivist premise that theft is justified for the “common good.” If you wish to keep more of what you make, I suggest that you start by questioning the moral premise of taxation, not by jumping on the libertarian “less" or republican “more efficient” government bandwagons.

Neal Boortz at A&M

I went to hear Neal Boortz live for four hours this morning. He was generally right on everything he mentioned, though he lacked Rush’s smooth delivery. Although he’s known for being a libertarian, he correctly identified the threat presented by Islamic terrorism, and praised America’s military. Unfortunately, he rarely went beyond the concretes of particular events, and when he did so, the results were usually mixed. Still, he has good teachers, and he let off a few good lines this morning, such as “No free nation has ever existed that did not recognize property rights.”

"The Real Iraq"

Amir Taheri writes on "The Real Iraq": "a first-hand account of an Iraq that is rapidly moving forward in nearly every aspect of life - political, economic and cultural. And a people that, while understandably skeptical after decades of tyranny, is nonetheless hopeful - and grateful for their liberation."

Has America already lost the space race?

China has successfully flown its first “taikonaut.” According to Glenn Reynolds, China’s space program represents a new outward focus that’s an improvement over, say, preparing for WWIII or invading Taiwan. I’m more inclined to think that it’s an attempt by the Communist leadership to show the relevance of the Party in response to the growing influence of businessmen. As Americans should know well, nothing justifies billions of dollars of government waste and useless bureaucratic jobs like a space program.

While China is rushing ahead with its space program, NASA’s fleet of 1980’s era space shuttles is still grounded with little hope for change due to an entrenched bureaucracy that cares more about their jobs than innovation. Our best hope in space is a private initiative run by amateurs – currently waiting for FAA approval to launch their flight-tested space vehicle. What’s the federal government’s response to this dilemma? To ban model rocketry of course. Clueless politicians claim the rockets fuels are a “high explosive” that private citizens cannot be trusted with. Did you ever notice how, unlike real high explosives, the rockets don’t just blow up on take off? Anyone inspired by the awesome movie October Sky should keep their dreams to themselves these days: not only is the rocket fuel illegal, but launching a model rocket requires FAA approval.

More wackiness from the Vatican

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk

The church opposes any kind of contraception because it claims it breaks the link between sex and procreation - a position Pope John Paul II has fought to defend.

In related news, the Pope is favored to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Considering its history of recognizing terrorists as “peacemakers” I think it’s appropriate.

Normally, firing someone is anything but a pleasant task, but...

Bush Asserts Israel's Right to Defense

Used to the usual criticism from the White House whenever Israel took any steps to defend itself, I was surprised when Bush finally said something right.

Robert Novak comments on the Plame scandal:

How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who in America" entry.

For humorous takes on the story, go here and here.

Pistol
By this leek, I will most horribly revenge:
I eat and eat, I swear--
Fluellen
Eat, I pray you: will you have some more sauce to
your leek? there is not enough leek to swear by.
Pistol
Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see I eat.
Fluellen
Much good do you, scauld knave, heartily.
Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your
broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks
hereafter, I pray you, mock at 'em; that is all.
Pistol
Good.
Fluellen
Ay, leeks is good: hold you, there is a groat to
heal your pate.
Pistol
Me a groat!

The media is having a fit over Sharon's decision to build more settlements on the western side of Jerusalem. Fortunately, this decision shows that he is not totally whipped by the White House...yet.
Meanwhile, the terrorist group known as Hamas says Israel's fence "means the early failure of the road map project." Um, I think that "project" failed when you blew up hundreds of innocent people. If their goal was to be left alone by Israel, then the fence would be the best thing they could ask for. However their real objection to the fence is evident in their own objections: "the wall will not protect the Zionist entity and will not stop the strikes of resistance."

A third spy has been caught at Guantanamo base. As Sean says,

Another translator has been arrested for spying at Guantanamo. Once is a fluke. Twice problem. Three times is a conspiracy. Think I'm off my rocker? Well, two of the three arrested had ties to Syria.

Bake Sale Anyone?

SMU shuts down race-based bake sale.
The Texas A&M chapter of the YCT is planning the same thing in November.

A few interesting stories: Jeff Jacoby says that The War On America Did Not Begin On Sept 11th, Victor Hanson writes that "These Are Historic Times," and Arthur C Clarke's dream of a space elevator may be becoming a reality, although the weight of government involvement may ground this project before this elevator goes anywhere.

Arafat threatens to commit suicide if he is expelled from Israel. Oh, the horror! Don't do it Arafat – the thousands of innocent people you murdered will never get over it!

Walter Williams on "Click It or Ticket"

"Click It or Ticket" represents another bold step along the road to serfdom. History knows of no totalitarianism agenda where noble goals weren't used as justification. Nazis used "for the good of the German Volk" and the Soviets used "for the good of the proletariat" as their justification. Health and safety have become the American justification for attacks on liberty.

“If you build it — we will burn it”

That is the slogan of the eco-terrorists group known as “ELF.” In the last few years, these home-made terrorists have not only been causing untold millions of dollars in damage, but have also been committing murder for “crimes against nature.” Ted Kacynski’s ‘revolution against the industrial system” is just one example of their methods, along with assassinating political opponents, and large-scale harassment and intimidation campaigns against American companies. A few years ago, they went after an insurer of a drug-testing company:

Employees have had their homes vandalized with spray-painted “Puppy killer” and “We'll be back” notices. They have faced a mounting number of death threats, fire bombings and violent assaults. They've had their names, addresses and personal information posted on Web sites and posters, declaring them “wanted for collaboration with animal torture.”

[The offender’s] roommate insisted he had no role in the vandalism.
"We absolutely condemn it," she told the Daily Bulletin. "We think it was wrong. We're peace activists. We feel like we're being unfairly targeted because we disagree with our government."
Lopez said the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were continuing an investigation of federal crimes, which would be added to Connole's state crimes charges. The FBI, after the arson and vandalism spree, released surveillance video from a Ford dealership in Duarte that showed two young men spray-painting SUVS.

Since man survives only by conquering nature, man is an inherent threat to the "intrinsic value" of nature and must therefore be eliminated. Environmentalism makes man the endangered species.

(Read on for several of the more interesting crimes perpetrated by eco-terrorists.)

JULY 21, 1997
Redmond, Ore.
The ALF and ELF used napalm which they referred to as “vegan Jell-O” - to destroy the Cavel West horse slaughtering plant.

OCT. 1999
“An ALF faction known as the Justice Department took credit for sending over 80 razor blade-laced envelopes, each containing a threatening letter with a picture of a bomb on it, to animal researchers, hunting guides and others in the United States and Canada. An ALF communiqué said some of the razor blades, which were positioned so as to slice open the fingers of anyone opening the envelopes, were coated in rat poison.”

MARCH 30, 2001
Eugene, Ore.
Thirty SUVs at Joe Romania's car dealership were torched, causing about $1 million in damage. The ELF said the attack was in support of Jeff “Free” Luers, who was serving a 23-year prison sentence, in part for torching cars at the same dealership.

MAY 21, 2001
Seattle, Wash.
The ALF set fire to the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture, causing $5.6 million in damage and wrecking years of research on genetically altered poplar trees and similar projects.

JULY 4, 2001
Detroit, Mich.
The ELF torched an executive office of logging giant Weyerhauser to protest the company's part in funding Oregon State University and the University of Washington's poplar and cottonwood genetic engineering research.

JULY 24, 2001
Sands Point, N.Y.
The “Pirates for Animal Liberation” claimed responsibility for unsuccessfully trying to sink a Bank of New York employee's 21-foot boat.

JAN. 29, 2002
St. Paul, Minn.
The ELF claimed a $250,000 arson at the University of Minnesota's Microbial and Plat Genomics Research Center, which was under construction.

Socialist healthcare policies are bankrupting doctors and killing untreated patients. If you believe that doctors should not be made slaves to bureaucrats and patients, support Americans for Free Choice in Medicine.

Not satisfied with forcing flush-twice (or thrice, if you’re in CA) toilets on unsuspecting Americans and creating numerous toilet smuggling outfits along our borders, enviro-wackos are pushing the “dry flush” variety to developing countries . These monstrosities start around $2000 and closely resemble the unsanitary, disease-ridden, unheated, and putrid outhouses our ancestors had to use before the invention of flush toilets. The new variety “improves” on that design by forcing you to regularly empty the toilet -- presumably on your crops. After all, we wouldn’t want to deprive ringworms and other assorted parasites of their “right” to continue infecting us.
(Props to Tim for the link.)

More on the Patriot Act

Many people sent me links to various critiques of the Patriot Act. For the reasons I mentioned in my original post, it’s very difficult to find objective evaluations of the law. Two stand out: this one by Reason magazine and this editorial on Capitalism magazine.
After doing some reading, I’ve been convinced that the Act has major flaws, of which the primary one is not that it gives too much power to the government, but that it is too vague about which powers it actually provides for. The great danger of a tyranny is not that it has too much power, but that its power is expressed by the arbitrary and unpredictable whims of some bureaucrat or dictator. I stand by my original claim however: unrestricted liberty requires a system of objective laws, under which the government has all and only the power it needs to find and punish criminals.

Here is a damsel in distress the world has forgotten about. Help her out by spreading the word.

Where were you on 9/11?

I’ve been wondering what possible motivation even an Islamic nut would have to bomb an irrelevant and pacifist group like the UN. According to one UK-based fundamentalist group, the UN is just as “quango organisation doing the bidding of the US.”
In related news, neither New York City nor the major media networks plan any special events to mark the upcoming second-year anniversary of September 11th. Not everyone has forgotten the occasion however, as the nuts mentioned above have planned a celebration of the “Magnificent 19” for the occasion.
What kind of society would not only forget about the murder of so many innocents but allow the same groups that created these terrorists to celebrate their atrocities? Britain is significantly more guilty of being a terrorist breeding ground than the U.S., but both are infested with the same plague: the terrorist-loving, America-hating trend of multiculturalism.

(Thanks to LGF for the links.

STRONGER, YOU FOOL!

(Thanks, DailyPundit)

A tally of US taxpayers' tab for Iraq

Tim insists that I link to this article about the cost of the US involvement in Iraq. Surprise, surprise, "reconstruction" is costing a fortune. Probably the biggest cost of the war is the cost in increased oil prices (no “blood for oil,” eh?) Since there has been some misunderstanding about my stance on Iraq, let me clear things up.
ATTN: World
Re: “Iraqi Reconstruction”
I adamantly oppose the reconstruction of any oil refinery, factory, or even one golf shack with money taken from me without my consent. Furthermore, I oppose any “peacekeeping” or policing efforts in any foreign country, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo. What I oppose even more than the above however, is die-happy fundamentalist terrorists blowing up my countrymen and putting my life in danger. This is why I support the US military taking whatever steps to kill those bastards as fast and as efficiently as possible, while risking the lives of American soldiers as little as possible. The best way to do this would have been to take out the two governments that are the most active in supporting terrorism around the world: Iran and North Korea. Having failed to do that, Iraq is better than nothing. This involves taking out the Iraqi government by whatever means necessary. What the Iraqis decide to replace Saddam with is not my concern, though I doubt that any semblance of a democracy is possible.

Have the WMD's finally been found? Let's hope Bush has the guts to follow up...
(Thanks, RE)

China's Mix of Freedom and Blood

A successful Chinese businessman was jailed earlier this year for his anti-communist statements as well as for “illegal” competition with state banks. This case is typical of the resistance state-run industries in China put up to better and more efficient private companies. The spread of private enterprises in China is creating a new class of entrepreneurs who challenge the state monopolies both economically and ideologically. The military-run state industries often respond by having the businessman sufficiently harassed or quietly disappear. While the situation is depressing in the short run, this mix of freedom and force is unstable – sooner or later, China will have an intellectual revolt and will be forced to choose capitalism or tyranny. If it chooses tyranny, it will surely look for an outside scapegoat to blame for the economic collapse that follows. This turn of events is probably the greatest threat from China to America’s security in the long run.
(Thanks, Keenan )

The Patriot Act and the Politics of Liberty, Part Two

To determine whether the Patriot Act infringes on our liberty, we must first determine what “liberty” is. Two political theorists stand out as defining the meaning of liberty: John Locke, and John Stuart Mill.

John Locke essentially invented the notion of liberty. According to Locke, the essence of liberty is the absence of coercion. Locke believed in political liberty, under which “coercion” means the initiation of force against an individual by physical force, the threat of force, or fraud. Furthermore, Locke held that liberty can only be justified on a particular ethical and epistemological basis, rather than an absolute independent of any particular ethical or philosophical basis.

According to John Stuart Mill, the meaning of “liberty” is very different. Mill was a utilitarian – he saw the happiness of society as his ultimate goal. He rejected the idea that humans had a common nature or a single path to their happiness – which means that each individual must find his own path to self-actualization in order to maximize his happiness. For Mill, liberty lies in the ability of the individual to choose the way in which he wishes to express himself, and to share his ideas with others in order to teach and learn the successful means by which to achieve happiness. In this view, limitations on liberty come from anything that limits one’s means of “self expression,” whether that means singing in the streets, having your art shown in museums, or bashing people’s heads in.

The primary difference John Locke and John Stuart Mill is that according to Locke, full and unlimited liberty is possible as long as men do not initiate force against each other, while for Mill, liberty must always be limited and contradictory because force is often needed to allow individual self-expression. So, if one was unable to convince the media to present his views, or to have museums display his art, or to convince men to follow his vision of society, the state’s role is to regulate the media, support the arts, and enforce “community standards.” Locke on the other hand, argued that the function of government is to protect individuals from the initiation of force, and as long as men respect each other’s rights, and the State prevents the initiation of force, full and unlimited freedom is possible.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, it was John Locke’s definition of liberty that he had in mind. Since that time however, Mill’s view has come to dominate society, in liberal, conservative, and libertarian circles. Some argue that if any restriction of “self-expression” limits liberty, then no objective basis for government limitation of “liberty” is possible, and anarchy is the ultimate form of freedom. Most people amend this view with the position that government coercion is the only “practical” means to compromise between conflicting views of liberty. Leftists and libertarians are the most common supporters of this utilitarian and subjective definition of liberty.

According to Locke however, totalitarianism and anarchy are essentially the same condition of freedom being displaced by a rule of the biggest thug. Full and unlimited liberty is possible to man – but only in a society where the initiation of force is removed from human relationships – and that can only be done in a system of objective laws. In a free society, the role of the government is to negotiate peaceful solutions to disputes and punish criminals and foreign invaders who initiate force against its citizens. The government must be restricted from becoming yet another aggressor by being limited to stopping criminals and carrying out justice.

Liberty is only possible in a society where men are free to do as they please as long as they respect that same right in others, and the government fulfills its role of carrying out justice based on objective laws. There are only two ways the government can fail to respect the liberty of its citizens: by initiating force, and by failing to adequately protect its citizens from the initiation of force. The former happened with the success of the terrorists in the 9/11 attacks, precipitated by many years of flawed domestic and foreign policy. The proper response of the government should be both to exact justice on anyone responsible for the attacks and to change its domestic and foreign policies to prevent such attacks in the future. The Patriot Acts are just one of necessary steps needed to correct decades of flawed policies that emboldened terrorists, and crippled the security agencies by preventing them from properly carrying out their function. These powers are not a limitation on the liberty of the people, but a necessary condition in order that the primary requirement of liberty: life, be preserved. This is not a blank check for whatever policies the government thinks are necessary – the police must be supervised by the courts to ensure that they abide by the laws, and the laws must be written so that proper precautions are taken to avoid harassment or wrongful convictions of innocents. (See my post The Fallacy of “Liberty vs. Security” for more.)

The latest Patriot Act is not perfect in this respect – but it goes a long way to giving the security agencies the powers they need to carry out justice. It is much better to have a sharp offensive security policy where the FBI actively goes out after individual terrorists than a dull defensive policy where airline passengers cannot take nail clippers in a carry-on and children and grandmothers are subjected to intrusive random searches. Yet both the liberals and libertarians would rather have us treat everyone like children than go after the actual terrorists with no holds barred. Of course, neither group will admit that the inevitable outcome of the policies they are advocating is just that.

The Patriot Act and the Politics of Liberty, Part One

Leftists (including the neo-commie Howard Dean) would love to have you believe that the Patriot Act is some sort of Nazi anti-subversion law that blows away the Bill of Rights. I will bet you good money that none of the protesters you hear about have ever read the Patriot Act, nor do they have even a remote clue what it is actually about. Even if they did know what they Patriot Act is about, they have absolutely no conception of individual rights, preventing them from making any kind of informed judgment about whether the Act will take them away. Given that a leftist’s idea of “freedom” is imprisoning gun owners and smokers while letting killers and rapists loose, promoting government-enforced racism, ignoring eco-terrorists, and stealing my money to support lazy-ass moochers, bad art, and "free" speech, I would love to see a law that wipes out the leftist notion of “civil liberties.”

No, the leftists definitely cannot be trusted to understand, much less argue whether the Patriot Act infringes on our “civil liberties.” To understand what infringes on liberty, one must first know what liberty is. Explaining this however, is something that will have to wait till after lunch. Meanwhile, check out the “Preserving Life and Liberty” site the government set up in support of the Act.

Take out Pyongyang!

MSNBC has an interesting account of a North Korea missile factory shipment to Libya. North Korea’s major sources of income consist of foreign aid (from western nations as well as loyalist Koreans in Japan), slave labor exports to China (and often to U.S. with a “Made in China” label) – and military hardware and technology sales to dictatorships around the world. Although I am skeptical about its chances for success, North Korea’s latest quest to develop nuclear weapons is a clincher in the case to take it out. No need to send in a large US force – drop a few nukes to take out Pyongyang, and the enslaved North Koreans will take care of the rest (and be eternally grateful to us for it!)

More Islamic madness…

Why in the world would anyone go after the UN?
I can think of two reasons. The obvious explanation is that the Iraqi terrorists are stupid and cannot distinguish between the different foreign agencies in town -- so they targeted the least-defended one. The less likely reason is that they want more UN involvement and aid to Iraq – precisely what is likely to be the outcome of the bombing. With all due respect for the dead, the bombing is the best thing that could have happened to the UN from the perspective of its supporters – it has given the UN a relevance they have been desperate for since the war started.

In other news, how many innocent civilians have to die before the “cease-fire” is officially over?

Commanding Heights on PBS

I hear that the Commanding Heights miniseries is pretty good -- and now it's all online. The book has been gathering dust on my shelves for a while, so I think I've give the video version a try. Stay tuned for a review..

Update: I saw the miniseries, and I have two words for you: SEE IT. The series is a must-see for anyone who shares an interest in economics or want to learn about the economic history of the 20th century and the issues surrounding “globalization.”

The first section is an account of the economic development of the 20th century, and the second goes over some of the issues surrounding privatization and globalization. The third section is rather muddled and aimless so skip it if you are pressed for time. The many multimedia presentations and additional readings that accompany the videos are also very informative, and I spent a significant amount of time pausing the videos to browse them.

Although the overwhelming message is pro-market, I have some major issues with the economic theory presented in the series. The “free-market” is defined as a mixed economy that is far from being a welfare state, yet not nowhere near a truly capitalist society. Organizations and treaties with dubious merit like the WTO and NAFTA are endlessly glorified. The Austrians are given minor lip service, while the Chicago/monetarist school is put center stage. Clinton is given something like a dozen clips, and portrayed almost as a champion of free trade. Most disturbingly, the Marxist take on the Great Depression is accepted wholesale, along with a rejection of “raw greed” in favor of “controlled” capitalism. While the series definitely leans towards free markets, Thatcher and Reagan are glorified as the ultimate capitalists. Commentary on monetary policies is flawed somewhat by the monetarist perspective. In short, you will find a great deal of historical context, but be careful about accepting the economic theory the series presents at face value.

MSNBC provides some "tips" for fixing the power grid. Their "fix"? Nationalization, regulation, and environmentalism -- the very causes of the blackouts.
Ah well, another great Cox and Forkum. Also: FCC head warns of more regulations.

Et tu, Arnold?

Druge reports that Schwarzenegger's top economic adviser Warren Buffett wants to raise taxes. Buffet is a democrat and a vocal critic of Bush's tax cut. This is the man Arnold picked for his economic advisor? I know he wants some credibility, but this is not the way to get it. Does anyone remember seeing Arnold with Milton Friedman on the "Free to Choose" videos praising free-market policies?

NY Blackout Special Edition

Quick Quiz: What is the media’s most likely take on the blackout:

1. The “complexity” and “chaos” of the market is unsuitable for an “essential” need like electricity.
   
2. The blackout was caused by America’s over-reliance on fossil fuels – we need to reduce our electricity use and move to renewable energy sources.
   
3. The minor looting and small number of deaths caused by the blackout is a sure sign that we can trust the government to protect our lives.
   
4. The Democrats haven’t found a way to blame the Bush administration for it, but they’re going to have something soon.
   
5. The blackout is an inevitable consequence of a heavily regulated, price-controlled, forcibly monopolized, and eco-crazed power industry.

I have a feeling the terrorist to blame here is called "incompetence."
Bill O'Reilly: "..it's a natural occurence..a shame this stuff has to happen..."
Has to happen? Just like terrorism, huh?

"Missile-smuggling plot"? What plot?

God knows, I'm all for blowing to hell any terrorist fuckers than want to mess with the U.S. of A. However I suspect that this latest "missile-smuggling plot" is basically a PR stunt by the FBI, perhaps motivated by the upcoming elections. I was watching an interview with a former FBI chief investigator, and listened to him answer questions for several minutes about the "foiled plan." Guess what he said? NOTHING. He went on and on about how terrorists were bad (um, DUH!), how terrorism is a global problem, blah, blah, but nothing whatsoever about what this "plot" was about. Methinks, some undercover FBI agents promised this Indian guy a ton of money in exchange for smuggling a "package" into America. Meanwhile, the Russian security agents working with the FBI conveniently sold it to him. That's all that ever happened -- no plot to shoot down any airliners ever existed, and no sale would have happened if some poor sucker hadn't been convinced to smuggle a package accross the 'lake'. Meanwhile, while the FBI is pulling publicity stunts, Congress is restricting the military's abilities to take out the real terrorists. Good planning, guys.

The first GI action figure of a U.S. president?

The George W. Bush Elite Force Aviator Action Figure, coming to a toy store near you!

(Thanks, Tim)

Black church will pay whites to attend.

Wow.

What Is Good For Iraq Is Good For Iran?

FOX:

The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini…the late Iranian cleric who hated America and founded the Islamic state that rules Iran…is now blasting his own country's clerical regime, calling it, ‘the worst dictatorship in the world’ and suggesting that U.S. military force might be needed to remove the regime. Hossein Khomeini, a Muslim cleric himself, says of U.S. military intervention, ‘I think the [Iranian] people would accept that. I would accept it, too, because it's in accord with my faith.’ Hossein, now visiting Iraq, told the Scotsman newspaper, 'I see that there's security, that the people are happy, that they've been released from suffering.'

Paper: N.Korea Plans to Export Missiles to Iran

Word on the street is that North Korea is selling long-range ballistic missiles to Iran. I’m not sure why a totalitarian slave-state like North Korea would be able to create both nukes and ICBM’s while a marginally less-totalitarian but much larger slave-state like Iran is not. Gee, maybe it has something to do with Israel having the balls to take out the nuke-factories while our dear old President Clinton decided to “negotiate” with that epitome of honesty, beloved dictator Kim Il-jong. I doubt that N. Korea has the capablity to develop working nukes in the near future, though Iran certainly will if Bush decides to echo Clinton and "negotiate" with the death-happy Islamic fundamentalists.

Of course North Korea and Iran claim that their nuke plants are (mostly)intended for the peaceful purpose of "providing electricity to the People". If the satellite photo below is any indication, they definately need it.

LAWRENCE, Massachusetts (AP) -- This city's superintendent of schools, who recently put two dozen teachers on unpaid leave for failing a basic English proficiency test, has himself flunked a required literacy test three times.
The story concludes:

Laboy, who receives a 3 percent pay hike this month that will raise his salary to $156,560, recently put 24 teachers on unpaid administrative leave because they failed a basic English test

Fox Hunting and the Politics of Compromise

The House of Commons has just voted for a total ban on fox hunting in England. One might be tempted to dismiss this as another sign of the loony leftists in Europe but the failure of the "pro-hunt" lobby holds a number of important lessons for conservatives in America. The primary causes for the failure of the hunting lobby to defend their rights were their willingness to compromise and a failure to offer a moral defense of their rights.

Two weeks ago, Andrew Linzey, a prominent British "expert" on morality and "animal rights" compared fox-hunting to rape. To quote, "'Causing suffering for sport is intrinsically evil. Hunting, therefore, belongs to that class of always morally impermissible acts along with rape, child abuse and torture...All acts of cruelty to animals are of a kind ....they diminish our humanity and offend."

While Linzey's argument is flawed on oh-so-many levels, I am more interested in what the opposition had to say in response. Here is one of the spokesmen of the Countryside Alliance, a pro-hunting group: "If you ask a rape victim or a victim of torture who has suffered so much whether they think what they have gone through can be compared to hunting, I think you know the response you would get. Frankly, it's disgusting. We are talking about a legal pastime which is being likened to illegal acts of gross exploitation."

Note that no attempt is made to defend the moral argument Linzey is making. The best answer the spokesman comes up with is that rape feels worse that hunting. The second part of his reply is to say that rape is worse because it is illegal, which is completely irrelevant in the question of whether it is right. Similar flaws are found in arguments in all of the Alliance's defenses. Their latest slogan is "59% say keep hunting." Other arguments call for a defense of their "way of life" and that hunting an improper priority for the legislature. Not one has dared to offer a moral defense of hunting or to explain why it's wrong to kill humans but not animals.

In response to the Alliance spokesman, Mr Linzey could easily say "Well how do know that rape feels worse than hunting? Have you ever been hunted?" In a comparison between being hunted down by dogs and being raped, most people would probably choose rape, and any sane person would certainly say that both are immoral and ought to be illegal. If a clear distinction between the moral status humans and animals is not made, what possible defense of hunting can be made? And how can one defend the moral status of humans if one does not recognize what makes them different from animals in the first place?

In short, hunting is doomed in England not because the arguments of the anti-hunt lobby have any merit, or because the defense of the hunters are wrong, but because hunters fail to provide any defense for their views at all, other to offer vague clichés such as "tradition," "way of life," and desperate resorts to public opinion. Realizing that they have nothing to offer in defense, they argue for compromise measures such as registration and various limits on where and how they hunt.

The gun lobby in America faces the same proposition. While the liberals offer laughable claims that guns are intrinsically evil, gun owners fail to defend their position on a basis of individual rights and refer to the traditional role of guns in American society and the Second Amendment. There is no certainly no question that gun ownership is an American tradition and a right guaranteed by the Constitution, but until recently fox hunting was an even older British tradition that collapsed before a small but vocal minority. Until gun owners on both sides of the pond realize that they must defend their rights on a moral basis and offer a principled stand, their freedoms will continue to be eroded by collectivists with preposterous claims that hunting amounts to rape and guns are evil while criminals are not. Ironically, it is Tony Blair who stated in response to calls to weaken the hunting ban that "this is a moral issue, and as soon as you try and compromise on a moral issue you end up hacking everybody off." Until conservatives stop "conserving" and start defending their rights, their stance is as useless as the fox hunters.

(Btw, while I think the NRA's willingness to compromise on their principles makes them unworthy of anyone's support, I was surprised to find a link to CapMag on their site. If you want to support an organization that truly supports your rights, I recommend you check out Keep and Bear Arms)

Supreme Court Ruling Extends Legacy of Supporting Racism into 21st Century*

In its latest ruling, the highest court of the United States decided to prolong its longstanding tradition of upholding state-sanctioned racism by affirming the right of public universities to exclude people based solely on the color of their skin. The recent ruling was a clear vote in support of affirmative action programs, with the possible exception of a contradictory ruling issued the same day. The decision highlights the Court's unwavering commitment to upholding their oath to abide by and protect the Constitution of the United States, except in cases where the National Interest , Common Good, or the State's Interest in Protecting the Whims of the Electorate, trumps the guiding document of our government.

As Justice Ginsburg explained, the ruling is exemplary of the Court's resolute commitment to carrying out justice: "I'd rather let 100 rapists go free on a technicality than commit an injustice." the outspoken feminist declared. "As my record shows, I have always ruled in support of freedom, democracy, and social progress, at least other than on Earth Day, May Day, during you know, my time of the month and generally whenever I didn't felt like it. Where was I? Oh, yeah, I'm a firm supporter of social and economic progress." She then hurried off to finish the paperwork for her ruling in support of price controls and the upcoming ruling on what consenting adults can do in their own home.

While some critics have criticized the ruling as a vague compromise that fails to provide any real guidance as to what the law really means, Justice Stevens vehemently denied these allegations: "When the conservative wing doesn't ruin our decisions, we always vote according to principle and set a firm precedent for the future. Other than the rulings on race, abortion, the death penalty, the rights of accused, freedom of religion, property rights, the draft, and other minor issues, we have always spoken as one voice and provided clear direction to the lower courts. I can't speak for my Republican peers, but the liberal wing of the court has always been a consistent supporter of individual rights, at least other than when we ruled that snail rights trump human rights and that some men don't qualify as human beings."

*Your freedoms void where prohibited, all rights (not) reserved. This is just a parody, so please don't sue me for libel.

Child porn, Bill O'Reilly, Libertarianism and Hentai

What do they say? If you can't take the heat, (or the competition) get out of the kitchen. This "criminal at the computer" read your book and is tired of your "someone should do something!" commieconservatism.

Edit: A further comment. O'Reilly says

the Supreme Court actually helped [the child molestation people] by ruling that virtual child porn, computerized images of kids being raped, are legal, an extension of free speech.

What he is almost certainly talking about, is hentai, or the popular Japanese version of anime, or animated nudes. Japan has strict censorship laws that prohibit the portrayal of genitals (even animated ones), but are very flexible and open on everything else, including breasts. The weird result is that mainstream anime features plenty of bare-breasted women and porn has genitals that are digitized just enough to get past the censors. Anyway, women in Japanese anime only come in two forms: young, nubile, and top heavy, and old hag. Although their huge cleavage, enormous eyes, and purple/green hair hardly qualifies as "human," a number of conservatives (like Mr. O'Reilly) have labeled hentai as "child porn" and sought to ban it outright. It doesn't take much brains to figure out that this is only a stepping stone to banning pornography, masturbation and all kinds of other things their preacher thinks are bad. So what is child porn and what should be illegal?

I was arguing with a prominent "libertarian" a few months ago who was said that while child molesters are guilty of a crime, those who distribute child pornography are are not, because they didn't actually harm anyone. I compared this to saying that while a thief commits a crime, those who knowingly buy his stolen loot do not, since they didn't steal anything themselves. (The libertarian agreed with this as well, at which point I gave up.) The fact is in both cases, both parties are guilty: one of the actual crime, the other of aiding and abetting. When dealing with virtual child porn however, there are no victims and no crime. The behavior may be immoral, but it's in the same status as watching the numerous rape and gang-bang scenes in adult movies. (Not that I watch that kind of stuff, but did you know that the rape scenes frequently feature tiny white women and mean-looking black men, yet are happily purchased by all races?) Not surprisingly, I have heard many arguments made by feminists for banning "rape" scenes and by conservatives for banning adult stars who dress to look underage. Their logic is based on the implicit assumption that humans are like apes who mindlessly imitate whatever they see, be on it television, computer, or newsprint. If that were the case, then my many hours of playing Doom are a much bigger threat to society than my small but growing hentai collection. In any case, child porn it is not, and to prove it, I've posted a random sample here. Judge for yourself, but not for too long, since it may soon be against the law.

US Army expands Iraqi weapons ban to toy guns..

kids fight back..

Martha Stewart: Political Prisoner

There are a number of interesting stories covering the witch hunt the government is pursuing against Martha Stewart. A number of papers are running stories such as "Official Poll: Is Martha Stewart guilty?" and Poll: Majority of New Yorkers think Martha Stewart is guilty. How the hell is Joe Shmoe supposed to know the details of the legal code or what Martha did or did not do? Fortunately, most of the editorials I've seen recognize the case for what is is: "U.S. government makes her the subject of a criminal test case designed to further expand the already unrecognizable boundaries of the U.S. federal securities laws." A number of sites in support of Martha have popped up, including Martha's own MarthaTalks.com and the SaveMartha.com, which features several hilarious clips from her "enemies."

Martha's own defense has been to say that she is only being prosecuted because she is a successful woman -- but I think this take is misguided. Many successful men have gone to jail for insider trading, and Martha's defense is doomed unless she acknowledges the real motivations of her prosecutors: to inspire fear, uncertainty and doubt into successful businessmen everywhere, and gain political prominence in the process. As the must-read article "Martha Stewart: Political Prisoner" points out,

It is politics, not the pursuit of justice, which is driving this case. Stewart is well-connected politically, but it is to Democrats, who control none of the branches of government at the present time. Her wealth and public persona make her a convenient target of a very political U.S. Department of Justice and of U.S. attorneys who see the example of the Guiliani path to fame and fortune.

I can't say whether Martha broke the law or not: I'm not lawyer, I don't know the facts of the case, and even if I were a lawyer, the SEC regulations are vague enough to mean whatever the government wants them to mean in any particular case. What I do know, is that the insider trading laws are a mockery of justice, and that the witchhunt against Martha Steward is only happening because she and Sam Waksal are successful individuals, and in today's world, success can be a very dangerous thing.

The title says it all:

The title says it all: Starving [African] Nations Reject U.S. Food Donation. If you want my take, read last years blog on it.

In other news, the Defense Dept is adopting the "new" IPv6 protocol. My guess is that when every bussiness has IPv6 implemented in 5 years, the Pentagon will still be conducting studies about how to best implement the protocol.

Thanks to Tim for this

Thanks to Tim for this story about a classy Nevada brothel. See what happens when politicians stop being meddling nannies and allow people to choose their own lifestyle? Best of luck to them, but they have a long way to go before they catch up with the Japanese.

Which party does this list of proposed policies describe?

• "Special rights" for certain races/cultures/ethnicities
• Censorship and arbitrary imprisonment of non-crimes such as sexism, "heterocentrism", "ableism" etc.
• Arbitrary redistribution of wealth on the basis of wealth, race, success, etc
• "Reasonable" slave-reparations plan
• State-worship replacing God-worship (note: I don't condone either)
• Extensive gun control and confiscation from "suspect" groups
• Nationalized child care, health care, and education, and social security for the retired
• Rational thinking replaced by mass brainwashing in public institutions
• Arbitrary court system dominated by politics rather than legal code
• Belief that race, class, and society fix the essential traits of every person.
• Many other policies that sacrifice individuals for "society" and the "common good"

Seems like the usual liberal agenda, right? Replace "slave" by "Jew" and "heterocentrism" by "homocentrism" and you have platform of the National Socialist Workers (NAZI) Party.

(This blog inspired by "an extremist homophobic Republican nazi" on the Hobbes forum.)

"Drug cartels thrive in US national parks"

The CSMonitor reports that "Drug cartels thrive in US national parks." The blame is placed solely on the druggies, but do you think this would happen if the park land was privately owned or growing weeds was legal? When the government places a very profitable (and harmless) industry outside the law, what else can it expect but the Prohibition all over again? Well, at least public land is finally being put to a productive use.

Is driving a "right"?

Remember "Sultaana Freeman," the woman who refused to show her face for her driver's license photo? A number of arguments have been presented in support and in opposition of her "right" to have her photo taken with her veil on. Unfortunately, since no one understands what a "right" is anymore, no one can say whether driving is in fact a right and just what freedoms the the separation of [mosque] and state clause allows. The current interpretation is that as long as your religion (a) does not pose any immediate danger to the public, and (b) is followed by a sufficient number of electorally - motivated followers, you will be free to practice whatever stupid tricks your holy book prescribes. This is of course an arbitrary doctrine without any rational or Constitutional basis. So, "Native Americans" can smoke their dope and wear their bald eagle feathers on their own time, but they can't file for unemployment insurance if they get fired for smoking their dope at work or claim that cannot find work because Friday is their "holy-day." (Whereas Christians who observe the usual Sat-Sun holiday can.) The rest of us can't wear feathers of smoke dope because although that passes (a), it fails (b).

All men are born with a right to life, liberty, and property -- and that includes the right to practice any idiocy your particular shaman prescribes -- as long as you don't harm anyone else in the process. The right to liberty and property includes the right to own and drive a car -- but it is a violation of someone else's right to force them to pay for your roads and traffic cops. There is no right to drive on public roads for anyone, whether you are Catholic, Southern Baptist or Harry Krishna because the maintenance of a "public roads" is theft. So in deciding whether Mrs. "Sultaana Freeman" has the right to have her face hidden involves making the best of a bad (immoral to be exact) situation. The question her collectivist judge is currently asking -- what her religion "really" says is completely irrelevant in the matter. The number of people who share your delusion has no bearing on its truth. The only question the judge should ask "Does wearing a veil pose a threat to the safety of others?" Since wearing a veil undermines the primary function of having an ID (and thus undermines the valid police function of maintaining safety and carrying out justice), I would say that the answer is clearly yes. On that basis, and on that basis alone, there is no "right" to conceal your identity on a public road.

Now as to why I used quotations quotations for Mrs. Sultaana Freeman's name, it turns out that her real name is "Sandra Keller," and as the photo taken for her 1999 felony aggravated battery (of a foster child) conviction shows, she has already exposed her real face to the cops a number of times since her 1997 conversion to Islam.

PETA Madness

OK, first PETA compared the murder of the Jews in the Holocaust to the killing of cows and chickens. If that weren't crazy enough, the're now on a campaign against IAMS (the pet food company) for get this, conducting nutrition trials on pets. Apparently unlike humans, who frequently experiment with different diets, animals aren't able to consent to nutrition testing! The irony of course is that animas don't have rights for the precise reason that as non-rational beings, they don't have the ability to engage in consensual/transactional interactions with humans. Meanwhile PETA is essentially a terrorist group bent on wiping out humanity - or at least everything that differentiates us from animals.

Victims of America's Immigration Policy

Two sad stories in the news exemplify the unfortunate victims of America's restrictive immigration laws. A high school student from Laos is set to be deported 22 days before graduation. His family has lived here for 13 years, and after unsuccessfully attempting to get permanent citizenship, are set to be deported. Both parents have productive jobs, and Tchisou has been accepted into the University of Minnesota, where he wanted to study natural resources or aerospace engineering. Unlike so many illegal immigrants from south of the border, the Tho family actually attempted to comply with the law and obtain citizenship, and deportation is their reward.

Like the Tho family, in a few weeks I will mark the 13^th year since my family came to America, and although we came here legally, it boggles my mind that I could be deported back to Ukraine because of a difference in paperwork. I cannot speak for Tchisou, but I speak virtually no Ukrainian, and loath Ukraine and everything it stands for with a passion that rivals only my distaste for commies (and for the same reasons). Besides that, the country I left was USSR, and it is dubious that Ukraine would even take this dirty Russophile Jew back, probably dooming me to years in detenention camps while the bureaucracy decided my fate. Like Ukraine, Laos is a mix of communism and anarchy held together by nationalistic propaganda, and a former immigrant would be doomed to second class citizenship or worse. (I dramatize a bit since the Tho family will probably end up in France by virtue of having lived there on the way to America, but being an American in France is only a marginal improvement over Laos these days.)

Meanwhile, the bodies of 18 immigrants were found in truck in Texas, stuffed inside a locked truck that may have held over 100 people. This is just the latest episode of the annual death marches that many thousands of illegal immigrants undertake to find low-paying and unwanted jobs in America that usually involve working outside in 100 degree Texas heat. Everyone who has ever complained that Mexicans are "stealing" his minimum wage job should feel some guilt and responsibility for the suffering his economic ignorance causes.

While they are expert at sending little boys and young men back into slavery, the immigration services too overwhelmed by the drug war and their attempts to stop well-meaning immigrants to deter any actual criminals from crossing our shores. The ultimate hypocrisy is that Middle Eastern terrorists are able to buy visas while harmless and hard-working immigrants are denied their chance to the American Dream.

Power Politics

A major step on the path to my political enlightenment was the rejection of the traditional left-right, liberal-conservative political spectrum in favor of a two-dimensional one, with one axis representing political freedom and the other economic freedom. Later, I came to see that political and economic freedom are ultimately inseparable. While the two may exist out of sync in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, economic freedom leads people to demand political rights, and authoritarian regimes attempt to monopolize economic as well as political power. While I could write a book on both the historical and theoretical implications, for now I'll offer a quote from For the New Intellectual: "Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries."

A good quiz to measure one's position in this two-dimensional spectrum is at the Politopia website, and the original World's Smallest Political Quiz (about which I have some reservations) is worth taking a look at as well. (Actually, to the best of my knowledge, the original idea comes from Ayn Rand.) What I found tonight however, was a grotesque rip off of the original idea twisted beyond recognition by marxists brainwashed by "critical theory". An objective test should accurately determine one's actual level of knowledge or views, given an honest examinee -- but this quiz is so laden with contradictory, loaded, and irrelevant questions, that no objective evaluation is possible. (In fact, it only claims to be valid for citizens of "western democracies.") My reason for mentioning it at all is to bring up a recently realized point to light: libertarianism is inevitably a subjectivist and anarchist philosophy because it rejects the difference between power and authority, or might and right.

About half the questions on the quiz reflect the false dichotomy between blind state-worship and the rejection of all political authority shared by libertarians and Statists. In other words, you must either blindly accept everything the government does without question, or reject it as the selfish actions of power-hungry bureaucrats. Sample questions: "Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity." and "No one chooses their country of birth, so it's foolish to be proud of it." Libertarians and leftists have a lot in common: it is only the hypocrisy of the left in distrusting government to protect them from criminals, yet blindly trusting government to be their mommy and daddy that prevents them from reaching the anarchists conclusion that many "classic" Marxists did.

The quiz includes a number of seemingly irrelevant questions that actually reject the distinction between the government's proper roles of preventing the use of force and assume that it must force a particular morality down everyone else's throat. (Welfare and earth-worship excepted, of course.) Examples:

Sex outside of marriage is usually immoral. Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers. Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all. Astrology accurately explains many things.

Again, libertarians argue, "government should not enforce morality," forgetting that any legal system must be based on a particular morality, and often failing to distinguish between government interference in voluntary vs. involuntary interaction. Admittedly, many libertarians do make this distinction -- but to the extent that they acknowledge a certain moral code as the basis of their political views, they are not libertarians, for by rejecting any specific moral code as a basis for political authority, libertarianism excludes any particular moral code from forming such a basis.

The imporance of the distinction between power and authority is certainly not a new idea. John Locke was aware of it, and Machiavelli and Plato believed that a "legitimating myth" is required to keep ordinary folk in line. Authority is no myth however: as Aristotle first wrote, there exists a necessity for government precipitated by our condition, and a rational man had the capability to realize it.

"Food Aid Said Diverted to N.Korea Military "

Regular readers of my blogger will know what I think of the groups that send aid to North Korea: they are guiltier of causing mass starvation and supporting genocidal regime than Kim Jong Il himself. If it were up to me, I would have those "humanitarians" sent to die in the labor camps with the rest of the peasants whose torture and slavery they are perpetuating.

The fact is, that without the massive material and diplomatic aid (of which US provides 68%) from the quasi-free nations of the world, North Korea would have collapsed long ago. If any more proof is needed that the sanction of the free world is keeping North Korea's regime afloat, Reuters news reported today that food aid is being diverted to the military instead of the starving peasants. Well, DUH! You don't to be a UN bureaucrat to figure that out. In a decisive condemnation of North Korea's actions, Tony Hall, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies said "We don't like that. The food is not designed for that. The food is aimed especially at women and children -- people who are hurting." Wow, thanks for clearing that up, Tony.

Meanwhile, Kim continues playing world leader like a fiddle to get his way, by threatening to build nukes, start a war, etc if concessions aren't made. (I'm not sure if the "non aggression" treaty North Korea is pushing for means that the U.S. will standby if the Kim attacks the South, or that we'll sell him arms to better attack the U.S.)

Meanwhile, the bloodsuckers at the UN keeping leeching more money from the productive men in America to support more and more despotic dictatorships abroad. "I can't remember in my experience of working in the humanitarian field when we have had so many crises at one time" says Mr. Hall, Leech #1. Perhaps it's time for a little self-examination.

Gotta love the UN

Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post has written a great editorial about the U.N. He mentions how Iraq has been chosen to Iraq to Chair U.N. Disarmament Conference (with Iran as co-chair) while Libya, that great utopia of individual rights was elected to the chairmanship of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
Can the U.N. possibly become any more hypocritical? Next, I suppose North Korea will be selected to chair the Democracy Conference, and China to lead the Religious Tolerance Committee, and Cuba to chair the Economic Development Forum. Then, the five chairs can pass a resolution condemning the U.S. for terrorism, hostility to Muslims, human rights abuses, and trade restrictions. (And the libertarians, those great defenders of non-aggression would probably applaud the resolution for pointing out U.S. "imperialism.")

Venezuela

If you don't know what's going on in Venezuela just yet, click on the link below.



For an overview, check out this article on their site: Is John Galt Venezuelan?

This is pretty funny: U.S.

This is pretty funny: U.S. food programs 'make the poor obese'

"The U.S. government's food aid programs for low-income people are contributing to the high obesity rates of America's poor, according to a recent report from a Washington think thank.

In his paper, Besharov, director of AEI's social and individual responsibility project, notes that that the U.S. government now spends billions annually on its three major programs to help feed the poor: $18 billion on food stamps; $8 billion on school breakfasts and lunches; and $5 billion on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, which provides food directly to mothers and children.

He says these programs are driven not by an emphasis on healthy eating habits that could help stymie the costly problem of obesity, but by outdated policies that contribute to obesity. Such policies ignore the fact that Americans are much more likely today to be at risk from health problems related to overeating and obesity than those that arise from lack of food. "

On Cloning

Matt Drudge had a recent story referring to the recent claims of a successful human clone being born under the tagline "DID THIS WOMAN CHANGE THE COURSE OF MANKIND FOREVER?"
Now, I usually like Drudge, but he seems to have joined the general hysteria surrounding human cloning.

I am skeptical that a successful human clone is scientifically possible in the near future, but even if this feat can be accomplished, I see nothing wrong or immoral about the practice. First, the classic argument against cloning, that interfering with reproduction "goes against God's will" is nonsense. If we take this argument to its natural conclusion, then any human manipulation of genes is immoral. But we are in effect participating in genetic manipulation when we choose one mate over another, or breed a certain variety of a crop over another, or choose to have kids or not. Simply by favoring blondes over brunettes, or mates of a certain race, we are in fact engaging in genetic manipulation - and if man was made in God's image, than that image is certainly a moving target. Excluding human manipulation of us and our environment leaves us with little choice, but to go back to the caves or trees we originated from – because it is in fact human nature to rule nature, rather than be ruled by it.

Cloning, like any technology gives man power -- to improve his life, or to destroy it. In the long run, it is only the productive and life-enhancing applications of technology that make life and further development possible, which is why technology and industry is fundamentally beneficial to human life. The "natural order" for man is as a rational being who applies his creative power to benefit his life by conquering nature – including that of his own body. Because it excludes human achievements from “nature,” the entire notion of going "back to nature" implies a return to our animal nature -- a miserable, short, and brutish life scrounging scrubs while trying to eke out a pathetic survival.

Another argument against cloning is that it will lead to birth defects and shortened lifespans. Perhaps so, but so will so does smoking, consuming alcohol and bad diets while pregnant - and mothers are not legally liable for in those cases. Perhaps, if cloning was inherently detrimental to a fetus - for example as random radiation exposure might be, there might be a case for banning it, but in fact, it promises incredible advances in preventing genetic disease and perhaps even improving on the fragile condition from which we have involved. Sure, some people might mess up their kid's genes, but then stupid people have kids all the time - more than their fair share even, and no one tries to pass a law against that.

More on NK Nukes

Apparently, North Korea is going full stream with nuke production -- they have removed UN seals and inspection devices, and openly admitted to nuclear weapons production. Apparently, they're not afraid to take the world with them if they ever go down:

The communist party's newspaper Workers' Daily declared that "the army and people of the DPRK are fully ready to mercilessly strike the bulwark of US imperialist aggressors" - implying that they could hit targets in the US.

"There can be no earth without Korea," it said. "The army and people of the DPRK will destroy the earth if the enemies dare make a nuclear strike at it. This is their do-or-die spirit."

A pacifist speaks his mind.

On October 8, Air Force Academy cadet Robert Kurpiel sent an e-mail to several college professors seeking support for the academy's annual assembly, which provides a forum for the exchange of political views. His polite request sought advice on publicity for the event and such. One who responded was Professor Peter Kirstein of St. Xavier University in Chicago. Here is his October 31 reply in full and verbatim:

You are a disgrace to this country and I am furious you would even think I would support you and your aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage. Help you recruit. Who, top guns to reign [sic] death and destruction upon nonwhite peoples throughout the world? Are you serious sir? Resign your commission and serve your country with honour.

No war, no air force cowards who bomb countries with AAA, without possibility of retaliation. You are worse than the snipers. You are imperialists who are turning the whole damn world against us. September 11 can be blamed in part for what you and your cohorts have done to Palestinians, the VC, the Serbs, a retreating army at Basra.

You are unworthy of my support.

I have expressed to Cadet Kurpiel my regrets over what I communicated to him in my e-mail. I did not mean to impugn his character. I am sure he is of the highest character. I should have written him in a more thoughtful and contemplative manner. As one who believes in non-violence and the avoidance of conflict, I could have been more circumspect and creative in my communication with him.."

Trent Lott

Here is a quote from MSNBC news:

He added, "I am going to have to make changes, make amends and do something about it." Specifically, he pledged his support for affirmative action programs and for creation of a "task force on reconciliation."
"There's an opportunity here," Lott said. "This is a wake-up call."
When pressed by moderator Ed Gordon, Lott spoke candidly about his Thurmond comment. "It was insensitive, at the very least," he said. He also said if he had to vote today he would vote for the federal holiday in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which he voted against in 1983."

No Gore in '04

It seems that Al Gore won't run in '04 after all, clearing the way for (the marginally better candidates) Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, and Lieberman. Either way, as long as the Dems fail to get their act together and find something to stand for, Bush's re-election should be a shoe-in.
Also, while advertising the upcoming speech on Abortion, I started a lively (perhaps too lively) debate on TexAgs.com which is probably the most active thread ever outside their college football section.

Quoth one commie

"We need [Moore's] noisy, cocky energy, his passion and class consciousness; we need his shticks, we need his stones."

Anyone who wants more proof that Hollywood/media is commie heaven should note the
13 positive and 0 negative reviews on Michael Moore's latest manifesto: Bowling for Columbine.

Damn Voting!

So I tried to go vote yesterday and today but the whole world seems to be determined not to let me. First, I found out that early voting ends four days before the elections, so a trip in the rain to the MSC was wasted. Today, I went to the MSC to have the officials tell me that all off-campus voters must go elsewhere, so I look at the precinct map and go to the City Hall (3 miles away) on my skates. I finally get there to find out that they do not have my name on the roll, and my precinct is actually right next to where I live. So I go 3 miles back, find the other voting location, and they tell me that they do not have my name either, so I get them to call election headquarters, which is finally able to tell me that I am supposed to vote at the MSC!

I have class, so I run home to get my books, and since I am running late, I take my bike. After class, I head to the MSC, but as I am riding by Beutel (the infirmary), I slip and fly headfirst into a metal pole. A very sweet girl half-carries my bloodied, limp body into Beutel, where eight stitches, lots of antibiotic, and a big credit card bill later, I hop on one foot (no kidding) to the MSC. FINALLY, I get there and do my thing for democracy. Then, I hobble back the mile it takes me to get home.

What a day! (The stitches come out in 10-14 days, and no, I did not get the girl's number, though I could have sworn she would have given it to me if my hands weren't all bloody.)

Zimbabwe

The thing I find the most outrageous about politics in today's world is not that so many collectivist and authoritarian governments exist, but that it is the free nations of the world that support them. The U.S. is building North Korea a nuclear plant in exchange for it agreeing to not build more nukes, as millions of its citizens starve, kept alive by the millions in aid that the country gets every year, while North Korea diverts its entire industry (supported mostly by western aid) towards making more weapons and keeping a huge conscripted military force in the army instead of allowing their enslaved masses to raise any crops. As it sends aid and builds North Korea nuclear plans (which are illegal to build in the US thanks to the enviro-wakos), the U.S. military keeps several thousand troops stationed at the border between the Koreas to guard against North Korean aggression. More so than the dictators of these countries, who are common thugs, the "civilized" countries that support these dictatorships are responsible for their existence.

Recently, "thousands of tons of U.S. emergency food aid destined for crisis-stricken Zimbabwe has been diverted to other countries, and a new shipload may be diverted within days, because the donations include genetically modified corn that the Zimbabwean government does not want to accept." Why not? They "don't want to contaminate their soil with genetically modified crops"!
Even more outrageously, Mugabe has said he is being prudent. "We fight the present drought with our eyes clearly set on the future of the agricultural sector, which is the mainstay of our economy," he told Zimbabwe's parliament on July 23. "We dare not endanger its future through misplaced decisions based on acts of either desperation or expediency."

What Mugabe does not mention is that in the last year, he has stolen the land of thousands of white farmers in a pathetic attempt to boost his own failing popularity by taking the role of a common looter. Since the farmers produce most of the country's agricultural output and hire millions of workers, millions of people have gone starving (and unemployed) and the country's economy has nosedived. And this punk claims he is "set on the future"? But it's not Mugabe who makes me sick - it is the aid agencies, the governments, and the media that support these regimes by adopting and promoting the statist, collectivist, nihilist, and pragmatic attitudes that create these sad situations.
Excuse me while I barf.