End the War on Freedom

Lux Lucre - Girls are Evil, A Mathematical Proof - Flash animation. Hehe.

Lux Lucre - Merger - Flash animation. What would happen if the Demicans and the Republocrats stopped pretending they were different?

Lux Lucre - The Atlanta Declaration - Flash animation of L. Neil Smith's classic RKBA statement.

Lux Lucre's Flash Page - more animations, some in multiple languages, including the wonderful and incredible The Philosophy of Liberty. Most have reasonable loading times over a modem connection.

Harry Stein at Strange Cosmos - How Insidious Political Correctness Can Be: How I Was Smeared - in a speech decrying political correctness, Mr. Stein used the word "nigger" while telling a story of his son's interactions with a teacher over Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Big mistake. Now he's been labelled a racist and the man who invited him to give the speech may be denied Alan Greenspan's position heading the Fed. Kike, Spic, Wop, Nigger, Chink, Wasp. There. Now you can call me a racist, too. Words by themselves are not racist folks. Only the use to which you put them can be racist. [smith2004]

Irene Harnischberg of AP via Tampa Bay Online - U.S. Military Planes Banned From Swiss Airspace Except for Iraq Surveillance, Aid Missions - good for the Swiss. [rrnd]

Switzerland banned U.S. military planes Friday from using its airspace unless they are on humanitarian missions or providing support for U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq.

The decision, which came at a special meeting of the federal cabinet, further complicates U.S. flights between the Persian Gulf and U.S. air bases in Germany and Britain. Austria adopted a similar ban last week.

Thomas L. Knapp at Strike the Root - So Smash the State, Already! - let's stop arguing about which brand of anarchism would be best. The problem at hand is the existence of the state. [rrnd]

Governments seem to have outright murdered in excess of 170 million of "their" citizens in the 20th century alone -- and that excludes another 40 or 50 million killed in the 20th century states' gangland feuds ("wars").

When it wasn't busy murdering people, the 20th century state was busy mugging them. Just to throw out a random factoid, the 26 states comprising the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had a bottom taxation level of around 25% of their Gross Domestic Products from 1965-2000.

Don't even get me started on the costs of regulation, the enforcement of "laws" against "crimes" which have no victims, the rate of imprisonment or the sheer bloody humiliation of being required to kneel before some bureaucrat (whose wages are paid by said prostrate serf) and ask "permission" to exercise "privileges" which the poor peasant, likewise, paid the cost of providing in the first place.

Vin Suprynowicz at The Las Vegas Review-Journal - Why not just outlaw the potatoes? - commentary on the recent news about potato guns in Germany and Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. [rrnd]

"The guns are not governed by the usual strict firearms regulations in Germany, but prosecutors in the republic's 16 states are passing emergency rulings to try to outlaw them. ...

"Police are considering asking leading hardware chains to sell piping only to adults. Local stores that sell hairsprays and pressurised lighter fluid, the favourite propellants for the weapons, may also be asked to sell them only to adults. ... "

And heck, if that doesn't work, they can always ban potatoes. They're only teen-agers -- they'll never figure out they can switch to turnips.

When will the totalitarians (functional definition: only the government police can have guns) figure this out? Trying to disarm industrious young males who want to blow things up is about as productive an endeavor as the king in the old fairy tale trying to destroy all the needles in his kingdom, so his daughter wouldn't be able to prick her finger, as foretold in the witch's curse.

...

In an article for Forbes, Fritz points out, reporter Dan Lyons found multiple distortions in Moore's documentary. Among the most significant: "The much-celebrated scene at the beginning of the film where Moore receives a gun at a bank in return for setting up a certificate of deposit turns out to be false.

"In reality, customers at the branch where Moore shot the scene are normally required to pick up their guns at a local (gun) store. ... Yet Moore makes it look like it's standard practice to receive a gun right there, even joking before he walks out, 'Here's my first question: Do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?' "

Deutsche Welle - Remembering the "White Rose" - Besides being George Washington's birthday, February twenty-second is the anniversary of the 1943 execution of three German students, Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst, who called themselves "White Rose", for distributing anti-nazi pamphlets. I reported about The White Rose on 4 December, 2000 with a link to Jacob Hornberger's The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent (link updated), and the book, The White Rose, about them written by Inge Scholl, Sophie's sister. [rrnd]

Matthias Heyl, however, believes that once young people learn about the history of the "White Rose", they can identify with the members of the group even today.

"When one looks at the biographies of Hans and Sophie Scholl and the other members of the "White Rose", one realizes that they were completely normal people who used their ordinary opportunities to do something extraordinary," he says.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel - Editorial: Beware of a Patriot Act II - a warning about the proposed "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003", aka Patriot II. Fairly good editorial except for the following misunderstanding: [rrnd]

Another section of the bill would make it easier for the federal government to strip Americans of their citizenship if they supported groups deemed to be subversive. Ordinarily, it is not possible to impose this terrible sanction on Americans unless they voluntarily renounce their citizenship.

Under a section titled "Expatriation of Terrorists," however, an intent to renounce citizenship could be "inferred from conduct," so that a cash contribution to, say, a group the government considered suspect could become grounds for expatriation. In such a case, the ex-American would lose all his or her constitutional rights and become legally naked in the face of government power.

I sent the following letter to the editor:

I applaud the Journal-Sentinel editors for warning of the proposed Patriot Act II, further tyranny in the name of security. I'm writing to take issue with a small, but important, detail in their February 24 editorial. In explaining the section of the proposed legislation titled "Expatriation of Terrorists", they wrote "In such a case, the ex-American would lose all his or her constitutional rights and become legally naked in the face of government power."

American citizens and foreign visitors do not have constitutional rights. There is no such thing as a constitutional right. All human beings have inalienable rights granted by their creator. The protection of these rights is the only purpose of government. The Constitution gives limited and enumerated powers to the government and lists some of the most important rights of the people, e.g. the right to free speech and the right to keep and bear arms. But the Constitution does not grant these rights. They, and other human rights, are ours by virtue of our birth on the planet.

That expatriots would "become legally naked in the face of government power" is a common misconception. Foreign visitors to the United States have the same rights as citizens. They have the right to a trial by a jury of their peers. They may not be compelled to testify against themselves. They have the right to be confronted with the witnesses against them. They enjoy every right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

None of these rights may be infringed by law. Any law that attempts to do so is unconstitional, hence null and void. Anyone who proposes, votes for, or enforces such a law should be brought before a grand jury to consider a criminal indictment under 18 USC 242, "Deprivation of rights under color of law."

Susan Schmidt at The Washington Post - U.S. Targets Purveyors Of Gear for Illicit Drugs - Herr Führer Ashcroft is at it again. This time he's arresting people who sell water pipes. Sheesh. [rrnd]

A Gizabi at Janes - Sinking into the Afghan swamp - think the U.S. won the war in Afghanistan? Think again. [rrnd]

US forces have used tactics that are offensive to Afghans. They treated every Afghan with suspicion as if he was a member of Al-Qaeda; they entered houses without permission; they body-searched women - a taboo in the Muslim world, especially in Afghanistan; and they bombed innocent civilians and arrested and mistreated people, all because of mistaken identity or misinformation. They did not show sensitivity to Afghan culture.

Perhaps the most serious tactical error was the restoration of warlords in Afghanistan. The common people were disaffected by the proteges and stooges of foreign occupiers who had carved Afghanistan into fiefdoms. Most or all of them were driven out by the Taliban and Pakistan and the remainder were on the verge of collapse or on the run. One of the last was commander Masoud, who had lost most of his territory and was forced to retreat to the banks of Oxus river. One of the main reasons for the Taliban's ascendence to power was their rejection of the warlords. However, US forces brought the warlords back, arming, financing and guiding them back to their lost thrones. Worse yet, they even created some new ones, the so-called 'American warlords'.

George F. Smith at Strike the Root - What Killed the Four Horsemen? - a simplified telling of the death of the constitution at the hands of the depression-era Supreme Court. [rrnd]

It was fun passing laws. It made the politicians feel important. But there was a problem: the economy got worse. The politicians knew why. Many of the laws they passed were struck down by a group that wasn't elected by the people. This group was called the Supreme Court.

Certain members of the Court said the politicians' laws violated the Constitution.The politicians explained to the people that the Constitution now meant something different than what it had meant all along. To help the people understand, the politicians called it a Living Constitution. Things that live, change. And so the Living Constitution had changed. But certain Court members were too old to understand this.

Russell Madden at Laissez Faire Electronic Times - Learning from Past Wars - Mr. Madden has seen the error of his ways. Hehe. [rrnd]

Add comment Edit post Add post