New Years 2005

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 01 Jan 2005 13:00:00 GMT

# From stanleyscoop:

"You don't expect government officials and bureaucrats to obey the law because of high moral standards; You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." -- Michael Shirley

# From kaba:

"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church, for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." -- Robert A. Heinlein

# I remember thinking as a child that I would be forty-four years old in the year 2000. Well, here it is 2005. I pass the half century mark in only 15 months, assuming I survive that long. Hard to believe.

The blessings of liberty to you and yours in this new year.

# I got a new fuse yesterday for my twenty-year-old PS Audio Elite Integrated amplifier's power supply. It blew the instant I inserted the plug. Time to get a new amp.

# John Kaminsky - JohnKaminsky.com - can you say "conspiracy theory"? Thought you could. But what if there really is a conspiracy? Many of Mr. Kaminsky's articles are posted at WarFolly.com. [clairefiles]

"The Perfect Enemy" reveals that the al-Qaeda terror network is a fictional creation of the bloodthirsty maniacs who have seized control of the United States of America and now threaten the health and well-being of everyone in the world. It is also the title of the pivotal essay in John Kaminski's second collection of Internet essays, which have been featured on hundreds of websites around the world.

...

THE DAY AMERICA DIED
Having trouble convincing your friends and family that the U.S. government is lying to us and that the so-called terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 were actually an inside job?

Here is the evidence you need to change their minds!

...

AMERICA'S AUTOPSY REPORT
The Internet Essays Of John Kaminski

The false fabric of History is unraveling beneath an avalanche of pathological lies to justify endless war and Orwellian new laws that revoke the rights of all Americans. While TV and newspapers glorify the dangerous ideas of perverted billionaires, the Internet has pulsated with outrage and provided a new and real forum for freedom among concerned people all over the world who are opposed to the mass murder and criminal exploitation of the defenseless victims of multinational corporate totalitarianism.

# Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home Magazine - The Little Trailer that Could - on using a trailer as a versatile super bug-out-bag, and how to improve the DC electrical system.

In these parts, about every third homestead has a trailer sitting in its driveway or its backyard. A few of these are brand-new highway palaces, bigger and fancier than most Hardyville houses. But most are older travel trailers -- the kind of thing you can pick up for $750 or a thousand bucks in the weekly Wooden Nickel or Hardyville Horsetrader or whatever your local freebie paper is called.

...

If your trailer is parked permanently, you may be able to create a full-scale solar or wind system for it. But I'm in the process of coming up with a more modest (but also less expensive), "even-a-girl-can-do-it" retrofit. For a few hundred dollars, this system will give my very own Herb Tarlek Haven a bit of power independence in two stages.

# Garry Reed, The Loose Cannon Libertarian - The Christmas Grinch List - Mr. Reed checks out some post-election predictions from a stolen-election complainer.

Immediately following what rabid Rightists dubbed "The most important election in the history of civilization" (i.e., the 2004 presidential vote-fest) came much teeth-grinding, fist-shaking and hair-yanking from losing Lefties about the "Stolen Election." Apparently, after generations of Democrats reportedly stealing elections from Republicans, the liberal set was shocked, shocked that the neocons just might have learned how to steal one from them.

Hollywood vainbrains vowed to flee the country while enraged Bush-bashers bogged down the email maze and webways with Appalling Predictions rivaling the Biblical End Times. One such digital diatribe contained the following foreboding forecast based on the Bush ballot win:

"... just wait until Christmas when gas prices are $3.25 a gallon, the stock market is floundering around 9,000, unemployment hits a 14-year high, Congress issues itself another pay raise, the military announces a "new forced retention" program, and the death toll in Iraq has topped 2,000 (yes, I'm making a prediction)."

# Clive Thompson at Wired - The BitTorrent Effect - on Bram Cohen's distributed download protocol. A new beta was released just 12 days ago. [wes]

The Pirate Bay is a BitTorrent tracking site in Sweden with 150,000 users a day. In the fall, it posted a torrent for Shrek 2. Dreamworks sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the site remove it. One of the site's pseudonymous owners, Anakata, replied: "As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe [and] US law does not apply here. ... It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are fucking morons." Shrek 2 stayed up.

...

The music industry watched songs get stolen for years, yet as soon as it gave people what they wanted - a reasonably cheap and easy way to pay for individual tracks - customers swarmed to the legal option: the iTunes Music Store. What if the movie industry pursued a similar model? Use peercasting to distribute movies cheaply, and make it so easy and inexpensive that most of people will go the legal route. As BigChampagne's Garland points out, the film industry might even find that it will be easier for them to bring customers to its side than it is for the music industry, because Hollywood doesn't suffer from the problems that plagued the record business. Music buyers had long felt bitter about album prices. Moviegoers generally do not feel that way about films. While music consumers want to own their MP3s forever, movies are usually a one-hit blast - fewer viewers will want to permanently own the movies. That means creating a digital rights management system for downloadable movies is likely to be a lot easier than it is for music. Music lovers hate DRM limits on their MP3s because they expect their music to behave like a piece of property - something they can own forever and transfer from device to device. In contrast, Blockbuster has long proven that people are happy to just rent movies.

...

Cohen knows the havoc he has wrought. In November, he spoke at a Los Angeles awards show and conference organized by Billboard, the weekly paper of the music business. After hobnobbing with "content people" from the record and movie industries, he realized that "the content people have no clue. I mean, no clue. The cost of bandwidth is going down to nothing. And the size of hard drives is getting so big, and they're so cheap, that pretty soon you'll have every song you own on one hard drive. The content distribution industry is going to evaporate." Cohen said as much at the conference's panel discussion on file-sharing. The audience sat in a stunned silence, their mouths agape at Cohen's audacity.

# RemainStanding.com sells self-defense products via mail order. Stun guns, pepper sprays, mace, tasers, spy & surveillance equipment, knives, martial arts, batons, crossbows, sling shot, blowguns, soft air guns, alarms. No physical address in evidence, but their shipping map implies that they are in North Carolina. I did NOT add them to my Arms Manufacturers page because of the lack of a mailing address.

Add comment Edit post Add post

Previous Posts:
December 2004
S&W 500: BOOM!!
Printing Money for War and Profit
Slavespeak
Barely More Sentient than a Parrot
Real Crime vs. Legislated Garbage
Autism is Not a Disease
Chocolate Mint Pie
Blessed Be!
Light the Whole World

Navigation

History

Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair