End the War on Freedom

Mike Shelton at the Orange County Register - Smart Bombs - cartoon commentary on humanitarian aid for Afghanistan.

Nuclear-Powered - Suitcase bomb - 30 pounds of plutonium explodes with the force of 200 tons of TNT. I don't know if this site is a joke. The "Key Benefits" below seem fairly tongue-in-cheek, but the info looks plausible. [grabbe]

Soviet military intelligence agency (the GRU) developed "suitcase bomb." These bombs measure 24 x 16 x 8 inches (60 x 40 x 20 centimeters).

...

Key Benefits

• Comes with its own easy carry suitcase.
• Easy arm control panel with dual timers.
• Disposable one time use.

Botach Tactical - Backie Collins CIA Letter Opener - a non-metallic "letter opener". $8.00. "No California sales to citizens". Botach Tactical sells many useful self-defense items. Added to my links page in the "Stores" section.

CIA. Letter Opener for the new millennium. This updated version is made from GV6H, the high-tech composite from Switzerland made with 60% glass fibers. This completely non-metallic letter opener provides superior plunging power as well as a hard edge. The scalloped serrated edge on one side gives additional opening power on fiberous materials. The built-in clip eliminates the need for a sheath since it can clip directly to a belt, pants, sock, etc. The contoured handle is comfortable to hold and has a thumb depression for a secure grip. There is a hole in the handle for attachment of a lanyard. The CIA. Letter Opener is completely non-metallic, non-magnetic, and non-absorbent, making this a perfect item for EOD personnel.

Moshe Feiglin at JPFO - Why America Has Already Lost the War - One Israeli Jew's perspective on Bloody Tuesday. I hope he's wrong. I continue to consider the atrocity to be an action of a small number of individuals. If it is indeed a cultural and religious war, humanity is doomed.

Two deviant daughters came forth from Judaism but left the fold to conquer the world: Christianity and Islam. Both hate their mother, and both fight each other.

Judaism integrates the qualities of strict justice and mercy, in harmony and in proper measure. Christianity took only the quality of mercy while Islam took the quality of strict justice.

The Moslems see with jealousy how the culture based on Christian mercy succeeds in gaining control over the world. Let everyone come and benefit from the cornucopia open to all -- to everyone we proffer the other cheek, and the whole body, in fact. Come and take your part in the wealth, come and enter the gates of the World Trade Center. We aren't conquering you with the sword, but with gold.

...

The day after the attack, a wealthy American acquaintance approached me and asked for my comments on the situation. I told him what I thought, and he then surprised me by making an offer that couldn't be refused: "I am ready to pay for a full-page ad in the New York Times". "I want you to compose the ad" he said. I didn't want to do it, because America's war isn't my war, and because I had hoped that this dear Jew would direct his financial resources to far more important endeavors in which we are engaged in Eretz Israel. But the man persisted, so I composed the following quick draft:

IT IS A CULTURAL/RELIGIOUS WAR

We can kill a million Bin Ladens, but they will continue to celebrate.

[Photo of Arabs celebrating in the streets.]

They have destroyed our symbols.

[Photo of the twin towers going up in flames]

We must destroy their symbols.

[Photos of the El-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount, and the Kaba building in Mecca.]

Shocked?

Americans don't do such things?

Right.

Therefore, America will continue to be destroyed until you understand.

My friend was astonished. "But they will start a religious war!", he exclaimed. "Can you imagine what acts of vengeance will result from this?"

"And what have you suffered just now?", I asked him. "Do you think that they only killed nearly ten thousand people because at the moment they don't hate you so much?"

"This is a religious war", I explained to him. "They aren't afraid to die. They have sanctified death, they die with the name of Allah on their lips, and seventy virgins are waiting for them in Paradise. You don't frighten them with your bombs. At best, you'll turn them into Shahids. They have directed their attack against your god. You have no alternative, but to direct your attack against theirs. When you destroy their god, they will become powerless and come back down to this world. They will suddenly be frightened by the sound of footsteps, and by the prick of a pin. They will know that not only they understand your language, but you understand theirs, and you are fighting them according to their own rules".

"Think about it", I added. "How many people are you going to kill in vain, and how easy it would be to win this war without killing anyone".

My friend was convinced, but in the end decided not to run the ad.

Vin Suprynowicz - Half-measures in the Klamath Valley - part of The Libertarian series. Radically reform or repeal the Endangered Species Act. Do it today. It's too late for the farmers in the Klamath Valley, but it's not too late to prevent further atrocities against good, hard-working Americans.

The findings of credible scientists hired by the Klamath irrigators suggest the suckers are doing far better than federal biologists have suggested. Their populations, which numbered about 5,000 in the lake when the species were listed as endangered more than a decade ago, have swelled to at least 100,000, and might actually be harmed by excess water behind the dam, according to those reports -- which federal courts have so far refused to consider.

But that's not even the main point. Congress was duped in 1973 into passing the Endangered Species Act by assurances it would be used primarily to make sure the continent's last grizzly bear, last bison, or last bald eagle wasn't shot as a pest and sold for dog food.

Instead, the ESA has been widely used by the green extreme to identify a "marker" subspecies in virtually any eco-system, like the "threatened" bull trout of the Jarbidge Canyon, the "threatened" Mojave Desert Tortoise (now so plentiful in government shelters that they have to be euthanized) -- even threatened maggots or invisible blue butterflies that "might" someday visit the coastal grasslands of Southern California -- thus using the Act to block virtually any kind of proposed new progress or development.

The Libertarian Enterprise has a new issue, "More Harm Than Good?" Check out Vin Suprynowicz'es 'Stop Complying Now ... Don't Give the Government Regulated Airlines Your Business' and We Have a Volunteer if you haven't read them yet. Other articles I liked:

• Letter from Jack Jerome - Danger Will Robinson! The Nazis are crawling out of the woodwork.

  Not surprisingly, most sheep prefer limits to their rights to assemble, search and seizure, gun control, due process, and privacy. Right now in Manhattan, you may be summarily and randomly stopped to be frisked and your car searched. Right now in Washington D.C. you may be detained and confined (arrested???) for what authorities THINK you might know or what you may have witnessed. Right now sophisticated search programs operating out of Fort Meade, Maryland and Langley Virginia ARE reading your e-mail as fast as is inhumanly possible. Finally, right now our new Attorney General is asking to further abridge your rights with a Congressional rubberstamp.

• Letter from Jeff Colonnesi - a long-winded list of ideas about what to do about the criminals who bombed the WTC & Pentagon. I haven't thought much about these, though in general I think the chance of convincing Muslim women to kill their husbands is miniscule at best, but I did like one paragraph:

  Fifth) (Though this should actually be done first.) Repeal every single law on the books that prevents individuals from carrying weapons. Not just guns. But knives, tear gas, collapsible batons, and anything else some precious soul wants to carry to defend themselves. Tell the various states that the feds are going to start prosecuting ANY state official that continues to try to enforce state or local weapons laws. And dismantle the ridiculous war on drugs. We lost anyway. And we learned back during W.W.II how foolish it was to try to fight a war on two fronts. The money, material and personnel can be better used to find and stop terrorists. And the economic boost that the legalization of marijuana alone would give would turn this "recession" around.

• Letter from Sunni Maravillosa & Jeff "The Hunter" Jordan - Sunni and Hunter's Project: Safe Skies site will offically launch on Thursday, October 11. They're asking for links and stories.
• Letter from fear republic - apparently, Free Republic has been brimming with war fever since Bloody Tuesday. http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/fear4republic is a bit of satire aimed in their direction. Hehe.
• Letter from Scott Cattanach - links to Death on a Very Small Planet, a site with pictures contrasting Belgrade in 1999 and New York in 2001. What they did to us a month ago we did to them 2 years ago. Convenient how everybody forgets, eh? Not that either attack was justified.
• Letter from C Bussjaeger - "I don't want to live in a police state anymore." Me, neither.
• We Want to Live by David M. Brown - stay on the sunny side. Why Americans have rallied behind the flag.

  And America is a place where people can live, better than in a great many other places in the world. We can because of the abundance of material wealth here, yes. Also because of the abundance of freedom and opportunity we still enjoy, notwithstanding all the roadblocks the busybody bureaucrats and politicians insist on plunking in our path. In America, we can make ourselves a to-do list and then, for the most part, we can actually go about doing the things that are on the to-do list, crossing them off one by one as we go along. Try doing that in Russia -- or Afghanistan. Ask a woman in Afghanistan what's next on her to-do list.

• "Our Power is Our Right" by Sean Gruber - Strong piece. Strong piece. Bravo!

  A bully is a truly disgusting person. He or she is a person that feels validated only when they are controlling. What would George Bush 2 do without power? I don't think he could be happy without someone to boss around. And what is even better for Bush and all of his type, is that the very people whom they impose it upon, praise them for their tyranny. What could be better for a rapist, then to hear his victim scream out during the act, 'you are such a noble rapist, for I could have never achieved this orgasm if you would have left it up to me to decide whether or not I would have sexual intercourse with you, for I am too simple of the mind to have decided for myself'? Or 'you are such a noble leader for outlawing some drugs and taking the decision out of my hands, for I am too simple of mind to have decided whether or not I would have put them into my body'?

Lord13 at Kuro5hin - Can I Have Your Zip Code? - interesting discussion of stores asking for zip codes and other personal information. [kuro5hin]

Richard Stallman at NewsForge - Who will watch the watchmen? - RMS comments on the push for new police powers in the name of combatting terrorism. [newsforge]

Today the security forces want to be allowed to seize credit card information from Internet sites without a court order; they want to be able to record what URLs you look at without a court order, which can tell them such information as what books you have bought. There will be no difficulty getting a court to approve a search warrant when there is credible evidence of a terrorist plot, so they can investigate terrorists without this change. Whenever police ask to be allowed to bypass search warrants, we must be on guard.

...

Will the FBI stick to reason in deciding what is a "terrorist group?" Not if recent experience is any guide. On May 10, 2001, FBI director Louis Freeh testifying to Congress on the "threat of terrorism to the United States" listed Reclaim the Streets as a terrorist threat. Reclaim the Streets sets up surprise street parties, where people play music and dance. It is described in the book No Logo, by Naomi Klein, as one of the new forms of protest against global brand-dominated culture. No person has ever been killed or wounded by Reclaim the Streets. Can't the FBI distinguish between dancing and murder?

...

If an FBI agent asks for our cooperation, what should we do? The FBI investigates and arrest terrorists. If the FBI were investigating a plot to hijack planes, I would want to help all I could. But the same FBI arrested Dmitry Sklyarov for allegedly developing a program that Americans can use to escape from the shackles of Adobe e-books. No one should cooperate with an investigation of that kind of "crime." If you don't know whether a policeman is looking to arrest a person for murder or for smoking a joint, how can you determine what right conduct would be?

If the United States wants to obtain full cooperation for the FBI and the police from all Americans, it should abolish laws that shackle and harm Americans. Congress should repeal the DMCA, and the prohibition of certain drugs.

John Everitt at Firetrench - Freenet: Opinion, Opinion: Freenet - the author's opinion of Freenet. Bottom line: he likes it, though he thinks it is currently being used by fairly seedy characters. [newsforge]

It's a complicated question and can you make an informed choice? I think everyone who has a stake in freedom of speech should use systems such as Freenet. This is in effect an actualisation of freedom of speech. The clientele is pretty seedy at the moment, but don't let this put you off publishing. Peer 2 peer pressure may work and there may be some things that you want to say without revealing your identity. It does maybe show you the flip-side of freedom of speech and the advantages of freedom of speech.

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