The Libertarian

American automotive icon General Motors (GM) is now on the brink of bankruptcy, after Merrill Lynch last wednesday (2July08) slashed the GM price target by a whopping 75% and changed recommendation from “buy” to “underperform”. The market reacted promptly, as the stock dropped 15% on the same day; biggest drop in 20 years, lowest stock value in 54. GM declined to commend, and is now looking for further capital to stay afloat, though the company spokesmen says that they have sufficient capital to survive 2008 (not her words). IOW, no, they don’t.

Now, if this isn’t a pretty visible illustration of the pit the US is sinking into, can you imagine GM is eventually acquired by Toyota or… a Chinese company? Oh, my. The King Nation of Capitalism being propped up by the old COmmunist arch-enemy. That WILL hurt.

(Merril Lynch’s analyst, John Murphy, who announced the lowered expectations and thus apparently caused the crash in GM value also paints a bleak picture of the US car industry, not only in 2008 as a whole, but continuing into 2009 with falling small-vehnicle sales).

Viacom is using the favorite tool of business to get access to the viewing histories of YouTube’s users - the court. Viacom’s message to the users of the world? Translated to english; “Fuck you and your privacy”. (The judge who ordered YouTube to comply is a senile old fart named Louis Stanton - 81 yo… as a commenter noted, past retirement age when the stuff he is ruling on came into existence). Big Corps care only about you as long as they can wring a buck or two out of you. (The YouTube viewing history is worth billions to the media giant). Else, not.

Q posted on /. (typos corr’d) : “This is an interesting question. If privacy laws supposedly protect an individual’s privacy when the data of said individual is in the hands of a business [company A], would it also protect the individual’s privacy from [company B] gaining access to said data, if the individual was not consenting to them getting their hands on it in the first place?”

The US is progressively becoming a very bad place to host any kind of data-providing service, be it BitTorrent, otehr Peer2Peer, user-submitted content etc. When that nation is in the dust 30 years from now, you can look to things like this for the reason.

Pardon for my recent anglophone absence, but I thought I’d give you a brief heads-up on the market situation:

Crude oil is now at a record 140 US$/barrel, and slowly pushing on 150$.

The ECB - European Central Bank - announced plans on monday to raise the discount rate, which it did today, by 0,25 percentage points, leaving it now at 4,25%. This is following the news that EUROLAND inflation has been far above the target of 2%; in fact, it has gone beyond 4%, which is the higest in 16 years. The rate increase is the eleventh in 3 years. Considering the justified fear of a worldwide economic recession, this will IMO start the crash we’ve been approaching for at least the last year. The rate increase will increase the relative value of the Euro, which again will decrease the relative value of the US dollar, which is already in a very bad shape; it has the lowest exchange rate with other major currencies in a good two decades. This will in turn put pressure on the FED (US central bank) to increase its own discount rate, and that will trigger the crash in the US, which has so far been driven (and kept driving) by aggressive money supply expansion (=inflation) and the real estate/subprime phenomenon (=land speculation).

Put this on top of the US presidential election in the fall, and you’re in for a hell of a ride!

My general advice to people is now to sell off stocks, and again, in general, liquidate US holdings. Get rid of US paper dollars and if possible, buy commodities, gold and other noble metals being the obvious candidate (also beer and popcorn for the show in November). For investment, look to Europe for state bonds, especially Eastern Europe and the Baltic. And… be bloody careful with your money these days.

Right. It may not have the same verbal kick that some other title has, but at least it’s truthful. Blogs with the title “The (insert some modifier or qualifier HERE) *something*” are a dime a dozen these days, and besides, it’s mostly hollow PR to differentiate youself in some insignificant way from others sharing your chosen label.

So why would I call myself just “The Libertarian” instead of “The Pragmatic Libertarian”?

For several reasons.

For one, it implies that other libertarians than myself are not pragmatic, but rather ideological (and the connotations of that today is that one such is with his or her head in the clouds and removed from the realities of the world, which is bullshit, because in many areas pertaining to politics, they have their feet more solidly planted on the ground than most “main stream” Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, Moderates and whatnot).

Metapoint: Pragmatism is ironically itself an ideology. Chew on that, you pragmatists, HA!

Second: I’m not too sure of how “non-ideological” i myself (or anyone else for that matter) should be to qualify to be “pragmatic”. As I see it the opposite of (pure) ideology would be (pure) pragmatism, which directly translates to pure oppertunism, and that means doing anything that would increase your power and reputation in the eyes of the public, no matter how much you’d have to prostitute yourself, betray your friends, allies and guiding ideals. As such, pure pragmatism is absolutely repugnant to me.

Additionally, go read Hayek’s “Why I am not a Conservative” for some more elaboration on ideology vs pragmatism.

Third, I may also change the Libertarian label as well, because the established, state-political Libertarian movement has been in decline the last few years in regards to ideology and integrity (and as such, taking the public perception, to the degree that there is one such of libertarianism, with it). From the summaries I got from US friends who followed the recent LNC (Libertarian National Convention), the LP is now aiming for a degree of moderation where it would indeed seem that they are “Republicans who want to smoke weed”. The intentions is no doubt good (MUCH better than those naaasty Demmies and Repugs, aye!), but the rhetoric is basically the same. (The NeoLibertarians, who are pro-war and more pragmatic than the rest of us pie-in-the-sky extremists, do indeed, in conjunction with the RLP’ers, seem to get their way.) And after a few years of being a libertarian, if there is something I despise, it’s justifying your own failures, inaction, incompetence and outright crimes with “your good intentions”. I want results, not sweet-sounding crap-talk.

Is the LP a good way to raise awareness about the libertarian cause? Initially it may seem so, but when you consider how much time, money and effort goes into busting into the public awareness, by means of advertisements, qualifying for the ballot, money for publicity - and plain, saying the stuff people want to hear (which in 90% of the case is bullshit or plain immoral from a freedom standpoint), I say - lets use the energy and resources elsewhere. “The Free State Project might be one such, but i doubt it. It could much too easily be labelled by the anti-libertarians as a militant takeover, yada yada, and that would be the end of that.

If you want to have a more libertarian world, my guess is that local independence and subversion efforts against the Big Government is the way to go. (Oh - and resisting the temptation to save others from themselves, as well.)

And, if you have a better suggestion for a self-label, let’s hear it.

Just chatting with a buddy about the prices of DVD players in the US versus here in Denmark. It seems (in Michigan at least) you can get a Philips DVD player with a standard 1 year of warranty for 18$. That seemed extremely cheap compared to here, but for certainty I went ahead and dug up prices on local offers in my area (been a few years since i bought either VHS or DVD players, as the few movies I do watch is on my computer, and I just don’t watch TV so I obviously don’t record anything).

The cheapest DVD player I could find is a DANTAX (ironic name, btw) which is a cheap brand and that was 102$ are current exchange rates. Mainstream brand names are a good deal above that - like LG (134$) or Philips (227$). True, we Danes do get 2 years warranty (a default required by law), but then I asked what the price of an additional 2 year warranty on top of the Philips purchased in the US was. Answer: 8$.

So the approximate difference in consumer price for a bare-bones DVD player looks like a factor of 4.

Damn, we are getting screwed here in Scandinavia…

Cuba lifts computer ban

- following Fidel’s circling of the drain, his brother, Raul, took over in 2006 and though he is just as much a communist hardliner as El Fidel, he has shown signs of softening up to… well, lets say, the modern world.

An internal government memo seen by Reuters on Thursday said the appliances long desired by Cubans can go on sale immediately, although air conditioners will not be available until next year and toasters until 2010 due to limited power supplies. Only foreigners and companies can buy computers in Cuba at present, while DVD players were seized at the airport until last year, when customs rules were eased. Now Cubans will be able to buy them freely, paying for them in hard currency CUCs, or convertible pesos, worth 24 times more than the Cuban pesos state wages are paid in.

“Based on the improved availability of electricity, the government at the highest level has approved the sale of some equipment which was prohibited,” the memo said. It also listed television sets, which were already on sale, electric pressure cookers and rice cookers, electric bicycles, car alarms and microwave ovens. Raul Castro, 76, has led Cuba since July 2006 when his older brother Fidel Castro provisionally handed over power after intestinal surgery from which he has not fully recovered.

Welcome to the 80’s, Cuba!

The sale of many electric appliances was banned in the 1990s when the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived Cuba of billions of dollars in subsidies and oil supplies, resulting in an energy crunch and daily blackouts of as long as 18 hours.

You know you’re running a shitty economic system when your entire nation must recieve external subsidies to stay afloat.

Raul Castro has encouraged debate of Cuba’s economic woes and has received a torrent of complaints focusing mainly on poor wages and limited access to consumer goods that are priced in hard currency.

The wonders of state socialism, eh?

source.

The digital universe is now 281 exabytes large

- IDC/EMC estimates that the digital universe of humanity is now around 281 exabytes in size. By 2011, it with be 10 times the size that it was in 2006 (which as 161 exabytes).

Interesting stuff.

Gold breaks 1000$/oz

- or rather, the dollar broke 1/1000 oz of Gold - downwards. This happened on the 14th of March, and is the lowest level for the dollar, ever, even lower than the post-Nixon gutting of Bretton Woods. This is following that the Fed has been inflating the dollar for years, and lately, Bear Stearns crashed from trading at around 60$/share to a miserable 3$. JPMorgan stepped in to buy out BSC, with the aid of the fed who propped them up with 200e9 $.

Making money out of thin air. *shrug*

A lot of the whiners shouters about the war in Iraq are making excessive claims about the number of civilian casualties in Iraq these days. Following the publication of the Lancet study, it is common to hear claims of hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq, and now, even some are claiming that more than a million Iraqs have died due to the war effort since March 2003.

IraqBodycount.net tells a different story:

Iraq Body Count Press Release 16 October 2006

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, and Josh Dougherty

Summary

A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:

1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive “Shock and Awe” invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.

If these assertions are true, they further imply:

* incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
* bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
* the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
* an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.

***

The debacle in Iraq is indeed a major humanitarian tragedy, but it is important to realize that you weaken your credibility and your case by making untenable claims about the extent of the human losses and damages caused by the war.

For the first time ever, there is less than one billion people in the world living on less than 1 US$/day (which is the defining characteristic of extreme poverty). Comparably, in 1981, there were 1,479 million people living in extreme poverty.

Press release from the World Bank:

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2007 — Global poverty rates continued to fall in the first four years of the 21st century according to new estimates published in the World Development Indicators 2007, released today. The proportion of people living on less than $1 a day fell to 18.4 percent in 2004, leaving an estimated 985 million people living in extreme poverty. By comparison, the total number of extreme poor was 1.25 billion in 1990. Two-dollar-a-day poverty rates are falling too, but an estimated 2.6 billion people, almost half the population of the developing world, were still living below that level in 2004.

Next milestone to reach is bringing the number of people on less than 2 US$/day below 1 billion; today there are 2.6 billion of those.

The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February 2000, when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.

The Madrid study marks only the second time that THC has been administered to tumor-bearing animals. In 1974, researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institutes of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on the events in his book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. In 1976, President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies, who set out — unsuccessfully — to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the “high.”

The gov’t knew that marijuana offset tumor growth as far back as ‘74, and put the lid on the research that discovered this phenomenon. Why?

Is it that research into synthetic THC could make billions for the medicinal industry (IOW, corporate welfare with a new twist)? How about criminal incompetence? Or is it just plain malice (notably perpetrated by BOTH of the big US political parties)?

Applied game theory in action:

DoS extortion is no longer profitable

In the last six months of 2006 we saw a pretty sharp decline in the daily number of denial of service attacks. Although there are likely a number of factors at play here, I think there is one primary factor: denial of service extortion attacks are no longer profitable.

DoS extortion attacks are usually carried out by a bot-network owner. Using their bots, the extortionsist has to make a successful DoS attack against a target organization. Following that they have to issue the extortion request and hope the target organization pays it.

The thing is that DoS attacks are loud and risky. Whenever a bot-network owner carries out a denial of service attack they run the risk of losing some of their bots. This could happen either because an attacking computer is identified and disinfected, or if it is simply blocked by its ISP from accessing the network. Furthermore, if the bot-network owner isn’t careful they could lose their entire bot network if their command and control server is identified. Since a DoS extortionist has to carry out at least one successful DoS attack before they can even demand their pay, they run some serious overhead risks.

So what happens if the target of the attack refuses to pay? The DoS extortionist is obligated to carry out a prolonged DoS attack against them to follow through on their threats. For a DoS extortionist this is the worst scenario because they have to risk their bot network for nothing at all. Since the target has refused to pay, it is likely that they will never pay. As a consequence, the attacker has to spend time and resources on a lost cause.

It is likely that bot network owners are now moving away from DoS extortion and towards more lucrative ventures like spam. Not surprisingly, we saw a noted increase in spam volumes in the last six months of 2006.

Source.

Who pays for Sweden’s free lunch?

Published: 14th May 2007 17:14 CET

Sweden’s generous welfare system has served to break down the protestant work ethic, argues Captus’s Nima Sanandaji.

Sweden has traditionally relied heavily on the strong protestant work ethic of its citizens. A cornerstone of the country’s welfare system has been a population which has been reluctant to misuse the system. Although taxes have been high and government benefits generous, the strong work ethic has stopped people from taking advantage of the welfare state. Alas, this attitude has been largely abandoned. As time has passed, people have adapted to the system.

Dependence on state handouts is widespread amongst the adult generations. Today around 21-22 percent of the Swedish population in working age is being supported by one form government handout or another, up from around 11 percent in 1970 (as reported by Swedish Public Television 15th March 2005).

Many unemployed people are unwilling to take jobs that pay less than their former employment. The reason is that government compensation is often almost as high as their previous salaries; taking a job that pays less than their old one might very well mean lower income than the state benefit.

In a survey form the Swedish Enterprise Institute 70 percent of companies with 10-200 employees say that they interviewed who did not even want the jobs offered. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that people seek jobs that they are unwilling to take, only in order to convince public officials that they are actively seeking employment so they can continue collecting government handouts.

As widespread as government dependence is amongst adults, it might yet become worse amongst the new generation of Swedes.

In 2006 youth unemployment in Sweden was amonght the highest in the EU, fully 21.5 percent. Many young Swedes, in particular those with an immigrant background or from low income Swedish families, are becoming more and more used to the idea that it is acceptable to live off taxpayers’ moneys. This is creating a phenomenon that can be described as a ”free-lunch generation”. A generation that does not clearly see the moral difference between earning something by hard work or receiving it from the state. The attitude is simply “anything that I want, I should have.”

…

The article concludes:

The Swedish welfare system is effectively breaking down the very norms that make the society function. As people become more and more accustomed on living of government one question arises: who is ultimately going to draw the short straw and become forced to pay for the supposedly free lunch?

Excellent question. Why should anyone bust their asses to work for people, who take their standard of living granted without being willing to expend any effort to maintain it, but instead vote themselves to the “goodies”?

It is clear that the “welfare” state must be broken down and abolished, before it breaks down society entirely.

You may remember that a few months back, a widely published international study found that Denmark, ie. the place I live, was the happiest country on Earth. Of course, the welfareists and social democrats were not late to take this is an indication that statist “welfare” makes people happy. Sounds reasonable, right?

But now I have discovered this:

So - the supposedly happiest country in the world, which happens to be a role model state for state welfare proponents everywhere, appears to have the next highest suicide rate of most high-income nations, only topped by Finland. That does not compute. Conversely, the USA, which is often trumpeted (especially by state welfare advocates) as a veritable hellhole for anybody by the fat cats and rich bastards, had a very low rate of suicide.

Of course, there is a different explanation for popular happiness, and that is that the general happiness of the populace is more dependent on culture rather than policy initiatives.

Source.

Slammer turns Florida election result into worm food

New concerns about the accuracy of electronic voting in Sarasota County, Florida are being raised after a published report documented how the county’s main database system came under attack from a virulent worm. The county server was breached on the first day of early voting in the 2006 election, which included a now-disputed race for a seat in the US House of Representatives.

The attack code was a variant of the infamous Slammer worm that penetrated the county’s server, which unbelievably, was missing five years worth of security patches, according to an article painstakingly reported by investigative journalist Brad Friedman. The breach crippled the county’s entire network, including the electronic voting system, where net connectivity was disrupted for two hours. Those trying to vote during the outage were turned away.

The worm breached the database server’s firewall and overwrote the system’s administrative passwords. The server then “sent traffic to other database servers on the Internet, and the traffic generated by the infected server rendered the firewall unavailable,” according to a two-page incident report unearthed by Friedman. A network security specialist who helped draft the report said he believed the harm to the county’s election systems was limited to the two-hour disruption, because the two networks were not connected. (The specialist conceded that the timing of the attack, on the first day of early voting, “would make somebody raise an eyebrow” in suspecting the election system was being targeted.)

…

The concern over the accuracy of evoting in Sarasota County might seem like the hand wringing of luddites were it not for improbable results in the race for Florida’s 13th Congressional district. Republican Vern Buchanan edged out Democrat Christine Jennings by just 369 votes. More than 18,000 ballots recorded no vote in the race, an “undervote” rate that was about nine times higher than other races. Jennings is contesting the results in court.

Yet another example of not only the incompetence of the public officials, but the dangers or poorly thought out and poorly implemented e-voting.

Source.

Swedish school children:

• 95% knows about Auswitz, but 90% do NOT know about the Soviet gulags.
• 99% do NOT know the concept of “collectivisation”.
• 99% do NOT know what a “Bolshevik” was.
• 40% thinks that communism contributed to the prosperity of the world.
• 22% believes that Soviet communism was a democratic form of government.
• 43% thinks that the total number of victims of communist regimes were less then 1 million human beings.
• 18% thinks that the number of victims of communism in the 20th century were less than 10.000 humans.

Those who do not know history are forced to repeat it.

Oh, and:

All hail the social democratic public school system!

Source.

…from an environmental POV.

As most other places in the western world, in the 1st of May this year, the reds gathered together on public spots to celebrate their traditional “international workers day”. In Copenhagen, Denmark, around 100.000 of these people met up in the large park system (”Fælledparken”) in the center of the city to drink beer and listen to the statist-collectivist demagogues fire off the usual bullshit verbiage.

That, however is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that afterwards, 13 tons of trash was left behind by the reds. Thats 13.000 kilos of waste, people. The park services had to have 15 men spend almost a week cleaning up the mess.

And these reds claim that they are proponents of a “clean nature”? Garbage!

I predict the collapse of the United States as we know it within 20 years, not due to the USA indebting itself, but due to the fact that at the current rate, there will be so many pages of tax code that nobody will know how to pay their taxes (and the state will thus go bankrupt), or that people will simply be so disgusted with the tax mess that they all become anarchists that shoot IRS agents for sport.

On average, three people are executed in China every day, and two in the rest of the world combined:

Since 1990, at least 18,008 people have been put to death. Last year alone [1999], Amnesty International logged 1,077 executions — an average of nearly three a day — while the rest of the world’s countries that practice capital punishment together racked up 736. Ninety- eight of those executions were in the United States.

Experts believe that the number of executions in China is even higher than estimated because the government does not publicize all executions and has deemed the exact count a “state secret.”

…

In 1979, there were 28 types of offenses, including “counterrevolutionary” activity, that merited being put to death. But by 1995, in response to a rising crime rate in China’s new go-go society, the list had risen to 74 and incorporated an increasing number of nonviolent offenses, especially economic ones.

Source.

In the course of 25 years between 1978 and 2003, he said, China’s economy grew by an average annual rate of 9.4%, with its GDP, foreign trade and foreign exchange reserves jumping from 147.3 billion dollars, 20.6 billion dollars and 167 million dollars to over 1.4 trillion dollars, 851.2 billion dollars and 403.3 billion dollars respectively. China now is the world’s 6th largest economy and the 4th largest trader.

An average economic growth of 9+% is very impressive, but there is still a long way to go for the Middle Kingdom.

“The reason why China has produced such tremendous changes is because we have adhered to the road of building socialism with Chinese characteristics…

(He means “capitalist market economy”.)

…and persevered in reform and opening-up, thus galvanizing the Chinese people’s initiative, enthusiasm and creativity,” Hu said.

Though China has achieved impressive results in its development, there are still many acute problems, such as over-population, weak economic foundation, under-developed productivity, highly uneven development, and a fairly sharp contradiction between the country’s ecological environment and natural resources on the one hand and its economic and social development on the other. China’s per capita GDP, though reaching the record high of 1,000 US dollars last year, still ranks behind the 100th place in the world.

1,000 US$/cap/yr? Pathetic. OK, so the numbers are not corrected for Purchasing Power, but still; the US and Northern Europe has GDP/cap/yr figures in the 30,000-40,000 US$ range.

“To make China’s modernization program a success and deliver a prosperous life for all the Chinese people still requires a long and uphill battle,” he said.

…the same applies to the struggle against the brutal opressors of the Chinese political system.

Hu said that building a well-off society of a higher standard in an all-round way for the benefit of well over 1 billion people is his government’s long-term goal. China will try to quadruple its 2000 GDP to 4 trillion US dollars, with a per capita GDP of 3,000 dollars by the year 2020.

By that time, most of the western world will have GDP/cap figures in the 40,000 US$ range (in current dollars).

Source.

And exactly how prosperous is the richest Chinese city (Hong Kong excluded)? Xiamen (warning! Gfx heavy link!) has a yearly GDP/cap of around 7000 US$, which is 1/4th of the poorest western countries.

This is how Xiamen looks on the shiny front:

…and this is the shoddyness behind the facade:

China, you are on the right track, but you still have a long way to go - cast off the shackles of demagogic tyranny, instill a real democracy, and punish your opressors - the sooner the better!

IRS loses nearly 500 laptops containing sensitive data about the taxpayers:

Nearly 500 Internal Revenue Service laptops — many likely containing unencrypted personal information of taxpayers — were lost or stolen over a 30-month period ending in June 2006, according to an audit released last month.

The audit, conducted by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, found that between Jan. 2, 2003, and June 13, 2006, a “large number” of laptops were stolen from the vehicles and homes of IRS employees, while 111 were stolen from various agency facilities.

Although auditors were unable to determine exactly what information was contained on the missing laptops, they did conclude that personal information of taxpayers is not adequately protected.

And the Nuclear Security Agency, as well:

Nuclear Security Agency Loses More Computers

Less than three months after the Department of Energy fired Linton Brooks, then head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), because of security lapses, the agency is once again in the “oops we lost it” spotlight. This time the loss is 20 desktop computers containing information on nuclear weapons; at least 14 contained classified information.

Some people, principally high-tax-proponents, claim that libertarians are “greedy”, because we want to lower taxes and in particular abolish the income tax.

These are typically the same people who think that the fruits of the labor of the individual belongs to the collective/society, and the same people do not understand that from the dawn of time, the fruits of labor came to be in the hands of the individual laborer.

If it is an expression of greed to want to keep what you yourself have produced, and as such have a natural right to keep, then it is also an expression of greed to stop a burglar from running away with your stereo.

Yesterday, it was the 50th year anniversary of the signing of the Rome Treaties, which are considered the “certificate of baptism” for the European Union. The EU of today was originally known as the “Coal & Steel Community”, founded by six countries: (West) Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy and France.

Denmark, the UK and Ireland joined in in 1973, increasing the member state count to nine, and over the next twenty years, Greece, Spain and Portugal also join up. East Germany is merged with West Germany in the German Reunification of 1990. In the middle of the 90’s, the EU is twelve members strong.

The EU has been very valuable in maintaining a liberal-democratic stronghold in Western Europe, while the post-Stalinist USSR served as a Eurasian hegemon of military power, but times are changing. This is now 2007, the EU counts 27 member states, the then-CSC, later-EEC, and now European Union is no longer just a trade union where free flows of goods and capital increase our prosperity.

The EU is evolving into a social-democratic project aimed at becoming a Federal European Welfare Super-state. Kind of like the USA, only with less corporate power, less military might, but more headless economic redistribution.

The last 50 years have been good for the EU, but will the next 50 years stay that way, with increased centralization of power in the hands of the bureaucrats in Brussels, and less popular sovereignity in the national governments?

I have my doubts. But… here’s hoping.

For a brief history of the EU, read this.

I found this guy, Mike Gravel, who is running for Prez in the ‘08 election.

His issues are as follows:

The War in Iraq
Immediate and orderly withdrawal of troops followed by aggressive diplomacy

National Initiative for Democracy
Empower Americans and turn every citizen into a lawmaker by enacting a national initiative.

A Fair Tax
Eliminate the income tax and replace it with a progressive national sales tax - Fair Tax.

America’s System of Education
Education should be our nation’s priority. We need to foster competition and rethink the system.

Social Security
Put real money in the Social Security Trust Fund and invest it properly so Americans can leave surplus to heirs.

Veterans Affairs
Fully finance the VA and end the war on our nation’s vets.

National Healthcare
Enact a national, universal, single-payer, not-for-profit U.S. healthcare system.

Tax reform, healthcare reform, education reform - seems decent to me!

Well… two of them actually:

The Encyclopaedia Dramatica’s articles on:

Libertarianism:

“Libertarianism is a fad political ideology believing that governmental involvement in peoples’ lives should be limited as much as possible so libertarians can fuck dogs without being jailed on sodomy laws (hey, that rhymed). Most Libertarians are either 13 year old boys or paranoid survivalists living in tiny cabins in North Dakota, where they stockpile weapons and food for the dreaded day when Big Brother comes ’round tryin’ to implant mind-control chips in their brains.”

Scary thing is that you get the idea that some of the more extreme libertarians are actually like that (of course, an even scarier thing is that in a not-too-far future, the thing about mind-control chips will indeed be possible… :/ ).

Of course, I wouldn’t ever admit to sodomizing a dog, but I’ll readily admit that I piss in the sink, but I digress…

List of Things Libertarians Believe In

1. Drugs are good. (Sure, if used responsibly)
2. Social security is bad. (Yes, seeing how the money spent on it could be used much better elsewhere)
3. Abortions are good. (That is an issue which divides the libertarians, and even the ones that want the state out of the abortion business see the procedure as tragic, so… no)
4. Government is bad. (Correction: TOO MUCH government is bad)
5. Guns are totally good. (Sure, if used responsibly)
6. The death penalty is bad. (I happen to agree on that, since it is morally questionable, plus it is outrageously expensive for the taxpayers)
7. The free market is good. (As a supplier of high-quality, low-cost private goods, yes!)
8. People who say they are conservatives but are really Republicans are liars. (As a rule of thumb, yes)
9. People who say they are liberal but are really Democrats are liars. (As a rule of thumb, yes)
10. Privitization is good. (Yes, assuming that the corporate fat cats are kept out of the bidding…)
11. Unions are bad. (When they think it’s their job to harass private business owners and destroy private property, hell yes!)
12. Ayn Rand is God. (No, she was a dogmatic megalomaniac, albeit one with a talent for passionate writing)
13. Somalia is the best country on earth. (See below)
14. CEOs have delicious cocks, therefore you must be fucked by them. (I wouldn’t know… :P )
15. …are agnostic because religions and atheism are too altruistic and therefore hamper capitalism. (I happen to be an atheist…)

***

Typical Libertarian Activities

* Bitching about how fucked up the government is, but doing nothing about it. See also: Hippies. (May seem like that to some, but there is this thing called the Libertarian Party…)
* Complaining about how evil the government is but praising Big Business and preaching that if we just get the mean ole government to leave businesses alone and give our bosses complete freedom that capitalism will create a utopia. (The last part is true enough for some libertarians. I know, because I used to be one of them).
* Majoring in Computer Science. (True in the case of Michael Badnarik :)
* Posting on Internet forums. (That’s simply not true, we are far too busy stockpiling ammo and suplies for the coming civil war).
* Thinking of ways to get back at the “jocks” who picked on them in grade school. (Yes. Shoot them.)
* Acting exactly like the kid from The Catcher in the Rye. (No comment.)
* Having sex with their golden retrievers. (No. I only have a cat…)
* Being the douchebags of the planet. (Oh come on.)
* Hang around at this page http://www.nazi.org/ (Yeah, i get a kick out of those peeps occasionally… :)
* Cry about how minimum wages and anti-child labor laws are morally wrong and a great threat against freedom. (True enough. Problem is that anti-child labor laws typically result in increased child prostitution in 3rd world nations, such as Thailand. Of course, if these guys wanted to be really mean, they’d say that libertarians SUPPORTED anti-child labor laws so we’d have more kiddies to copulate.).

Now, for the article on Somalia:

Somalia, Beacon of Freedom

Somalia is a country in Africa which has enjoyed anarchy for the past several years, with predictably fantastic results including an average life expectancy of 48. This is hardly surprising though, as the country had been controlled by communist fucktards previously. The nation’s exports include hides, charcoal, and scrap metal. The official national pastimes are violence and goat herding, though a recent referendum suggested that rape should also be included. The referendum was struck down on the grounds that the most popular form of rape in the area was already implied by the reference to goatherding. As Somalia has no government, it is the Libertarians favorite country and what they want the world to be like.

Again, a strong hint of truth in that. Some AnarchoCapitalists actually seem to be upholding Somalia (the way it used to be, as it’s hardly an anarchic society anymore, since the previously-in-exile-government set up shop in Mogadishu, aka ‘The Mog’ this January) as a libertarian ideal (quote: “Defending and Celebrating Somalis’ Freedom and Prosperity”). Freedom? Sure, to plunder and pillage whatever you choose, if you have enough Russian aftermarket AK-47s in your posession! Prosperity? Bullshit, Somalia is dirt poor, even utter shitholes like Congo have higher living standards than they do in Somalia. Sure, the anarchic period on the Horn of Africa was relatively prosperous, but that was only because Said Barre’s socialist dictatorship was even WORSE!

Of course during the anarchy, Mogadishu had the cheapest phone service in Africa, but that is about the extent of the success stories from AnCap paradise.

WASHINGTON , DC - Congress is considering sweeping legislation, which provides new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as a major legislation by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.

“Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,” said Barbara Boxer. “We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over.

With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they do a better job, or have some idea of what they are doing.”

Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi pointed to the success of the US Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack job skills, making this agency the single largest US employer of Persons of Inability.

Private sector industries with good records of nondiscrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement “warehouse” stores (65%) The DMV also has a great record of hiring Persons of Inability. (63%)

Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million “middle man” positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.

Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given, to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations which maintain a significant level of Persons of Inability in middle positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium businesses that agree to hire five clueless workers for every competent person they hire.

Finally, the AWNA ACT contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Nonabled, banning discriminatory interview questions such as “Do you have any goals for the future?” or “Do you have any skills or experience which relate to this job?” or “Did you ever read a book?”

“As a Nonabled person, I can’t be expected to keep up with people who bother to try,” said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug- nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, MI due to her lack of applicable job skills. “This new law should really help people like me.” With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other ambition-less citizens can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Said Senator Ted Kennedy, “It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and also find a place for all illegal aliens no matter how skillless most are.”

Collected on alt.politics.libertarian.

The Vietnamese collectivists are showing their true colors - they are in fact individuals (well, duh! Humans aren’t ants, for sure), but they are hypocrites at the same time:

The head of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party has criticised the lack of morals among many of the party’s members.

Speaking at a specially convened meeting, General Secretary Nong Duc Manh said some members showed too much individualism. The meeting follows a series of graft scandals, which have damaged the party’s reputation over the past year.

Mr Manh told party members that a slipping of moral standards could paralyse the party. He advised them to follow the example of their country’s founder, Ho Chi Minh.

But we already knew that socialists have their Führer-worship in common with the National Socialists?! Instead of Hitler they have Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro & Che and of course, Ho Chi Minh…

(source)