End the War on Freedom

# Volker Weber at vowe dot net - Life explained - well, that clears that up. Hehe. [picks]

From this entry at pournelle:

War IS mistreatment; war IS abuse; and "carrying the war to the enemy," "fighting them in Iraq rather than Manhattan" IS to detain innocents without cause, disrupt lives, generate hatred for the United States, leave bitter memories, and probably generate recruits for al Qaeda or for ANY organization that may be able to strike a blow against the Yankee imperialists. We knew that going in. Didn't we? Surely we could predict such things. I could and did. Surely our leaders who are paid to think about such things knew better than I did. Certainly our Colonels did.

Which is not to say that it is automatically wrong to take the war to the enemy. If it's true that this is the only way to stop "them" from coming after us, then keep on sewing hoods and shipping cable ties to Baghdad; but make damned sure this is the only way to accomplish that job.

Once an army gets used to brutalizing civilians, it is not quite the same army; and when it comes home it is not the army sent out. Surely we all know this?

# I put down a deposit on a Marlin 1894P, a lever-action carbine in .44 Magnum. I expect to have it paid for by the end of the summer. Nice next gun for my daughter (and me) to shoot. 16.25" ported barrel, 8-shot magazine, 5.75 lb., overall length 33.25", fires .44 Magnum or .44 special. Marlin no longer makes this rifle, so I was lucky to find a new one. I'll, of course, buy reloading dies for it. My Speer reloading book says that a 20" barrel can push a 240 grain projectile at over 1700 fps, so I should be able to get close to that. Not as potent as my 444P, but still effective, and I'm betting it will be a blast to shoot. Hopefully, One Ragged Hole's One Hole Sight will be available for it by then.

# Claire Wolfe - Wanna See the Cover for the New Book? - a few words about Bob Crabb, her artist, and an image of the cover of The Freedom Outlaw's Handbook. Click on the image to the right for higher resolution version at her web site. [claire]

# Jeff Head - Dragon's Fury - Eagle's Talons: Death of An Uprising in Hamadan - this is the second available excerpt from the fifth and last volume in Mr. Head's World War III series. He expects it to be available in July. This excerpt is chilling. Imagine a government with such weapons at its disposal. Big Brother with millions of robotic sticks.

# Anthony Gregory at Strike the Root - The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories - conspiracy theories are fun. Uncovering conspiracies can be useful. But until we get rid of the gorilla of all conspiracies, the very existence of the modern state, it ain't worth much of anybody's time to pursue the small potatoes. [root]

We may never know the full truth about Oklahoma City , the Kennedy brothers, TWA , flight 800, and the murder of Nick Berg. Historians can't even agree on who set the Reichstag fire.

But we do know that whether the Nazis, Communists, or anarchists burned down the Reichstag, it spawned the emergence of Adolph Hitler's murder spree. And we do know that whatever the unknowable details surrounding September 11, the U.S. government has grown to an unprecedented size and threatens the peace and freedom of millions of human beings worldwide.

# Elaine Cassel at Counterpunch - Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later - some folks say, when the Busheviks are compared to the Nazis, that it's not even close. After all, the Busheviks haven't started loading people into cattle cars. Well, they're not doing it out in the open, but lots of people, U.S. citizens included, are being "disappeared", especially from Europe and the Middle East. [counterpunch]

Speaking of loading people in train cars, the Washington Post last week finally reported on imprisonment abroad of thousands of people, American citizens and others, who are being held by the CIA in what is politely known as a "rendition." These "detainees" are in no way protected by any law whatsoever. I have been in touch with one family whose son is imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. He is American citizen, a resident of Virginia, and a student at a Saudi university. Last June, he was seized by Saudi law enforcement as he prepared to come home for the summer. Though the U.S. government denies publicly even knowing that he is there, sources tell me that he was held initially because he "knew" some of the men charged as the Alexandria 11, those notorious Muslim men about to be sentenced for 50 to 100 years for playing paintball, supposedly in preparation for "jihad." The Saudis deny that they have the man. Contacts from him to his family confirm that he is indeed imprisoned there. American lawyers are helpless to do anything for him, and no Saudi lawyer dare even attempt to visit him (so I am told by a Saudi lawyer).

Well, how about the fact that thousands of Americans are disappearing like this, and being held out of reach of family, attorneys, or courts? Does that make you think a little harder about blowing this off as not Nazi-esque? Maybe you ought to keep this in mind as you make summer travel plans, especially if they take you across the Atlantic. Last week, the European Union announced that the airlines of EU countries would share complete passenger information with American law enforcement prior to airline departures. The government (or one of its tens of thousands of contractors who work without complete immunity from federal law or oversight if they are contracted by the Department of Homeland Security) will scan the lists and take action against any people whose names are the same or similar to those on its "terrorist" watch list. Note that I said the names are the same or similar. Not that the identities are. Big difference, don't you think?

What kind of action is taken against those whose names are the same or similar? Either detentions abroad (from hours to days) to detentions in the US upon landing (federal agents board planes, handcuff you, and take you away for interrogation, denying you a call to your family, let alone a lawyer). If you are very, very unlucky, you, too, could be "rendered" abroad, taken from say an airport in Paris to Syria (yes, Syria is one of the most popular countries for sending our own or other citizens for torture and interrogation) where you won't be heard from again unless you are very, very lucky.

# Murray N. Rothbard at The Ludwig von Mises Institute - The Case for a Genuine Gold Dollar - motivation for and a roadmap to elimination of the federal reserve and a return to 100% reserve banking with a gold-backed dollar. Reprinted from The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School. Long, but worth reading. [stanleyscoop]

In recent years an increasing number of economists have understandably become disillusioned by the inflationary record of fiat currencies. They have therefore concluded that leaving the government and its central bank power to fine tune the money supply, but abjuring them to use that power wisely in accordance with various rules, is simply leaving the fox in charge of the proverbial henhouse. They have come to the conclusion that only radical measures can remedy the problem, in essence the problem of the inherent tendency of government to inflate a money supply that it monopolizes and creates. That remedy is no less than the strict separation of money and its supply from the state.

...

We can do much better, and there seems little point in going to the trouble of advocating and working for fundamental reform while neglecting to hold up the standard of the best we can achieve. If in our disillusionment with central banking, we call for abolition of the Federal Reserve and a return to some form of free banking, what route could we then take toward that goal? The closest approximation to a free banking-and-gold standard was the American economy from the 1840s to the Civil War, in which there was no form of central banking, and each bank had to redeem its notes and deposits promptly in gold. But in working toward such a system, we must realize that we now have a gold supply nationalized in the coffers of the Federal Reserve. Abolition of the Federal Reserve would mean that its gold supply now kept in Treasury depositories would have to be disgorged and returned to private hands. But this gives us the clue to the proper definition of a gold dollar. For in order to liquidate the Federal Reserve and remove the gold from its vaults, and at the same time tie gold to the dollar, the Federal Reserve's gold must be revalued and redefined so as to be able to exchange it, one for one, for dollar claims on gold. The Federal Reserve's gold must be valued at some level, and it is surely absurd to cleave to the fictitious $42.22 when another definition at a much lower weight would enable the one-for-one liquidation of the Federal Reserve's liabilities as well as transferring its gold from governmental to private hands.

Let us take a specific example. At the end of December 1981, Federal Reserve liabilities totaled approximately $179 billion ($132 billion in Federal Reserve notes plus $47 billion in deposits due to the commercial banks). The Federal Reserve owned a gold stock of 265.3 million ounces. Valued at the artificial $42.22 an ounce, this yielded a dollar value to the Federal Reserve's gold stock of $11.2 billion. But what if the dollar were defined so that the Federal Reserve's gold stock equaled, dollar for dollar, its total liabilities--that is, $179 billion? In that case, gold would be defined as equal to $676 an ounce, or, more accurately, the dollar would be newly defined as equal to, and redeemable in 1/676 gold ounce. At that new weight, Federal Reserve notes would then be promptly redeemed, one for one, in gold coin, and Federal Reserve demand deposits would be redeemed in gold to the various commercial banks. The gold would then constitute those banks' reserves for their demand deposits. The abolition of Federal Reserve notes need not, of course, mean the end of all paper currency; for banks, as before the Civil War, could then be allowed to print bank notes as well as issue demand deposits.

This plan, essentially the one advocated by Congressman Ron Paul (R.-Texas), would return us speedily to something akin to the best monetary system in U.S. history, the system from the abolition of the Second Bank of the United States and the pet banks, to the advent of the Civil War. Inflation and business cycles would be greatly muted, if not eliminated altogether. Add the abolition of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the requirement of instant payment of demand liabilities on pain of insolvency, and the long overdue legalization of interstate branch banking, and we would have a system of free banking such as advocated by many writers and economists.

# Miles Fortis & A K Church at Gunblast - Buffalo Bore's Heavy .357 Magnum - bear medicine in .357 Magnum caliber. A dollar a round. Standard pressure, but still pushes a 180 grain hunk of lead at 1500 fps from a handgun or 1800 fps from a rifle. Noticeable recoil. [gunblast]

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