Lessons Learned from our Southern Neighbor

American front - Failed states
Mexico celebrating 200th birthday - Arizona Republic (see link)
"Mexico celebrates its 200th birthday tonight, kicking off a two-day bicentennial extravaganza of lasers, fireworks and music aimed at lifting citizens' spirits in the midst of a recession and a bloody war against drug cartels. Even as crews tested hundreds of lights in Mexico City's main Zocalo Plaza on Tuesday, riot police and armored vehicles practiced crowd-control techniques because of worries that cartels might stage an attack during the festivities. Two years ago, attackers hurled grenades during an Independence Day festival in the central city of Morelia, killing seven people and wounding 132. 'We're in bad shape, as far as violence goes ... but you can't deny people a party if they want to celebrate something,' said Francisco Segura, 52, a building contractor." (09/15/10)

This news story gives us an opportunity to reflect back on the past and present conditions in Mexico. As I’ve mentioned before, borders - whether between two totally separate polities (“national”) or between two associated polities (“states of the Union” for example) are MORE than just imaginary lines on the ground and pretty lines on maps: they are REAL in the minds and actions of people, AND in the differences between the two sides of the border. Nowhere in my personal experience has that been more visible than on the Inter-German Border (IGB) between the Ostzone (East Germany) and the Bundesrepublik Deutschland in the mid 1980s, whether from the ground or especially from the air. But the border between the United States of America and the Estados Unitos Mexicanos (United Mexican States) is also very distinct: from the ground, from the air, and from the society and people. It was the first international border I crossed as a child, and even then, I saw the difference. Today that distinction is even clearer based on the way bullets fly and bombs shatter the night and the way bodies are found, day after day after day.
Why? It is clear in the history of the two nations - and of the states on both sides of the border. The land called Mexico today has a VERY long history - much of it has been “civilized” by the usual standards of historians and archaeologists since 1800 BC. By the standards of libertarians, most of it has NEVER been civilized: its history is one of bloody tyranny and repression and a constant trading of masters and varying degrees of slavery that make pre-1865 slavery in the United States look almost benign. Modern Mexico, like ancient Mexico, is a land and society and people which is VERY different - starkly contrasted - from the United States.
Unlike Anglo-French North America (that is, the part to the north of Mexico), Mexico does not have a history in which a dominant civilization came in and overwhelmed a number of various smaller (and weaker) civilizations and large barbarian areas; a dominant civilization (English-British) built on a painfully developed foundation of human freedom and liberty forged in centuries of conflict and migration and a series of fortuitous events. Rather, Mexico is the product of a clash and then merger of two civilizations that were themselves products of long cruelty and abuse and evils. The clash was initiated and “won” by a newly-merged Spanish civilization that had just emerged from 700 years of bloody tyranny by Islamic forces and a similar period of rebellion and warfare to overthrow that tyranny. In the process, that Spanish civilization had taken on many of the characteristics of its enemy. Facing it was perhaps the most evil and tyrannical empire known in mankind’s long and black history: the Azteca rule over central Mexico. Why do I make that claim? No other human “civilization” has been documented as having not just killed hundreds of thousands (or millions) of its enemies and subjects on the battlefield or in killing fields but by planned and carefully orchestrated mass-human sacrifices in their temples - and no other “civilization” has made a common practice of actually eating the dead bodies of its enemies and subjects. None that I am aware of. Ironically, this clash was initiated by what was essentially a private-enterprise (though officially approved by the crown) free-booting expedition. What they found was a tyranny and society that was even more evil, more perverse, more tyrannical than the Islamic system which they had finally driven off their home peninsula mere decades earlier; and they responded as they had been bred to do.
What developed, in Mexico and the rest of Meso- and South America, can be readily identified as the product of its antecedents: Iberian Islamic, Visigothic Iberian (Hispanic), and Aztec. Even in 2010.
Perhaps the difference between this Mexican civilization and Anglo-American civilization can best be illustrated by looking at this 200th Anniversary of Mexican “Independence.”
The United States celebrates its Independence Day on 4 July, the date of its Declaration of Independence. That incredible document was the product of many, many hours of work, deliberation, prayer, argument, and thought by a body of men which represented all of the thirteen British colonies that formed the original United States, meeting in the most populous and important city in those colonies. Contrast that to the Independence Day of Mexico, which celebrates 16 September, the day that a lone priest (Miguel Hidalgo) in a small and unimportant town (Dolores, Guanajuato) and about 300 of his followers proclaimed rebellion against a French-installed (and therefore technically usurping) Spanish monarchy in support of the deposed Spanish king, and then led an “army” (mob) on a months-long killing spree, failed to conquer Mexico City, and was defeated. Hidalgo was ultimately betrayed and captured on 21 March 1811 and executed on 30 July 1811. It was not until 06 November 1813 - more than two years later - that a Congress was assembled in Chilpancingo and wrote and signed the "Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America" that was followed by six years of war before Spain recognized their independence as the “Mexican Empire” - complete with an emperor. So much for freedom and liberty.
There is NOTHING comparable to this in the history of the United States. NOTHING. It is as though we claimed Independence Day as celebrating the day that Nathaniel Bacon began his Rebellion in Virginia in 1676, or perhaps the 5th of March (the day in 1770 when some Boston citizens attacked British troops and triggered the Boston Massacre), or maybe 16 December (the Boston Tea Party in 1773). But only if Samuel Adams had been a dissolute, immoral, Church of England priest who then led a mob of crazed killers in an attempt to occupy New York and Philadelphia in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie as rightful king of Britain. And only if eight years of war had led to the Treaty of Paris in which the UK recognized American independence and George Washington then declared himself Emperor of United America.
We may, as Americans, decry the many, many mistakes that these United States made, up to the most recent abrogation of our Constitution - mistakes which many of us believe include replacing the Articles of Confederation with that Constitution, the “imperialism” of the Mexican-American War, Abe Lincoln’s Republican (Socialist)-led tyranny and its catastrophic fallout, the nanny-state progressive imperialism of Wilson and Roosevelt, and all the rest. But when we compare American history to the series of catastrophes and evils that make up Mexican history since 1810, it is light contrasted to utter blackness.
Mexico was built on class warfare between the pure Indio (the survivors of centuries of Aztec and Olmec imperialism), the mixed-blood Mestizos, and the relatively pure European descendents, and on religious-political conflicts. Its first empire lasted only two years, followed by the 1824 republic which quickly deteriorated into a military dictatorship (Santa Ana’s) (and led to independence movements in Texas, the Yucatan, and on the Rio Grande). That was followed by the war with the United States and a new attempt to establish a republic, a military occupation by France (and the Second Empire), another republic deteriorating into a dictatorship (Porfirio Diaz), followed by another revolution and another republic (Constitution of 1917), which slid into a one-party “republican” state for more than 70 years. This is a pattern followed by most Hispanic societies and rooted in the 700 years of the Reconquista struggle against Islam in Iberia itself. Only for a brief period of time (from perhaps 2000 to 2006) was there even a shadow of the political life and relative lack of tyranny enjoyed by the United States; then the current troubles began which by 2010 have deteriorated into yet another war: call it “revolution” or “civil war” or “narco-war” as you will. Mexican condemnation of American “imperialism” in annexing California and New Mexico in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase in 1853) is hypocritical at best, given its several attempts to reconquer Texas, its annexation of Chiapas in 1824, the Soconusco Annexation in 1842, and the Annexation of the Republic of Yucatan in 1848, to say nothing of Mexico’s Indian Wars, which lasted until 1830. At best, Mexico’s imperialism has been less successful than the United States, but no less fervent.
I have many friends and even relatives that are of Hispanic and Mexican descent - virtually NONE of them would ever want to live in Mexico or “enjoy” Mexican (or Hispanic) culture and society and politics. Some of my ancestors were Mexican citizens (in Texas) - others of my ancestors “enjoyed” the attention of the Ejercito Mexicanos (Mexican Army) and Federales for a long time - and the Spanish army and militias for centuries. It was not pleasant, even when compared to having to deal with the US Army for a few decades of the 1800s. Sadly, for 200 years, Mexican celebration of Independence Day has been as great a bitter farce as Independence Day threatens to become in the United States in 2010. At the same time, we should be grateful for object lesson so clearly displayed just on the other side of that “imaginary line” called the border.

Shrove Tuesday

Terrible Tax Tuesday (Shrove or Pancake Tuesday)
Ah yes, welcome to the end of Carnival (Goodbye to Meat; Latin carnem levare, meaning "to take away the flesh"), Shrove Tuesday. For modern lovers of liberty, this day and its history has a lot of meaning. Originally, saying goodbye to meats, fats (hence, French "Mardi Gras" or "Fat Tuesday); was a fact of life: in ancient and medieval times, you finished eating the last of the fresh produce (meat-includinig fats, vegetables, sugar, fruit, etc.) from the last Harvest: in a pre-freezer/refrigeration society, and even before the invention of modern home-canning, that day came inevitably, and you were reduced to the preserved stuff. You had to make sure that you didn't eat eggs that needed to be next season's chickens; that you had enough left to provide the next generations of animals and protein for the spring planting (and wartime) before the new litters were big enough to be able to eat. You had to eat everything up before it went bad: it was better to store as fat in your body than as something moulding and stinking in the root cellar. As it so often did, the medieval (Roman Catholic) church made virtue out of necessity, and dictated that there was to be no consumption of meat, eggs, and sweets during the forty holy days leading up to the Spring festival of Easter; which became Lent. So the three days before the official beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday) and its contemplation and fasting was supposed to be a period of preparing yourself for the Lenten feast: clean out the house, use up the last of the prohibited foods (the last slices of meat were traditionally eaten on Collop (Slice or Chop) Monday (Rosenmontag) and the fat saved until Tuesday to cook pancakes in), and go see the priest to shrive yourself: hence the English term "Shrove Tuesday" (Also known as Pancake Tuesday, to use the last of the jams and preserves and fat and eggs.)

The clearing out of the foods became (especially for the upper classes, who didn't have to worry as much about starving to death in the next six weeks before the winter wheat and other crops came available and the litters started dropping) an excuse for feasting - and feasting of course means parties. The shriving on Tuesday evening was an excuse to go out and be quite debauched - since the priest would be told everything and "forgive" everything shortly, and you entered the holy season in a state of grace. But. Three days of partying was too much for the medieval and Middle Ages Catholic Church and Carnival was reduced to just one day (officially - by the way, don't tell the Germans). So people partied harder, just shorter, and the Age of Reason gave an excuse to forget the shriving (and any associated repentence, penance, or restitution). When the tradition was carried from France, Portugal, and other European climes to the Americas, it became more, shall we say, intense or concentrated, and today, we have the BIG parties in N'Orleans and Rio-de, and the smaller parties all over the place: excuses for wholesale debauchery and lewdness and all that even Paris or Lisboa would have shunned. A virtue turned on the wheels of if and became a vice - actually, a whole collection of vices.

In the same way, all the virtues of the Republic, here as we enter into an accelerated decline, have spawned vices. As if we know we are entering the Lenten season of the second American civilization, we gorge ourselves to excess, bloated deficits and cataclysmic spending; expansion of military actions and occupations; expanding of government size and "duties" and privileges; fresh and new and huge crops of enemies - usually barbarians - internal and external. The emperor (or First Citizen) parades in his new clothes; the whores of L Street occupy their corners and push out into the street, stopping the traffic; the sluts of the legislative branches invite more and more lovers into bed with them and try to outdo their sisters with more and more obscene tricks. Almost totally oblivious to the fact that tomorrow is Ash Wednesday; when not just repentence but penance and punishment come due: the "Little Judgment" is upon us, however unaware we are of its coming.

It is ironic, and fitting, that all these days of commemoration, days of remembrance, all fall together this year: Lincoln's Birthday, the Iranian Islamic Revolution, St. Valentine's Day, Lunar New Year, President's Day, Collop Monday and Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. Some predict the end of the "world as we know it," in two and a half-years time, more or less; but the signs of the coming doom are there for us to read. Too many of us are too drunk (or too hungover) to make it to the chapel at midnight and get that cross of ashes marked on our forehead, too blind and too distracted to stop and confess and repent and turn away from the evil of our days; too submersed in the filth of a spiritual and political Bourbon Street to recognize our danger. The meat and fat and sugar and eggs and fresh fruits and vegetables that were laid down in the early days of the Republic, paid for by the blood of tyrants and patriots, has been eaten: the cupboard, the pantry, the cellar, and the silo are all empty - the time of self-denial returns instead to its earlier pagan incarnation as the time of starving and fear and evil expectation: the joy of looking forward to the Eternal's resurrection is not there; because our society's, our civilization's faith is dust. Groundhog or not, shadow or not, the days of winter lay long and heavy before us: and no ordinary political or social or physical winter. No, a fimbulwinter, perhaps, an ice-age winter and spring and summer; a nuclear-winter.

Is there any hope? As the Lord told Elijah (I Kings 19:18) - "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him." Even in these days of the First Citizen's Carnival, a circus the like of which has not been seen since Nero Caesar, there are still those people who have not bowed the knee, who will still stand for liberty and our rights as God's children: the heirs of Hebrews and Greeks and Romans and Schweitz and Englishmen and Americans who will keep that heritage. I hope that you and I are among that number: who will wear the ash humbly, repenting and making restitution for what we have and for what we look forward to. As for the rest, well, let me quote Sam Adams: "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down
and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society

The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society

WHAT IS COMING?
Today (Tuesday morning), two friends sent me an article I've seen before, a "Firearms Refresher Course" that starts out by quoting George Washington ("A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."). It gets more "radical" from there.

It was interesting that these two should send this to me today. Yesterday, two of the transnational progressive web-magazines (Amped Status and AlterNet) published an article called "15 Signs American Society is Coming Apart at the Seams." (AlterNet and the full report is at Amped Status.)

Reason #14 was that ammunition and gun companies are making billions of dollars and cannot keep up with the demand for weapons and ammunition - "Americans are arming themselves to the teeth!"

Reason #15 was that it is claimed by the august Southern Poverty Law Center that more than 100 NEW militia groups have been formed while the total number of militia members has doubled in the past year. Since millions of us are starving and have no health care and no jobs and no future (according to them), all that is needed is a spark for the nation to be flooded with violence!

The logic of David DeGraw is that the "economic elite" are waging war against the American public, the environment has been destroyed by these elite, current government measures are ineffectual and inadequate and causing still more harm, and we are all gonna die (quickly, in this vast "worldwide" and "national" emergency) unless "the people" does something to retaliate against these "economic elite" and the government that is supporting the "coup." To DeGraw and the progressives he claims to speak for, the First Citizen is nothing but a shill for the "economic elite" and the rest of the Administration and Congress are all tools or members.

Now, this may all sound very anti-statist, and despite the irrational nature of many of the arguments (in the same paragraph we are told that 50% of ALL American children are short of food and have to have government food stamps, and then a few lines later the statistic of 1 in 4 is cited; health insurance is equated with "healthcare;" and such things fill the article), this will find a ready audience among many libertarians, especially "left-libertarians."

But in reality, this is nothing more than the same "anti-statis" rhetoric that has been the stock-in-trade for the bogus ("black-flag") anarchists and the socialists (whether Communists, National Socialists/Fascists/Peronistas/Falangists/etc., the "Christian Socialists" or today's Transnational Progressives) from the beginning. The "CURRENT" State is evil and corrupt and destroying us all, and worse, the current state is allowing the great unwashed masses to be destroyed and at the same time, forcing the populace into a massive (and always unsuccessful) popular uprising. They will be destroyed and the revolt will fail, of course, unless the populace accepts and follows the lead of the elite vanguard provided through sheer altruism by the... by the Progressives which include (strange how this works) some of the very elites and their proclaimed doctrines of salvation that are waging the war in the first place!

THEIR state, of course, will be "darned near-perfect" (to quote a friend) and won't have any of the faults of the current regime: everyone will be fed and have all the medical care and all the jobs and all the education that they need, and everyone will contribute to their maximum ability, and we'll all cut greenhouse gas emissions back to 1900 levels and the grass will be green and the rivers will flow and... ultimately, of course, when all the problems are solved (permanently), the state will wither away to be replaced by (take your pick based on the kind of socialism being highlighted - but some form of the Millenium).

We can't buy into it: this is what the demagogues of Athens and Corinth and Rome and Byzantium all promised; this is what the Levellers (and those who preached the Crusades) proclaimed; this is what those who urged on Wat Tyler and his peasants whispered; what the revolutionaries in the Tuileries fervently believed in 1789 and 1791 and 1848 and 1871; what the rabid Abolutionists in Bleeding Kansas and Harpers Ferry preached; what the Bolsheviks in Petrograd announced; what the Brownshirts in Muenchen and Firenza and Madrid and Buenos Aires marched to support; and the tune that the Red Guard and the Ba'athists and Jim Jones and the Khmer Rouge spilled blood to. Indeed, those who "made" Aaron cast the golden calf, the Caliphs that followed the husband of the widow - and no doubt the first Pharaohs of Kemet (Egypt) - spouted this same line. Self-proclaimed human messiahs are not interested in seeing the state wither away or even be violently put down; they work only for a new state in which THEY call the shots - in some cases, CONTINUE to call the shots, and in which the other 99% of humanity are little more than cattle or (at best) favored pets.

God did not make us to be pets - nor cattle. We cannot let ourselves be seduced into either embracing the man on a white horse or the self-appointed vangaard of the masses - we have to be free and independent and answer to God for our own actions. Otherwise, we have never truly lived.

South Dakota - Declaration of Sovereignty Mark I

I am printing this in its entirety: South Dakota has taken a first (albeit very small and faltering) step back to real freedom. It may not succeed but I pray that it does.

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 1013
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Reasserting sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers and serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates.
WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."; and
WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more and the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and
WHEREAS, today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government and many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and
WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and
WHEREAS, any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America, or Judicial Order by the judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of the United States of America by the Constitution of the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of any of the several states or their citizens constitutes a nullification of the Constitution of the United States of America by the government of the United States of America; and
WHEREAS, a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fourth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the State of South Dakota hereby reasserts sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that this concurrent resolution serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

Adopted by the House 3 MAR 09, Sustained by the Senate 5 MAR 09. (Note: governor's signature is not required.)

South Dakota is not alone: http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/02/23/state-sovereignty-resolutions/

Why the Mainstream Media is dying out

I am far from alone in bashing the old-style mainstream media (MSM) for their behavior - as indeed the continuing bankruptcy and even disappearance of a lot of them (the Rocky Mountain News, San Francisco Examiner, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, etc.) demonstrates. This Sunday is a perfect example of that. It was not a really busy newsday for a Sunday: that merchant captain made another, successful escape attempt from his pirate captors and three pirates got the justice they deserved; three children were shot execution-style in Louisiana; massive riots in Thailand caused the ASEAN meeting to be cancelled; the Zimbabwe dollar is officially toast; Mexico is officially blaming the USA for its druglords being so well armed; and more - yeah, the Obamas went to church today for the first time in months. The Washington Post - that flagship of the liberal, Tranzi, bleeding press - has a special E-mail alert service that you can sign up for to get important news fast. News like the airliner that went into the river in NYC, like Daschle withdrawing his name for HHS secretary, like the pitiful excuse for human trash that shot up an ICE center in NY. You get the picture. If I'd expected anything on their e-alert today, it would have been that Captain Phillips saved the First Citizen's political bacon by making a successful escape attempt there in the Indian Ocean. But no, of course that is not what the publishers who believe that "free flow of information is essential to a successful democracy" chose to fill my in-box with. No, THAT privilege of place was the flash announcement that Mr Obama had "fulfilled a campaign pledge" to give his daughters a puppy. Now, THAT is "essential" to successful democracy, indeed. And the old media wonders just why it is being flushed down the toilet and we are finding other things to line our birdcages with!

Democracy

"Democracy, n.:
- A government of the masses.
- Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of
direct expression.
- Results in mobocracy.
- Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights.
- Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice,
and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
- Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, [chaos]."
-- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25
(1928-1932)
Source: published by the US War Department, Washington, D.C., November 30, 1928
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/U..S..Army.Training.Manual.No..2000-25.Quote.7CCA

Last week, 04 NOV 2008, we practiced "democracy." The Electoral College worked the way it was supposed to, making a fairly close victory (52% to 46%) into a clear "mandate." Of course, only 119 million people voted, out of a total population of 300 million, of which at least 200 million (and probably closer to 240 million) are eligible by age, lack of felony convictions, lack of proven insanity or feeblemindedness, and residence in one place long enough to register and vote. So even with the low number, Mr. Obama is the "choice" of less than a third of the qualified electors: no much of a "mandate."

But more to the point, Electoral College or not, one man-one vote or not, is WHAT we were electing: is it a government administrator; a chief executive? Or is it a monarch? Even dictators can and are elected by popular vote: consider Hitler, Mussolini, and Peron. (Or if you dare, consider Lincoln and Roosevelt and Bush II.) Do we, by the mere act of voting once in four years (twice if you count the primaries), surrender our destinies, our daily choices, to a single man - even if that man is sharing the power to some degree with 535 people in Congress and 9 in the Supreme Court? It appears, too often, that is what we think - or at least, that is how we act.

Whether through the Electoral College or not, the modern American presidential election process claims to be, and appears to be, a "form of direct expression" of the will of the American people.

It is a will I challenge, a process I deplore - not because it is not a good idea to decide peacefully who will be a coordinator, a facilitator, or a organizer, but because NO ONE has the God-given power to determine what I and any other of the 300 million of us can do in our lives, and NO ONE should be given that power through ANY method.

P J O'Rourke has accurately described democracy as "two wolves and a lamb sitting down to vote on what's for dinner." Democracy, sooner or later, comes to the point where it reverses the ancient motto, "Vox populi, vox Dei" (the voice of the people is the voice of God; that is, people will speak in accordance with God's will, or to put it another way "Under God, the people rule") to where the people claim to have BECOME God and believe that EVERYTHING is subject to majority rule vote. It is evil, and more insidiously evil than most, because it sounds so good on the surface.

We will suffer through eight more years of "democracy:" we already have the demogogism, the license, and the agitation; the true discontent and chaos (not anarchy, but chaos) will be here soon enough.

Self-Destruction of a Nation

This news story was published recently in one of England's major papers.

UK: Jury decides that threat of global warming justifies breaking the law
Independent [UK]

“The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage. Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a ‘lawful excuse’ to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of ‘lawful excuse’ under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage — such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire. The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain’s green agenda and could encourage further direct action.” (09/10/08)

I am moderately familiar with Kent and the Maidstone area, having flown in and out of Kent on my last visit to the United Kingdom. It is a pleasant land, lush and green and densely populated (at least by Western standards), but increasingly, it is filled with evil people. Not viciously evil, mind you, but mundanely evil and lacking in thought. I don't know if these Greenpeace activists were local Kentish types, or if they came from elsewhere to do their damage. But clearly, the good burghers of Kent, or at least those sitting on this jury, agree with them.

The particular evil involved here has several elements:
First, there is environism. For all intents, modern "environmentalism" has become a religion with very little reason or rational mental processes involved: thus the "mental" is removed. A particularly large cult within the general "environist" religion is the Global Warming crowd, which these people firmly believe in.
Second, there is a general streak of Luddite belief and practice here. These people presumably live in houses or flats with electricity, running water, and flush toilets. They presumably drive or walk or ride at night. They also work (those that DO work) for the most part in places in which the owners or managers would not be able to employ them without benefit of electricity and all the work it does, including pumping the water (Kent isn't as flat as Kansas, but certainly is flatter than most American states) and treating the waste water that they use and generate. Yet they are willing to destroy one of the plants that provides this basic necessity of life. Luddites are, I am convinced, related to the grasshopper of Aesop's fable.
Third, there is (in addition to the environist lack of intelligence) a general lack of intelligence exhibited both by the vandals and the court (specifically the jury). Even IF shutting down the Kingsnorth power station would prevent an imaginary threat (global warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse glasses) from coming about, a mere thirty-five thousand pounds sterling of damage is hardly going to shut down such a station for more than a few days. Not only that, but if the wrongdoing is so minor relative to the "needed" action to stop the "greater harm," the applicability of the Criminal Damage Act is questionable at best.

Regardless of the evil demonstrated by the act and the acquittal, this opens a door - a barn door, even a hanger door, for more mischief, more evil, more destruction, more insanity. A court has determined that global warming is a threat which justified £35,000 of vandalism in one location in one county. Now, thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of Greenpeace terrorists and their ilk have a blank check to ravage the infrastructure of England, if indeed not the entire United Kingdom. It applies not just to power stations, but to ANY source of carbon dioxide or some other greenhouse gas: such as cows (methane-generators; methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2), automobiles, motor coaches (buses to Yankees), various factories, and even the Houses of Parliament, which main product is the hot air of its Members, chock full of carbon dioxide. Yes, in that I am being rather silly, but much of the rest is now fair game for vandals - and there will no doubt be an amazing number of pyros, arsonists, and yobs who are suddenly converted to militant Greenpeace-ism if they are caught by the peelers.

It will spread, no doubt, just as the Saxons and Angles and Jutes who invaded Britannia through Kent spread to destroy the ancient Celtic-Roman civilization. And with this sort of tacit approval of the vandals, modern British civilization is doomed.

E-mail scam spam!

Having fun.

Well, lookee here! I just got this wonderful opportunity in my e-mail (actually, in my spam drawer). I'd ask you to share in the "booty" with me, as well, if you are really interested, but...

It looks almost real. On a whim, I googled Andy Burnham, MP, and found out, lo and behold, that he is a REAL person! And even a REAL Labor MP in the UK. Your usual Nigerian scam letter is from some wrong-side-of-the blanket by-blow of some African general or president who isn't even a real person, or some made-up ex-colonial bureaucrat going on about mysterious plane crashes and secret diamond deals from fake mines in Angola. But EPE (UK) Ltd is a real company, and they really do specialize in filtration products; they are located in northern Wales and a a subsidiary of a German firm headquartered in Ketsch, a few miles southwest of Heidelberg. Mr Burnham is 38, an up-and-coming young star in the Labour Party and really is in High Chancellor Gordon Brown's cabinet. And being a Labor MP, he is probably crooked enough to have done an under-the-table deal like that with his bent counterparts in Moscow!

Of course, like almost all Nigerian scam letters, this one doesn't quite live up to the standards necessary for a really good scam. It is easy enough (at least for the select audience I'm sending this to, but sadly NOT to the general American public, especially many under the age of 30 or so) to see that the grammar is not up to the standards of a graduate of Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge, even if he HAS been a Labourite since age 14 and a good trades union member. And while Mr. Burnham was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (though with no background in economics or finance; I don't know what he read at Cambridge), until 24 JAN 2008, he is now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, a vastly more important job which indicates that he is being groomed for bigger things in the Labour party. The letter is almost two months out of date.

Much as I would LOVE to turn this over to the local Leigh constituency branch of the British libertarian party, or even the Tory or Social Democrat-Liberal branch to use as ammo to attack the most likely corrupt "Honorable" Burnham, MP, it probably is obvious even to the average Leigh voter that this is bogus.

Now, my point. If we can see this as the fraud it is, why on EARTH do we allow politicians to constantly defraud us on similar "share-the-wealth" schemes like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, oil-company taxation, $700 billion "investment schemes" and such like? Mr. Burnham most likely is NOT the author of this pathetic little scam spam, but based on his career and his associations, he is probably party to far bigger swindles than the mere 14 million GBP supposedly involved in this; like the vast increase in NHS funding which has been so touted by both the Blair and Brown Labourite governments and which has led to longer waiting lines than ever for basic medical care in the UK.

I will bet that if I were incredibly stupid and wrote back to "Burnham" I could not get him to give me any references or testimonials as to the 1.7 million he is offering to share. But every day, I read glowing reports in the newspapers and hear much the same on radio about how wonderful single-payer health care (like Britain's NHS or Canada's) is so wonderful and needed in the USA, and how the politicians in Congress and the Legislatures and the Administration are going to solve all our problems and make us all wealthy and healthy and happy... It doesn't make what the politicians are promising today in the USA any less a scam than what "Burnham" is offering in this e-mail. Much of government today is nothing more than a more carefully crafted and more successful Nigerian scam, Ponzi scheme, or pyramid scam. And I hope we can not forget it, and help other people to see that is the case, as well.

The original scam e-mail:


Dear Friend,

I am The Rt Hon. Andy Burnham MP, (Chief Secretary to The Treasury UK) I was a member of a committee that Brokered a deal between EPE (UK) Ltd, an oil Filtration Company that executed an oil filtration contract for the Russian Government during the regime of Tony Blair who just stepped down for Gordon Brown our New Prime Minister. We the committee members had an Over invoiced amount of £14,000,000.00 which we Had kept aside for ourselves but could not share Immediately. The Change of the office of the prime Minister has presented an opportunity for us to share The money amongst ourselves hence my contacting you.

My share of the booty is (£1.750,000.00) One Million seven hundred and fifty thousand GBP. Due to my Position as an MP in UK here. I can not invest the Money here or have a foreign account hence I am Seeking a reliable person who will receive this money on my behalf for investment purposes. The money was Deposited in a non investment holding account with a Bank here in UK.

I am sincerely seeking your assistance to receive this Amount. Please if you can assist in investing this Fund in any good investment in your country or any Country of your Choice. If you agree to Help, you will be entitled to 10% of the total amount While we will agree on your commission on the Investment later. If you are willing to assist, get back to me with Your Full Name, Address and contact details.

The Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP

Augustine on government

Taken from "The City of God" Book IV, Chapter IV:

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor."

Augustine here talks about a situation which libertarians today recognize, a principle which IS taught in Scripture: that morality is defined neither by numbers (democracy) nor by power (all the various forms of tyranny): it is defined by God. It is just as wrong, just as evil, just as sinful for ONE man to use the threat of force to steal a penny from you as it is a band or community of 100, 1000, 10,000 or 300 million. And the other way around.

What Augustine did NOT elaborate on is that there IS no justice in great nations or kingdoms, or even in lesser ones: there is pretense of justice but only God is just. Men who employ force to impose their will on others are by definition, unjust.

HOPE? (intro)

Is there hope for freedom, for liberty, anywhere in the world in this year of Grace 2007?

Do we have anything to tell us that we CAN enjoy the freedom that is our heritage?

A plug, a plug

A plug, a plug: although Mama Liberty ( www.thepriceofliberty.org ) just published the article last week about JPFO’s “Goody Guns” I had already ordered several sets, some to use and some for gifts (great Thanksgiving or Christmas gifts).

A pair came in on Friday, and the first batch of cookies baked Saturday (using JPFO’s kosher recipe) went over very well, especially among the younger set) at the monthly congregational pot-luck this (Sunday) afternoon. We didn’t bring any home, and the recipe was almost shortbread tasting, in the thicker version we used. (Too thin breaks such large cookies too easily.) Debby and I intend to use them as one of the “standard” refreshments for training classes that we do, and for meetings of such things as Character Council, Local Emergency Planning Committees, and such. And I’m waiting for the revolver version. We are looking at making Jello (TM) versions, also.

Whatever we make from them, the purpose shouldn't be forgotten: to make sure that people understand that guns are an important part of American life, not something evil as airports, schools, and courthouses want to make them out to be. Goody guns are perfect for teaching children safe gunhandling (my sons were doing that to the kids at the pot-luck) but they also are great conversation starters: especially if you are wearing an empty or full holster.

Which brings me to my second plug of the week: Starting today, Sunday, 21 OCT 2007, a lot of folks are participating in "Empty Holster Week" on college campuses around the US, reminding people that tragedies like the Virginia Tech killings aren't caused by a lack of laws prohibiting guns on campuses, or trying to make sure that mentally ill people can't buy or steal guns; they are caused by a lack of people able to defend themselves and their classmates, students, friends, and even neighbors in "gun-free zones" like so many college campuses are today.

I personally don't expect to be on a college campus this week but am going to wear an empty holster, anyway, to support those students and teachers and staff who ARE on college campuses doing this. I hope that you will join me. It is an important cause. I am, of course, going to continue to carry: I normally carry concealed, but for those who openly carry - this week, wear an extra holster, okay? And it is a great opportunity to spread the messages:

1. A free society is an armed society.
2. An armed society is a polite society.
3. Being armed to defend yourself and others against aggression is living the Golden Rule.
4. Not all people that carry guns are either police OR evil-doers.

And many more.

W

Mark Twain's War Prayer (1898)

I first read this many years ago, in an old collection of Twain's writings, and later saw it as a small book, published during the era of the Vietnam war. Written as a criticism of American aggression against Spain in 1898 (the Spanish-American War), this poem still stands as an excellent condemnation of militarism. It should serve as a warning to christian and non-christian alike, but especially to those who know that prayer is indeed answered by God.


The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms,
the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the
drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched
firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding
and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags
flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue
gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters
and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they
swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot
oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they
interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears
running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached
devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His
aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every
listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that
ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness
straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal
safety's
sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came - next day the battalions would leave for the front;
the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with
material dreams-visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the
rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult,
the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! - then home
from the war, bronzed heros, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas
of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and
envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send
forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die
the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from
the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed
by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house
rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous
invocation - "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy
clarion and lightning thy sword!"

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for
passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its
supplication was that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all
would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage
them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty hand,
make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them
to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable
honor and glory.

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the
main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in
a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending
in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale,
pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he
made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side
and stood there, waiting.

With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his
moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent
appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and
Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside - which the
startled minister did - and took his place. During some moments he
surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an
uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

"I come from the Throne - bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words
smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no
attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant
it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained
to you its import - that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto
many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it
is aware of - except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken
thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two - one uttered, the other not.
Both have reached the ear of Him Who hearth all supplications, the spoken
and the unspoken. Ponder this - keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing
upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a
neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your
crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon
some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer - the uttered part of it. I am
commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it - that part
which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently.
And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard
these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient.
The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words.
Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you

have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory - must
follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God
the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me
to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth
to battle - be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth
from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord
our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their

patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks

of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble

homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their

unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out
roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of
their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun
flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn
with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it
- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their
lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water

their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their

wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source

of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore

beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause)

"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak!
The messenger of the Most High waits."

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic,
because there was no sense in what he said.

Good article series starting

Over at the Gospel Sower blog (http://www.gospelsower.blogspot.com/) is the first in a series of articles on Islam. While the first one is looking at Islam from a christian's viewpoint, the next in the series will be viewing Islam from a libertarian viewpoint, and then from a viewpoint of a defender of Western Civilization. Others may follow.

Feel free to visit and comment here or there!

Minarchist, Anarchist or other? Part II (Draft)

In part one, I looked at why the "congregational" model of government as practiced by many christian and jewish congregations is neither minarchist, anarchist, or statist, and why this model has been successful for several millenia. Unlike "human government," this model is non-coercive. Let's look at the various points in more detail:
* Voluntary in nature – adults (those who are able to believe and act on their own) volunteering to participate, and remain in association with each other. Generally, since Pentecost, or in the case of Judaism, since AD70 (the Fall of Jerusalem), there has been no legitimate force used in any church or synogogue. God Himself does not command or execute any sort of immediate punishment on those who fail to act as He has commanded - judgment and punishment is reserved for Judgment Day. If a person fails to voluntarily abide by the norms of the community (congregation), the closest thing to coercion allowed is a withdrawal of fellowship (see below) - arguably only a confirmation of something the person themselves has done by refusing to cooperate. Even for those who are supported (financially, physically) so that they can work more on behalf of the congregation do so voluntarily, and cannot be constrained by any action of the congregation to be forced to work. Most important, there is no legitimate force or "automatic" enrollment in this body - the Bible teaches that even though circumcision (for Jews) is done to an infant to mark them as one of the community, they cannot truly participate in the community until they are old enough to decide for themselves (the ritual of bar mitzvah, as I understand it). In christian communities, although some would practice infant baptism, it is clear in the New Testament that belief is essential - which is exactly why those groups that practice infant baptism (not found in the Bible, by the way) have some sort of confirmation of that faith later in life. You are not automatically under the control of some "government" merely by accident of birth or residence or ancestry.

* Organized – as a body, functions are given out and accepted voluntarily, but they are specific in nature, not open-ended nor amorphous. Virtually all human governments are characterized by very vague limits on power and function of offices, agencies etc. This is either "de jure" (such as the British "constitution" which is vague or nonexistant) or "de facto" (such as the American constitution which is very specific but ignored in practice). (Tribal governments and that of most kingdoms are even more loosy-goosy: whatever the market will bear.) In contrast, both rabbinical tradition and the New Testament identify the various organizational elements clearly, and the duties are specific (even if often ignored).

* Leadership is local, collective, limited in power, voluntary, and must meet certain agreed-upon qualifications. This is perhaps the most critical, and apparently the most difficult part of the congregational model. There is no "one-man rule" and there is no wide area of "control:" the elders or directors or shepherds are always plural and responsible for the "flock" in which they themselves are. There are no provinces, colonies, or empires. The other elements have been discussed already, except for the qualifications. Most human government deals with essentially unimportant "qualifications" - age, place of birth, heredity, percentage of votes, etc. The congregational model identifies those personal traits which make for effective and trustworthy leaders: honesty, reputation, fidelity, etc. And they are expected to uphold a certain standard of conduct at least as strict as those they are leading are to follow.

* Power is limited, especially the power of punishment – anything more than withdrawing from the offender (refusing to allow the offender to continue to associate and benefit from the organization) does not exist. As discussed above, there is really only one punishment found in the congregational model. All other power is similarly limited: there is no corporal punishment to force someone to follow the leaders, no loss of freedom to avenge some wrong action. And as pointed out, no one can be forced to join or remain. This is stated again in the next aspect: No use of aggressive force – the members cannot be forced to do anything; persuasion is the only way of obtaining cooperation and participation.

* Justice in resolution of conflicts and righting of wrongs done is by consent – and limited to restitution, not punishment. This is one of the major areas in which "human government" has usurped the responsibilities of the historical congregational governments around the world, to the detriment of society and people individually. Justice, real justice, hinges on this: what was done which was wrong is made right, as much as possible. Failure to do so is "punished" only by those actions necessary to separate the unrepenting offender from other potential victims - not so much to punish them (that is God's sphere) but to protect the community from further harm. This is similar, perhaps, to the modern concept of "restorative justice" and to the ancient practice of "outlawing."

* The scale and scope is limited to a relatively small number of participants in a fairly small geographic area – from a few families and individuals to perhaps several thousand. There is, therefore, competition between the organizations for members, and mobility between organizations without requiring physical relocation. Obviously the limited power of the leaders and of the congregational government dictates this, but this is also important from the point of view of individual liberty: competition in this, as in all other parts of social life, is generally good (although it can get carried away) - for it provides freedom of choice. With a congregational government essentially operating by concensus, it is essential that people are able to move from one to another, or even to organize their own congregation free and independent from any other. Therefore, by necessity, the groups tend to be somewhat small, and thus limited in power - and less likely to be able to effectively become aggressors and build "empires."

However well this model might work, we do have to remember that humans seldom function ideally, and even this limited organization will (and has) become corrupt and stopped following the model. This happened in ancient Israel, when the people demanded a king, "like the nations around us." It happened in Reformation Geneva, and in Pilgrim Massachusetts, and we can see examples in many churches and synogogues today and in very recent history. But the very nature of the model reduces the impacts of such departures, as we shall discuss in the next installment.

Minarchist, Anarchist, or Other? Part I

"The current LP membership pledge does not allow for limited government," writes Dr. Carl Milsted (see link). "Some initiation of force is required for a government to do its job. Some taxation is necessary."

So states Tom Knapp in his excellent article “Yes we have no banarchists” in http://knappster.blogspot.com/2006/02/yes-we-have-no-bananarchists.html.

Well, here is one Libertarian who is also a libertarian who says that Dr. Carl is wrong – and might even argue with Tom about his conclusions (not that THAT has ever happened before, you know).

Now, we are supposedly known by the company we keep, and I admit to keeping some pretty bad company in the form of a whole bunch of anarcho-capitalists (I know, don’t you just hate hyphenated terms, but the Black Flag anarchists have so tainted the name “anarchist” that you really have to specify) like Mama Liberty (www.thepriceofliberty.org) and Lady Liberty (www.ladylibrty.com) and all the rest of my fellow Knights of Non-Agression at www.lrt.org. Most folks probably figure I am an anarchist or anarcho-capitalist – and probably wouldn’t consider me a minarchist, based on my writings of the last four or five years (my word! One-tenth of my life!). Well, they’re wrong. And if they think I’m a minarchist, they are wrong, too.

HEY! Easy there! IF you care to look under the table, you’ll see I’ve already got this little Hi-Point shucked. Just move your hands away from the holsters, pardners, and keep reading. That’s better. No, you don’t need that rope, either, pure hemp or not. Easy, easy. Did I happen to mention that I'm a "small-mouthed" pacifist, also?

Anyway, as I was saying, I really don’t fit into either camp, and I tell-you-three-times I am NOT a statist or anything like that. The reason is tied up in that quote from Dr. Carl. He’s wrong: Neither taxation (please, let us stop with the mealy-mouthed words – neither THEFT) nor any other initiation of force (see “aggression”) are necessary for a government to exist and function. Not to say that 99% of all human governments don’t use one or both of those methods, but it is possible for such to exist, and in fact, they have existed, pretty much continuously, for about 2600 years. No large percentage, but enough to know that they CAN function. Today, there are probably about 10-20 million people (not many, out of 6.5 billion, I know) that spend at least part of their time in voluntary participation in such governments.

To cut to the chase, what I am talking about is the way that hundreds of thousands of congregations, Jewish and christian, have been organized since the Babylonian Captivity and the days of Peter and Paul. It is not quite unique to them, but by far their version is the most successful and best organized of such groups. (And I must point out that not all religious organizations, christian or otherwise, meet the standards and criteria I will discuss here.) There are several keys to their success, and to the reason that they are an apt model for non-coercive government:
* Voluntary in nature – adults (those who are able to believe and act on their own) volunteering to participate, and remain in association with each other.
* Organized – as a body, functions are given out and accepted voluntarily, but they are specific in nature, not open-ended nor amorphous.
* Leadership is local, collective, limited in power, voluntary, and must meet certain agreed-upon qualifications.
* Power is limited, especially the power of punishment – anything more than withdrawing from the offender (refusing to allow the offender to continue to associate and benefit from the organization) does not exist.
* No use of aggressive force – the members cannot be forced to do anything; persuasion is the only way of obtaining cooperation and participation.
* Justice in resolution of conflicts and righting of wrongs done is by consent – and limited to restitution, not punishment.
* The scale and scope is limited to a relatively small number of participants in a fairly small geographic area – from a few families and individuals to perhaps several thousand. There is, therefore, competition between the organizations for members, and mobility between organizations without requiring physical relocation.

(Continued in Part II)

Massa Says We Can Blog!

In the old days, you know, before "democracy" and all that, we had it pretty simple. A "wiring diagram" for 99% of us was pretty simple:
GOD (maybe)
KING
DUKE
COUNT
KNIGHT
PEASANT
US (SLAVE)

There was just one "massa" - yeah, he might have a boss, but as far as we were concerned, when that ol' farmer said jump, we asked how high, and didn't have to worry about what his boss (the knight) or HIS boss (the count) thought - that was way beyond our paygrade.

Even when we got all high-flautin' in this country, it wasn' much different, at least for slaves:

GOD
MASSA
BOSS (Straw boss or Overseer or Foreman)
US (SLAVE)

But in 21st Century America, for most o' us supposedly free descendents of freed slaves, liberated Indians, and paid-off indentured servants, we got mor' massa's than I knows what tae do wit' - we gots Special District massas, and Town or City massas, and County massas, and State massas, and Federal massas, and prolly NATO massas and UN massas, too. And it isn't just one at each level, or even one COMMITTEE at each level: at the County, the massas sit on the County Board of Commissioners, the County Planning and Zoning Board, the County Elections Board, the County Health Board, and the County Environment Board, to name just a few. It's worse at state and federal level. It's not that straight line but more like an inverted pyramid, with one poor guy at the bottom, holding that point, and what seems like half the rest of the world standing on the upside base.

One, mind you, just ONE of those multitudinous massas at Federal level, right here in the good ol' USA, is the Federal Elections Commission, or FEC, which is supposed to make sure that we all properly know how to, and do the right thing to elect a new massa every two or four years, especially the "massa of massas" with that mystic name of POTUS (President of the United States). Well, one of the things which has really been bothering the massas that sit on the FEC and make sure we all do all the elections right is to do with "exemptions" for media and bloggers from all those limits on such triffles as free speech, right to trial by jury, private property, free assembly, etc. (I'm sure that the hoploclasts [gun-haters] will soon come up with a way that the FEC can also weigh in on our right to defend ourselves - maybe by claiming that concealed guns can be intimidating to other voters.)

One of the BIG (read, can be used to raise lots of funds for those lobbying for or against it) issues before the FEC in recent months has been whether bloggers can say anything they want to about political ballot issues and candidates within a certain time, before elections. Those people of the ilk of Senatoads McCain and Feingold don't want people to be able to publish nasty things (or even good things) about incumbents and challengers that might influence an election (read, let the challenger win), and got the rest of their fellow id... Kongrus-kritters to pass it, and POTUS to sign it; and now it was being interpreted to applying to bloggers and little old ladies in tennis shoes writing letters and posting them on-line. I think part of the argument was that, like the radio and TV stations, we are using the "public media" (you know, airwaves, electrical power lines, phonelines which cross or are located on public rights-of-way, and therefore have to be monitored and regulated, lest we create a CRISIS or "take away someone's rights."

It was sounding pretty serious in there, for a while, but... Finally, the FEC has announced that the Internet can have, courtesy of their glorious wisdom and inate modesty and love of the common folk, FREE SPEECH. WithOUT any (undue) government regulation! Wow! Some of our massas have said that it is okay for us to talk about some of our other massas, provided we don't get carried away. (Folks, if you think I'm being sarcastic and rude in this blog, read Paul Jacob's article, but wear an ovenmitt.)

As Paul points out, this is like DoD making a public announcement that they've decided to continue NOT to make private homes provide troop billeting, or the Supreme Court announcing that trial-by-jury can continue (provided they judge only the facts and not the law, mind you). It is stupid, it is insulting, but it is apparently taken at face value by many if not most political commentators on both left and right as being a wonderful affirmation of the way our political and regulatory system works.

Garbage! This, like 99.5% of what comes out of DC (and for that matter, every state capital and the entire Beltway), is nothing more than a sickening affirmation of what slaves we have turned into, of what tyranny we have accepted, and of how brain-dead we have become in this nation. We are indeed a nation of too many "massas" but only because we have become a nation of slaves - unwilling or unable to do anything without first having permission granted by twenty different agencies, boards, and petty tyrants on a stack of paper that demands a forest to make and a landfill full to dispose of. Free speech, on the 'net or anywhere else, is one of those many freedoms that are honored in memory, but only exist when they are not an annoyance to one of the hundreds of thousands of "massas." Including this blog.

Commentary on News week of 1 OCT 05

Libertarian Commentary on the News 3-7 OCT 2005 as normally published in ThePriceofLiberty.org. With Mama Liberty in the middle of moving, this will be the location! (For my comments and response on "Smartest and Dumbest States" go down to the next posting!)

Our fourth week as a weekly newsletter and commentary. The views expressed herein are those of the author and don’t necessarily reflect anyone else’s opinion, whether affiliated with one of the news sources, the news digests, The Price of Liberty, the Libertarian Party or its affiliates. My purpose is to reflect a libertarian and christian point of view in all these matters, and to encourage you to think, plan, and react to the key events which are taking place in our world and nation today. If I step on your toes, it is because they are in the way!

This week, we’ll concentrate on some overseas matters, our right to defend ourselves, and follow-up to Katrina and Rita. Overall, the major news story this week has been the nomination of a White House aide to President Bush to replace Mrs. Justice O’Connor – and the firestorm of betrayal being produced by the conservatives who still thought that President Bush would do something to redeem his “conservative” credentials. None of us knew much about Miss Meirs last weekend, and we don’t know much more today: she may be more conservative than Janice Rogers Brown and Clarence Thomas and Barry Goldwater all combined, but somehow, I doubt it: the hope of the Supreme Court changing for the next two decades is probably gone.


Our Right to Defend Ourselves

Virginia: Judge rules defendant acted in self-defense
http://tinyurl.com/dj2nl
Richmond Times Dispatch
"A charge of murder against Donald Arman Terrien, who shot and killed Richard Jason Gooding on Aug. 14, was thrown out of court Thursday when the judge ruled Terrien acted in self-defense. Gooding, 31, was the ex-boyfriend of Terrien's girlfriend, Bess McAteer, 24. McAteer testified in Henrico County General District Court Thursday that she started to leave Terrien's house about 9 p.m. that Sunday evening. She had walked to her car parked in the street when Gooding drove up and confronted her, yelling. ... Terrien came out the front door with his pistol in hand, held at his side, and called out to her, asking what was going on. He stepped down to the bottom of the steps from the small porch. She said she remembers Gooding saying: 'A gun? You've got to be kidding me,' and that he would 'kick his ass,' referring to Terrien. She said she called to Terrien to go back inside and call 911. She said Gooding ran to the house's front steps and attacked Terrien, who had turned to go inside, from behind. The exact sequence of events was not clear from testimony, but during the struggle with Gooding, Terrien fired two shots from his Sig Sauer 9 mm handgun. The first was into the air, holding the gun at arm's length, McAteer said. The second shot was the one that killed Gooding. It was fired 'dead center in his chest.'" (10/01/05)
A domestic dispute turned bad, but apparently a clear case of self-defense. There may have been enough questions to justify it taking 6 weeks to resolve this, but that is still a bad idea.

Airport hassles spur rise of private flights
http://tinyurl.com/8tc5o
Boston Globe
"Lionel Andre recently found a new way to deal with the hassle of big airports and big airlines, namely, avoid them altogether. Andre, 30, a business analyst with Siebel Systems Inc., lives in South Boston, barely 3 miles from Logan International Airport, but since June he's been heading almost every week to Hanscom Field in Bedford to fly to New Jersey. Andre takes Linear Air LLC, a new private-plane service that flies four days a week to Teterboro, N.J., across the river from New York City. Flying takes longer in the 10-seat Cessna Caravan turboprop than in a commercial jet, but the overall trip can be shorter when factoring in security lines and other traffic at Logan. At $438 round trip, it can cost roughly the same as a commercial flight. Pretzels and cookies are served, Andre can spread out to work on his laptop, and valet parking at Hanscom can make it a 10-foot walk from the plane to his car. 'It's superconvenient, and it's really first-class treatment,' Andre said." (10/02/05)
In many parts of the country, private aircraft have been cheaper than the ridiculous airline rate structure, and avoids most of the garbage that passes for “security” for the commercial airports and airlines. It also allows for greater security for the individual, who does not turn his luggage or laptop or weapons over to a TSA goon.

Supreme court okays frivolous gun suit
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9584450/
MSNBC
"The Supreme Court refused Monday to block a lawsuit against gun manufacturers accused of negligence for firearms violence in the nation's capital. An appeals court had said the District of Columbia government and individual gun victims -- including a man who was left a quadriplegic after being shot in 1997 -- could sue under a D.C. law that says gun manufacturers can be held accountable for violence from assault weapons [sic]." (10/03/05)
This is another “Imperial Court” decision – despite the fact that dozens of state courts have determined this sort of harassment is illegal. But of course, this is DC we are talking about.

Alaska: Anchorage expands recognition of RKBA
http://www.ktuu.com/cms/templates/master.asp?articleid=151&zoneid=1
KTUU News
"If you go to the mall, stop to get gas, have an after-work drink out with friends, be aware -- the people around you may be packing heat. The list of places you can carry a weapon in Anchorage is about to expand. In just a few weeks you can add city buildings to that list. So KTUU-TV is taking a look at just where you can and cannot carry a firearm. 'The vast majority of Alaskans think they ought to be able to carry a firearm wherever they wish,' said Wayne Anthony Ross, National Rifle Association board member. ... It may surprise you to learn that in addition to being allowed to carry a concealed weapon, you can also carry one in plain sight. But realize it may raise some eyebrows." (09/30/05)
The TV anchor sounds shocked, doesn’t she? Well, too bad. Open carry should be as common as concealed carry – or even more so. Especially in the West and Alaska.

Nevada: Elderly man fights back
http://www.kvvutv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3935198
KVVU TV
"Police say an 82-year-old man was washing his car near E. Sahara and Bruce around 10 p.m. last night when two men approached him with weapons and demanded money. The elderly man told the suspects that he had left his money at home. According to police, one of the suspects got into the back seat of the victim's car, demanding to be taken to the victim's home. The victim had a pistol hidden inside of his car, and he shot the suspect. The suspect in turn fired at the victim, striking him in the chest.The victim was transported to the hospital where he is in serious condition. The suspect died from his gunshot wounds." (10/04/05)
Our prayers that the elderly victim survives. At least in Nevada he won’t have to face murder charges or charges of carrying a loaded pistol in his car.

Washington: Man justifies shooting as self-defense
http://heraldnet.com/stories/05/10/04/100loc_trial001.cfm
Herald Net
"Stanley Douglas Nyberg was pushed off a river bank and was injured moments before he scrambled back up, pulled a pistol, and shot and killed his neighbor, Dina Camp, 44, with whom he had a longstanding property line dispute, Nyberg testified Monday. After he climbed up from the bank, he said that Camp took one or two steps toward him, and that's when he fired, Nyberg told a Snohomish County Superior Court jury." (10/04/05)
I covered this when it first happened, and months later it is finally being tried. It is a shame, as I frequently point out, that a full fledged jury trial is necessary for this: a coroner’s inquest should be adequate.

California: Wounded store owner shoots robber
http://tinyurl.com/a94qt
Record Net
"A wounded liquor-store owner shot a would-be robber around 9:30 p.m. Monday after being shot in the buttocks. Steven Groce of Stockton was shot while closing his El Dorado Liquor store, on El Dorado Street near Churchill Street, Stockton police said. He and the man he shot were taken to St. Joseph's Medical Center and San Joaquin General Hospital, authorities said. ... Police said men with bandannas pulled over their faces entered the store armed with handguns, one of them a long-barreled revolver." (10/04/05)
Hmmm – are long-barreled revolvers more evil than short-barreled ones? But I’m glad he was able to fight back.

California: Victim fights back
http://tinyurl.com/dugmt
Redondo Beach News
"On Sept. 29 at about 11:50 a.m. a subject entered the Hollywood Riviera Car Wash in the 1500 block of South PCH and brought an item to the counter with money to purchase it. When the cashier opened the register, the suspect allegedly threatened him with a gun. He was pointing the gun at the cashier and taking money out of the cash drawer when the cashier grabbed the gun. The suspect ran out of the business. The victim, armed with the suspect's .22 caliber revolver, chased him through the parking lot to Avenue H. As a white pickup truck slowed for the suspect to jump into it, a passenger in the truck allegedly pointed another handgun at the victim. The victim fired four to five shots at the suspects." (10/04/05)
Whew! A brave man, and hopefully these thugs won’t come back.

Cayman Islands: Draconian new victim disarmament laws
http://caymannetnews.com/2005/10/939/law.shtml
Cayman News
"With the Government's continuing focus on crime part of a new bill to strengthen the judiciary and sentencing could see some offenders incarcerated for considerably longer periods than in the past. At a recent Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Wharf Restaurant, the Leader of Government Business Hon Kurt Tibbetts announced a number of new measures to address crime including changes to laws to help in the process of capturing and convicting criminals. Bullet Proof vests are soon to be outlawed in the Cayman Islands and firearms offences will land perpetrators behind bars for a minimum of 10, and up to 20 years." (10/06/05)
This makes even less sense than the normal hoploclast/hoplophobe legislation: outlawing bullet-proof vests? They would do better to encourage them, as well as encouraging peaceful citizens to carry weapons regardless of location.



The Fall of Europe
Britain in the dock for human rights failures
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article316691.ece
Independent [UK]
"Britain has one of the worst human rights records in Europe and faces investigation over its failure to comply with a series of European court rulings. More than 100 findings have been lodged against Britain to which the Government has not adequately responded, five years after Tony Blair said he had fulfilled his promise to 'bring rights home' by implementing the Human Rights Act. These range findings from violations of the rights of mental health patients to the failure to protect children from unlawful corporal punishment in the home." (10/02/05)
It is only in the eyes of the Brussels bureaucrats that these are “human rights” – virtually all of these are procedural violations, or common sense actions now made illegal in Europe together with pure beer, milk chocolate, and preaching the Bible.

British tolerance of forced marriages wanes
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1005/p06s02-woeu.html
Christian Science Monitor
"In a drafty railway station cafe in England's Midlands, Ayesha, a young Muslim girl whose family is from Pakistan, is trying not to cry as she talks about her wedding day. 'When I was young I always expected to have an arranged marriage,' she says. 'But I also thought that I'd get a chance to know the man first.' Instead, at 17, her family forced her to marry a man she had never met. When Ayesha, not her real name, tried to have the marriage annulled, she was disowned by her family, and forced to flee her hometown of Birmingham. Although every year hundreds of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu women in Britain, according to figures from the government and aid agencies, are forced into marriage to fulfill traditional ideas of family honor or parental prestige, Britain's government has so far been reluctant to interfere in the private lives of immigrants." (10/05/05)
This is an example of how the British are “ignoring human rights” – by taking away the power of Muslim families to force their children into marriages and by refusing to recognize polygamous marriages. IF the Blair government has the guts to protect the rights of these young people, expect more condemnation from Brussels.

UK: NHS doctors back private hospitals plan
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,8363,1583350,00.html
Guardian [UK]
"A healthcare entrepreneur has raised more than £100m from the City to kickstart plans to build a chain of private hospitals across England in partnership with hundreds of frustrated NHS consultants. The venture, probably the biggest private investment in hospital construction since the NHS was founded in 1948, has been triggered by the government's plans for patient choice, identified by Tony Blair in his speech to the Labour conference as the big theme of his third term. From 2008 people needing an operation will be entitled to select any hospital - public or private - that can work within NHS cost limits. The treatment will remain free for the patient and the hospital will be reimbursed by the taxpayer." (10/02/05)
Hopefully we are seeing the beginning of the end of the socialized health care system in the UK.

Germany: Schroeder signals willingness to bow out
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1180141
ABC News
"Gerhard Schroeder signaled on Monday he might be ready to drop his demand to remain chancellor after Germany's inconclusive election, by saying he would not stand in the way of the creation of a stable new government. Schroeder, who has led Germany since 1998, said in a brief interview with RTL television that his fight to stay in the chancellery was for the good of his Social Democrats (SPD) and their center-left policies -- and not for personal gain. His refusal to step aside since his party finished a close second to Angela Merkel's conservatives in the September 18 vote, has been one of the chief hurdles to the formation of a coalition government." (10/03/05)
He should have quit some time ago, but he hadn’t finished ruining Germany.

EU opens talks to admit Turkey into bloc
http://tinyurl.com/9abgx
Tampa Tribune
"The European Union opened membership talks with Turkey early Tuesday -- a historic first step that would transform the bloc by taking in a predominantly Muslim nation and expanding its borders to Asia and the Middle East. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul flew late Monday night to Luxembourg for a late-night ceremony to formally open entry talks, following an agreement reached after two dramatic days of diplomacy that included strong U.S. lobbying for Turkey's candidacy." (10/03/05)
As I’ve pointed out before, this would be the worst thing the EU could do: the continent is already flooded with Muslims, both the “normal” kind and the radical Islamistic kind, and with guest-workers from Turkey and elsewhere. This will flood Europe with both. I don’t know WHY the US is lobbying for it, unless we are playing real-politick and hoping it will trash the EU.



Gulf War Three
News from the aftermath of Katrina and Rita was much less prominent this week, for the first time in a month.

Louisiana: $40 billion protection plan sparks debate
http://tinyurl.com/al2hs
USA Today
"A $40 billion plan to hurricane-proof the Louisiana coast has ignited a battle over how best to prevent a repeat of this year's double flooding of New Orleans. Endorsed by the state's congressional delegation, the proposal would create a nine-member independent commission that would give Louisiana a large say in how the federal money is spent." (10/02/05)
It would appear to me that LA should have NO sayso in how to spend other people’s money: if they want a say, they need to pay their share. Many folks like my idea: if we MUST recreate New Orleans (and it appears that economics demands it, mostly for transportation purposes), then lets use it as a landfill for the millions of tons of rubble created by the hurricanes, create a mound and cap about 50 feet high (30 feet above sealevel) and build a new city (Newer Orleans, or perhaps New Gulfport might be better) on top, safe from flooding. And at a fraction of the cost.

Parish president: FEMA still fumbling
http://tinyurl.com/86q6w
CNN
"The president of St. Tammany Parish accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sunday of continuing to mismanage the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a charge denied by an agency spokeswoman. 'I met the president personally,' Kevin Davis told CNN's 'Late Edition.' 'I actually drafted a note, and he signed it. It said, 'We are going to help you,'' the parish president said. 'I think he was sincere. He hugged me, and I believe in him. There is a disconnect apparently from that point down through the FEMA program.'" (10/02/05)
He expected something different? He’s one of the problems – he and his Parish failed to prepare adequately, but now it is the Feds fault he’s in a mess? As the story explains, it appears that the usual LA and NO corruption (on the part of Davis) is part of the mix: he wants them to use HIS construction company and HIS land for the temporary housing, so he can make sure his own house is rebuilt.

Louisiana: Search ends with 964 dead
http://tinyurl.com/7vm2g
Indianapolis Star
"The search for Hurricane Katrina victims has ended in Louisiana with a death toll at 964, but more searches will be conducted if someone reports seeing a body, a state official said Monday. State and federal agencies have finished their sweeps through the city, but Kenyon International Emergency Services, the private company hired by the state to remove the bodies, is on call if any other body is found, said Bob Johannessen, a spokesman with the state Department of Health and Hospitals." (10/03/05)
Far, far below the 10,000. Panicked exaggeration is typical in such situations, and this was made worse by the incompetence, not of government agencies (which we have to take for granted) but of the individual people who would not deal with dead bodies and other facts of life.

Post-Katrina easing of labor laws stirs debate
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1004/p01s01-woam.html
Christian Science Monitor
"Mario Pérez, muscular and 16 years old, is a budding carpenter. Next to him is Samuel Sánchez, 32, an experienced roofer. Fed up with earning $4 a day in Mexico, they recently arrived at this tiny town on the Mexican-New Mexican border to start the two-day walk to the US. They talked about where they would go. 'Probably Texas,' said Sánchez. 'What about New Orleans?' suggested Pérez. In the wake of hurricane Katrina, recent moves by the US government may help would-be migrants like Sánchez and Pérez decide where to go. And decisions in Washington are reigniting the immigration debate." (10/03/05)
Here we see an example of mainstream media playing switch and bait: the “easing” of laws concern things like Davis-Bacon wage rates and “child” labor laws which prevent people under 18 from virtually any job except babysitting – but they use this to make readers assume that the “easing” will yet further increase immigation: an effort that is separate on the part of Bush and his officials.

Arizona: Sedona Buddhists save dogs left after hurricane
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1005buddhistsdogs05.html
Arizona Republic
"Tibetan Buddhists see reincarnation as more of a circle than a straight line. One past life can lead to any other life, which means a person could come back as a lost dog. That is why Buddhists based in Sedona are now caring for more than 100 dogs at an Arizona ranch. The dogs had been abandoned in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. 'The traditional teaching from the Buddha is that any animal could be somebody you love,' said Alana Elgin, a Buddhist nun with the Kunzang Palyul Chöling in Sedona. This particular group of animals has survived the horror of the hurricane, the danger of the flood and being abandoned by their families." (10/05/05)
Have they considered that they are interfering with Karma by not allowing the supposedly reincarnated souls in these dogs to migrate to their next body – which they would have done if the dogs had been killed in the hurricane? Still, whatever cockeyed excuse they use, it is a good work that they are doing – if not as good as taking care of people. But then, we are talking about Sedona here.

New Orleans: Mayor lays off half of city staff
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051004-104447-4800r.htm
Washington Times
"Mayor Ray Nagin said yesterday the city is laying off as many as 3,000 employees -- or about half its workforce -- because of the financial damage inflicted on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Nagin said only nonessential workers will be laid off and that no firefighters or police will be among those let go. 'I wish I didn't have to do this. I wish we had the money, the resources to keep these people,' he said. 'The problem we have is we have no revenue streams.' Nagin described the layoffs as 'pretty permanent' and said that the city will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to notify municipal employees who fled the city in the aftermath of Katrina, which struck about a month ago. The mayor said the move will save from $5 million to $8 million of the city's monthly payroll of $20 million. The layoffs will take place over the next two weeks." [RRND editor's note: Only half? I thought NOLA was still almost uninhabitable, and likely to remain so for a year? What "city services" are these "essential" ones providing ... for people who are no longer there? - SAT] (10/05/05)
If 3000 people only account for 25-40 percent of the payroll, then one thing is for sure: New Orleans (which had a half-million population) had WAY too many employees, and way too many are getting VERY high pay. Steve has the right of it: I would expect that New Orleans might not even need a full-time mayor (not that it has one) for a year or more.

Nine face Katrina aid fraud charges
http://tinyurl.com/azjfg
CNN
"Nine Californians have been charged with fraud for allegedly participating in a scheme to pocket Red Cross hurricane relief funds from a call center in Bakersfield, Justice Department officials announced Tuesday. None were Red Cross employees. 'So far we've documented a loss of at least $25,000, but we expect that amount to go up,' said U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott, of Sacramento, speaking in Washington." (10/04/05)
These scams will crop up more and more in coming months as the con-men rake in their share of the cost of Katrina and Rita. But why is this a federal investigation? California can’t handle this sort of crime? Sigh. Where is Joe Friday when you need him?

Survey foresees $34.4 billion in Katrina claims
http://tinyurl.com/8odhg
Cincinnati Enquirer
"Hurricane Katrina is likely to result in at least $34.4 billion in personal and commercial property loss claims, according to the first publicly released survey of the nation's insurers. ISO's Property Claim Services Unit said Tuesday that the preliminary estimate of damages to homes and businesses in six states would make Katrina the most costly U.S. natural disaster ever, surpassing the inflation-adjusted $20.8 billion in losses from Hurricane Andrew in 1992." (10/04/05)
At the same time, the estimates of the $250 BILLION that supposedly need to be spent in the region have started to drop greatly, just as the body count has: Sadly, with 62 billion already spent, a similar 1/10 ratio won’t happen.

Hotel chains ask Katrina evacuees to leave
http://tinyurl.com/axvx5
Yahoo! News
"At least one hotel chain has asked some Hurricane Katrina evacuees to check out so it can honor the reservations of incoming guests. Hilton Hotels, the parent company of Hampton Inn and other brands, is trying to find other rooms for the evacuees but said they were warned when they checked in that their stays would be limited by room availability, said Hilton spokeswoman Kathy Shepard. 'We're doing our very best to accommodate these people,' she said. It's an uncomfortable situation for the hotel industry: risk bad publicity for kicking out hurricane evacuees, or anger big-spending repeat customers who travel for business. ... A Hampton Inn in Brookhaven, about two hours north of where Katrina struck, asked Barbara Perry of Folsom, La., to move out last week. She was living in the hotel with her parents and her three young children, and she was driving almost 90 miles a day to work. ... Had Perry found shelter in Louisiana, she would have been protected by a Sept. 1 executive order issued by Gov. Kathleen Blanco that bars hotels from displacing a refugee who guarantees payment. In Mississippi, no such protection exists." (10/06/05)
I fail to see how Blanco has the authority to write and enforce such an act: as we all know, there is no martial law, and this is certainly on the same order as boarding troops in homes. It is best left to the hotels to work out arrangements with their customers: both voluntary and involuntary.



Stupid Government Tricks

Demoted DeLay vows to stay active in House
http://tinyurl.com/7dqlb
Cincinnati Enquirer
"A defiant Tom DeLay, removed as House majority leader because of a criminal indictment, said Sunday he can do his job even without the title and pledged to continue his close partnership with House Speaker Dennis Hastert in pushing the GOP's agenda. The Texas Republican known for keeping colleagues in line and raising prodigious amounts of cash to help elect GOP candidates said he is only guilty of working to defeat Democrats. 'But that's not illegal,' he said." (10/02/05)
Not for lack of trying, of course.

Critics file suit against Georgia voter ID law
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170958,00.html
Fox News
"Advocacy groups including the NAACP, AARP and League of Women Voters have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new voter identification requirements. 'Georgia passed an absolutely obnoxious law,' said former President Jimmy Carter, who lives in the Peach State. 'It was specifically designed to prevent old people, poor people and African-Americans from voting,' he said. Carter co-chairs a private, bipartisan commission that last week recommended that every eligible voter in the United States receive a free, government photo ID card by 2010. He says Georgia's law is too restrictive. The new policy in Georgia eliminates utility bills and employee badges as valid identification at the polls. Voters must now present a government-issued ID card such as a driver's license or passport." [RRND editor's note: Libertarians might see something even more sinister here, as as pilot program for a required national ID - SAT] (10/02/05)
Carter’s stupidity is amazing: and his objections to the current law (which requires some kind of ID with a picture – not just an address and name) smell suspicious. As Steve points out, this strikes me as bad.

Canada: Ruling strikes blow to tobacco firms
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1003/p07s01-woam.html
Christian Science Monitor
"Canada is now the first country outside the US where governments can sue tobacco manufacturers to recover billions of dollars in smoking-related health costs, thanks to a unanimous Canadian Supreme Court ruling last week. Tobacco foes hope other countries will follow Canada's litigious lead. 'Canada is a pioneer in this,' says Richard Daynard, president of the Tobacco Control Resource Center. 'The legislation would obviously be available as a model for legislation in any other country.'" [FND editor's note: I just bet his Momma's proud of her ambulance-chasing little boy ... - SAT] (10/03/05)
For once, I’d like to see a national or state government stop its hypocrisy and just attempt to plain BAN tobacco products – and watch the sparks fly! Seriously, we are seeing a new prohibition developing, but using “modern” techniques which allow the state to profit more and more.

New law would exempt spies from Privacy Act
http://about.upi.com/products/perspectives/UPI-20051006-105238-8736R
United Press International
"An intelligence bill currently before the Senate would authorize a four-year experiment, during which intelligence and other federal agencies would be exempted from some Privacy Act provisions and able to freely share information about Americans -- if it is relevant to a foreign intelligence, counter-terrorism or anti-proliferation activity. Privacy and civil liberties advocates immediately condemned the legislation. ... Others were more sanguine. Angeline Chen, who teaches national security law at George Mason University, said she felt the authors of the provision were 'Trying to strike a balance' between privacy and the need to share information identified by several inquiries into the failure to interdict the Sept. 11 plot." (10/06/05)
The only balance this will achieve is the same sort of balance you get on a see-saw (teeter-totter) when one child gets off: keep an eye on this one, folks, and fight it!



Theft By Government

Florida: City considers land theft
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051003-122623-2136r.htm
Washington Times
"Florida's Riviera Beach is a poor, predominantly black, coastal community that intends to revitalize its economy by using eminent domain, if necessary, to displace about 6,000 local residents and build a billion-dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex. 'This is a community that's in dire need of jobs, which has a median income of less than $19,000 a year,' said Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown. He defends the use of eminent domain by saying the city is 'using tools that have been available to governments for years to bring communities like ours out of the economic doldrums and the trauma centers.' Brown said Riviera Beach is doing what the city of New London, Conn., is trying to do and what the U.S. Supreme Court said is proper in its ruling June 23 in Kelo v. City of New London." (10/03/05)
Funny, I thought the “common wisdom” was that Kelo wouldn’t amount to much – that no one would follow its example and that Congress and legislatures would quickly close the abusive loophole. Guess the common wisdom (once again) was wrong: isn’t it time to get rid of this pernicious practice?

New Jersey: Legislator calls for referenda on land thefts
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051006/NEWS/51006016
Asbury Park Press
"A state lawmaker wants to forbid municipalities from condemning property for private economic redevelopment without first having a public referendum on the matter. Assemblyman Patrick J. Diegnan Jr., D-Middlesex, announced Thursday he will introduce a measure this fall requiring public votes on eminent domain. He also wants the state to have to approve all municipal resolutions designating redevelopment areas, some of which can now take effect if the Department of Community Affairs fails to issue an opinion." (10/06/05)
As expected, the opposition to this bill is something fierce, with claims that it will “destroy” local government and eliminate all hope of economic development. New Jersey is already infamous for its abuse of small business and homeowners, and while this would be only a small improvement, anything would help – but I don’t expect it to pass.

DC: Thieves move in on ballpark land
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051006-120902-5838r.htm
Washington Times
"The District will begin using eminent domain to acquire parcels of land at the site of the Washington Nationals' ballpark by the end of this month, after unsuccessful negotiations with nearly half of the landowners. City officials said they expect to file court documents to take over at least some of the 21-acre site in the coming weeks and have $97 million set aside to buy the properties and help landowners relocate. The city made offers to all 23 landowners on the site last month but received no response from 10. ... Many property owners on the site said the city's offers are inadequate. Others are suing the city on the grounds that it has no right to use eminent domain to acquire land at the site. ... In April, the city notified property owners on the site that they would be required to move out by Dec. 31." (10/06/05)
“Unsuccessful negotiations” with eminent domain powers generally mean “We made them an offer that was too low, and they refused it, like we knew they would, so it is time to send in the lawyers and cops and dogs.” Watch the abuse: will it resemble New London or Zimbabwe more? I’m betting on Zimbabwe, given DC’s common roots in the Third World.



World Wars (Terrorists, etc.)

Chilling video shows Bali bombing suspect
http://tinyurl.com/93ujh
Indianapolis Star
"Police raised the alert level for Indonesia's capital and the president warned of more attacks Sunday as a chilling video shot the day before showed a suspected bomber clutching a backpack and strolling past diners moments before one of three suicide bombings killed 26 people on Bali. The near-simultaneous bombings on the resort island also injured 101 people, including six Americans." (10/02/05)
Biggest news on the war front this week was the new attack in Indonesia, which shows that even talking to the US is bad for you, if you are an Islamic country.

US: Colombia should fumigate coca
http://tinyurl.com/7f5pq
Detroit Free Press
"The U.S. ambassador urged Colombia Sunday to spray weed killer inside the country's spectacular nature parks to destroy cocaine-producing crops, insisting the chemicals will not cause widespread damage to the reserves' ecosystems. Harried by eradication campaigns elsewhere, drug traffickers have in recent years streamed into the parks, where spraying is banned. In the parks, they have torn down thousands of acres of virgin rain forest to plant coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine. In response, Colombia's government is debating whether to lift a ban on aerial fumigation in the reserves." (10/02/05)
It would appear that the parks have already had their ecosystem destroyed, but that does not mean that the chemicals will not cause more damage. Again, we have to ask, who is to blame for this? American consumers continue to buy the stuff, and desperate for a living, these people grow the stuff.

Nathan Barton is a libertarian writing from the Black Hills. Your comments are appreciated!
We hope to resume our daily commentary next week.