Capitalism Heals
"It's no accident that for the most part, the news is dominated by people whose value is largely driven by how much publicity they receive: politicians, athletes and entertainers. The people who actually make the world work - people in private industry, rank-and-file government employees and conscientious parents - are largely invisible in the news, except when they're unlucky enough to make one of the rare mistakes that reporters manage to find out about." -- Mike Gordon
Kevin Tuma - Tarpit - cartoon commentary on U.S. dependence on Arab oil. Hehe.
# John Lopez at GeekWithA.45 - Comment on this article, quoted below in its entirety. Mr. Lopez lists no-treason.com as his web page, and his name is in the masthead there. [geekwitha.45]
Here's the deal: individual liberty is fundamentally incompatible with coercive government.
The moment you whip out The Gun and clap it to some poor bastard's head and compel him to pay for your values, you've just repudiated the whole idea of individual liberty.
And of course The Gun is how the US government (and all others) works from top to bottom: "Under every stack of government paperwork is a loaded gun".
You're quite correct about the value of questioning fundamental principles, and the liberty/government conflict is one you might want to think about sorting out.
# Ian McCollum via Claire Wolfe - After-action Report: Operation Capitalism Heals (Geneva) - a report on a Bureaucrash operation at a WHO conference in Switzerland. Butter-and-cream sauce served next to anti-fattening-foods propaganda. Health nazis smoking. Article is also here at Bureaucrash'es site. [claire]
The final Crash of the day was at an auditorium on the other side of the city, where desperate health-o-crat German Velasquez was screening a documentary film called "Profits or Life?", about his attacks on pharmaceutical patents. During the film (which should have been subtitled "A study in false dichotomy") we distributed flyers pointing out the numerous idiocies in the film's arguments. This flustered the organizers a bit...and they got really unhappy when they found their discussion session Crashed by tough questions. Unsurprisingly, the panel members refused to answer most of our questions (including ones like why, when they claimed to be acting for the good of Africa, they had no Africans on their panel). Nor could they explain things like why capitalistic charity groups have proven so much more effective than lumbering, tax-funded UN bureaucracies. Circulating among the attendees afterwards, we found that we had gotten many of the attendees thinking seriously about the issue, and many expressed support for our ideas.
# Michael Berg at Guardian Unlimited - George Bush never looked into Nick's eyes - Nick Berg's father blames Bushnev and Rumsfeld for his son's death as much as the guy who wielded the knife. [unknown]
My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.
# Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.com - Why Ashcroft Must Go: What happened to Brandon Mayfield could happen to anybody - spirited away by federal goons on minimal evidence and held incommunicado. [grabbe]
The entire argument of the War Party, whether in foreign or domestic policy, is that preemptive action based on sketchy intelligence is a necessary part of the post-9/11 new world reality. Sure, we couldn't know that Saddam had WMD or links to Al Qaeda, they aver, but we couldn't afford to wait for reasonable certainty -- "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," as Condoleezza Rice put it on national television. So what if we're dragged into an endless, draining conflict in Iraq, and, perhaps, elsewhere in the Middle East. Don't worry: you'll get used to it!
The same principle applies to domestic law enforcement: we can't afford to wait for proof, the rules of evidence must be relaxed, and the old constraints on government power no longer apply. So what if innocents like Mayfield -- and who knows how many others -- are trampled underfoot? You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs: isn't that what the Marxists used to say in defense of the Soviet gulags?
Don't worry -- you'll get used to it.
