The beginning of the end...of government paper?

It's inevitable.

If not now or with this system, later, with another.

"E-dinar is the name of an Internet based
electronic payment (www.e-dinar.com) and exchange
system that facilitates gold backed transactions
backed by physical gold. Each e-dinar electronic
unit corresponds to an exact, fixed weight of
4.25 grams of pure 24k gold. So if an account
holder wants to send a specific amount to another
account, he just does it by a mouse click through
encryption. He also has the option to exchange
his e-dinars into any major currency or redeem
them and take physical possession of an
equivalent amount of gold dinars."

The gold itself is stored in Dubai at the
Transguard Storage Company. No metal may be
removed from storage except to cover out
exchanges and redemption orders from e-dinar
customers.

At e-dinar there is no minimum amount for any
transaction. If a customer wants just $5 worth of
gold, they’ll execute the exchange (without
hidden surcharges or exorbitant commission). The
conclusion is that the e-dinar is not just
another currency, it is a universal means of
exchange.

According to the e-dinar website they have amicably
separated from e-gold.

Interesting article.

The Unsystem discussed - Laws of the Jungle

This post is longer than I usually do because I
doubt many will read the original.

Allen [the author] has his shit together.

Pull your chair up close. This will light your fire
no matter which side of the fence you straddle...
even if you sit squarely on the center of it.

Anarchy is like jazz; it is the continuous
creation of social forms in real time.

Most jazz fans will see this. What about the rest?
Do you need to be a jazz aficionado to see this?

...Democracy, then, is not essentially different
from monarchy or oligarchy; it is merely the
extension of oligarchy to give more people power
over others. But the twentieth century claims to
give us universal democracy. "The people rule
themselves" also means "The people are their own
slaves." This fiction of universal democracy, of
everyone sharing political power, is like a
cannibal eating his own foot.

The two-party system is a shell game with two
shells and no pea under either of them. The
Democrats are symbolized by a donkey and the
Republicans are symbolized by an elephant. But
the two parties are a jackal and a vulture
fighting over a corpse.

Don't forget to add any other political party,
current, or yet non-existent who comes on the
scene.

...You say you believe in democracy. Good. I want
to ask you a certain question: "If you had the
power, how would you change the government?"

Think about it. Would you give more money to the
poor? Maybe you'd like to reduce the size of
government? Would you take a more aggressive
stand against the Soviets? Maybe you'd be more
conciliatory. Would you reform the bureaucracies?
Would you crack down on the drug traffic? Would
you try to wipe out organized crime?

If you really believed in democracy, you would
say, "The people have already decided how to run
the government through their elected
representatives, and I would be wrong to impose
my will on them."

But you didn't think that. You say you believe
in democracy, but in your mind, you're already a
dictator.
...
The American's proudest boast is "This is a free
country," as though the government protected his
liberty. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Federal, state and local governments have passed
more laws restricting human action—that is,
liberty— than any other civilization. Think of a
law, however petty, meddlesome or tyrannous, and
you will find that it has been passed by some
government body in America. But some Americans
are natural lawbreakers; they were born
disobedient. It is they we should thank for our
liberties. We don't owe our remaining freedoms to
idealistic lawyers or Supreme Court justices. We
owe them to bigots, rum runners and pimps who
refuse to be governed.
...
You don't want to hear this talk of might versus
might. You don't want to hear about a jungle;
you're civilized. You want to believe that you
have certain rights and that the state protects
those rights. But anarchists say that you
surrendered your might, which is your money and
your obedience, to the state, and the state is
only a mask for other men. You are now in a
position of bondage to strangers over whom you
have only the slightest control.
...
Visions of Utopia. Plato had them. Nightmares.
Specters. Thomas More was subject to them. They
come into the world through a man's mind. Hitler
tried to create Utopia, the earthly paradise;
Lenin labored for it. A billion living people
have been sacrificed to this strange god, Utopia.

What is it? A giant named Procrustes had a bed,
and when a stranger wanted to spend the night,
the giant allowed him to sleep in it. But if the
traveler were shorter than the bed, the giant
stretched him on the rack; and if he were longer
than the bed, the giant cut off his feet. Utopia
is that bed.

Utopia is the individual creation of a single
mind, but the world is filled with billions of
minds. All the governments of the world are
utopian because they all aim to be the best
possible government. The closer they come to
perfect government, the more the man is made to
fit the mold, the less the man is what he is.

Then what is anarchy? Anarchy is anti-Utopia.

Warning: long read and not for the logically impared.

Via A Pox on All Their Houses.

A timeless tale of woe

"No," he answered me. "I'm going back because
I've seen this before." He then commenced to
explain that when he was a kid, he watched with
his family in fear as Hitler's government
committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was
willing to say anything. He said the news refused
to question the government, and the ones who did
were not in the newspaper business much longer.
He said good neighbors, people he had known all
his life, turned against his family and other
Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority "as
if they were starved for it" (his words).

He said he was too old to see it happen right in
front of his eyes again, and too old to do
anything about it, so he was taking his family
back to Europe on Thursday where they would be
safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He
seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if
being too young on one end and too old on the
other to fight what he saw happening was wearing
on him.

The man is right to vote with his feet, but here's
the kicker, the missing link.

Der Bush is just one player in a string of player's
or Muppets in this show and yet there isn't one in
a thousand who objects to His Rule who isn't waiting
til he gets His Man in office, thinking "my guy
will make it aw better".

No, the stage was set quite a while ago.

Meanwhile, the fat lady is still warming up offstage,
no matter how warm and fuzzy or mean and heartless
the current Muppet.

The short of it.

Thanks to L. Reichard White

On reform

REFORM, v.
A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed
to reformation. --Ambrose Bierce

Lazar's hydrogen-powered car

Lazar said, "Every major car company is working
on a hydrogen system, but the only difference is,
they want to sell you a new hydrogen car and sell
you hydrogen gas at hydrogen gas stations.
Basically, we're making a conversion kit you can
use in your own car and instead of buying
hydrogen from someone else, you make it."

Go git 'em, dude.

Now let's see what all this will cost.

The whole report.

Khordorkovsky on Freedom the Russian Way

In response to letters from the readers of the
Bolshoi Gorod magazine, Mikhail Khodorkovsky
talks about his own understanding of Russian
freedom – and why a revolution in Russia would be
disastrous.


Dear Friends!

I am glad that the events surrounding Yukos and
my imprisonment have given you an opportunity to
use another language and to talk, for once, about
something else.

I am grateful to prison because it has given me
a new understanding of freedom. That very freedom
that is inside a person. It’s not easy to acquire
this kind of freedom. Even prosecutors and police
are powerless against it. I am using the
understanding of human freedom as something that
does not depend on a diploma handed down by the
authorities. It is not a bank account, saved and
spent by its owner. Freedom is an indelible
aspect of a human being, a special aspect. It’s
either there, or it isn’t. If a person is
critically dependent on something beyond himself,
he is already not free. And this can be any
dependence: vodka, heroin, personal vanity, or
money. Once, I, just as a lot of my business
colleagues in the post-Soviet years, thought that
money emancipated its owner because it allowed
him to think of other things besides feeding
himself. In other words, that money significantly
widens the sphere of choices one has. Now I know
that there’s something very cunning about this
line of thinking. When you are forced to think
about the fate of your capital every waking day,
this is dependence, which means slavery.

Read.

Something in the air

"It seems that an essential condition for crises
is to be found in the existence of a highly
developed system of communications and the
spreading of a homogenous mentality over vast
areas.

But when the hour and the right material are at
hand, the contagion spreads with the speed of
electricity over hundreds of miles, and affects
the most diverse populations, which hardly know
each other. The message flies through the air and
they all suddenly agree on that one issue, if
only a sulky admission that 'there's got to be a
change.' " -- Jakob Burckhardt

Has anyone else noticed?

Again, the logarithmic spiral

Leonardo's favourite design for exploring the
flux and force of nature was the spiral, the
precise natural form now associated with the
Fibonacci numbers. He never theorised it, but
again and again, in contexts from curly hair to
whirlpools to shells, Da Vinci ceaselessly drew
the spiral with its implicit numerical
proportions 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 ...

The logarithmic spiral has a Strange Attraction
for me. I have 'em, in one form or another, all
over the house, like other people hang the
crucifix.

The spiral has got me.

Anyone else notice this?

Bach's obituary, co-written by his son, praised
him for discovering "the most hidden secrets of
harmony". Listening to The Art of Fugue I can't
hear numbers, let alone identify the Fibonacci
series. But I can feel, as can everyone, the
deep, flowing baroque curve of the universe.

Works for me.

A part of the whole spiral.

Real security

We know that US borders are porous, that major
targets are largely undefended, and that the
multicolor threat alert scheme known
affectionately as "the rainbow of doom" is a
national joke. Anybody who has been paying
attention probably suspects that if we rely on
orders from above to protect us, we'll be in
terrible shape. But in a networked era, we have
increasing opportunities to help ourselves. This
is the real source of homeland security: not
authoritarian schemes of surveillance and
punishment, but multichannel networks of advice,
information, and mutual aid.

...that's assuming there's even a threat.

Now read why.

Thanks to simmering frogs.

The pause that refreshes

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the
majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
-- Mark Twain(aka Samuel Clemens)

Strong encryption for dummies

In close to a month of testing, Ciphire Mail
performed almost perfectly on computers running
Windows XP and Mac OS X version 10.3, with
Outlook 2003, Eudora and the Thunderbird mail
clients on the Windows box, and Eudora and
Thunderbird on the Mac.

Setup was a snap: Just download and install the
client, choose which e-mail addresses you want to
associate with Ciphire, enter a password, and the
application sets itself up.

Working with the program is just as simple. When
two people using the Ciphire client exchange e-
mails, the client intercepts e-mail right after
the Send button is pressed, and before it leaves
the computer. The recipient's security
certificate is retrieved at the Ciphire
Certificate Directory, security checks are
performed, and then the message and any
attachments are encrypted with the recipient's
key.

Be sure to read the whole article and the manual
to avoid minor glitches.

I haven't used it yet.

Update:

The problem here is how do I know my private key
is secured on my machine since there is
communication with a central server when Ciphire
is used? How do I know my unencrypted message
doesn't end up in their files?

Read.

Uniquely man

"Man is the only animal that deals in that
atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one
that gathers his brethren about him and goes
forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate
his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid
wages will march out…and help to slaughter
strangers of his own species who have done him no
harm and with whom he has no quarrel. …And in the
intervals between campaigns he washes the blood
off his hands and works for "the universal
brotherhood of man" — with his mouth." - From
"What Is Man" -- Mark Twain(aka Samuel Clemens)

Do you suppose this yakking about the "universal
brotherhood of man" is the cause of the
blood that follows?

Nah. Couldn't be...

...or could it?

The real Russian Mafia - The Taxman

The European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development has called on Russian authorities for
more government transparency and budgetary
discipline. "It is necessary to toughen
macroeconomic policies after such strong growth
in order to cope with budgetary disbalance and
decrease inflation," the bank’s statement said.

Meanwhile, the Russian government is doing
completely the opposite. All the international
observers agree that the budgetary discipline has
been slacking. Preserving investor confidence
also seems highly unlikely considering that the
taxmen have a free rein, presenting back tax
claims left and right. EBRD experts believe that
Russia will soon see massive investor flight, as
investors begin taking money out of the economy
for fear of stricter state control.

According to the data provided by the Russian
Economy Ministry, in the first quarter of 2005
alone Russian companies and banks took $19
billion out of the country. This is the highest
amount in the history of the new Russian economy.

As long as the taxman has control, the economy is
finished.

Read.

It really is this simple

"What is politically defined as economic
'planning' is the forcible superseding of other
people's plans by government officials."
-- Thomas Sowell

This says nothing of all the other plans They have
in mind.

Uzbekistan - uncovering the bullshit

This is why the United States government – not
Russia, not China, not the various thugs who loom
large in the pantheon of thuggery for a moment,
then are quickly forgotten – is the main danger
to liberty worldwide. Precisely because its
leaders raise the banner of human freedom, and
then dip it in blood, soil it with every
imaginable crime, and carry it into battle for
reasons that have nothing to do with their
professed ideals, Washington stands in the way of
the realization of human freedom everywhere. This
is why we oppose America's foreign policy of
global intervention – not because we don't favor
the liberation of foreign peoples from the
shackles of whatever tyranny besets them, but
precisely because we do favor it. We realize,
though, that the interests of the American state,
qua state, can only drive it to betray and
actively sabotage the very ideals of "freedom"
and "democracy" it pretends to export.

The Dreams of Empire always trump any other dreams,
don't they.

But underneath, these 'dreams' are really only about
remaking the world in the image of The Empire of
the Moment. They're only excuses for agrandizement.

A very god-like attitude.

If you can't baffle 'em with bullshit, whack 'em
good and hard.

How many times have we seen it throughout history?

If you want to find out what this has to do with
Uzbekistan you'll have to read the full article.

The new cultural anthropology

There is no correlation between these Chinese
search terms and those most common in the West.
In fact, the search term frequencies appear to be
completely the inverse between Chinese and US
users. Entertainment ranks as the most common
search category in the US (66% at Accoona and 49%
at Wordtracker), while it ranks at 0% for China
in the Top 25 searches. Manufacturing ranks as
the second-most searched for category in China
(25%), while it ranks at 0% in the US Top 25
searches for both Accoona and Wordtracker.

Americans now seem to be in the 'bread and circus'
phase, don't they.

If you've been watching, you also know that's
nothing particularly new.

Read.

A hoax?

Leir said he doesn't claim to be an expert on
UFOs, but he is interested in learning more about
them. He has only to look at the sky on a clear
night to know something is out there.

"Look at the stars. You can't possibly believe
we are the only intelligent thing in the vastness
of the universe," he said.

And it's easy to conclude that aliens hover over
us, abduct people and implant ... something.

"Maybe they are coming to study us," Leir said.
"Or maybe they're just visiting Earth to get a
look at us, just like we go to the zoo."

Exactly...that last bit.

What else would we have to offer that an advanced
race would want aside from comedy?

The report.

New link

"I will not make any deals with you. I’ve
resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped,
indexed, briefed, debriefed or Numbered. My life
is my own. I resign!" - The Prisoner, Number 6

Via Paul Tietjens

Paul is also going in my links section. Now
take a look at one of his short stories.

Propaganda

The most effective "propaganda" should be messages
that you tend not to notice, because you agree with
it. Because it has already been effective. And
effective on you. (Think. We all like to point
away from us at the "masses." But isn't it at
least somewhat probable that we are part of the
masses, at least in some ways.)

Go through all the movies you've enjoyed - and
stirring novels - during the last few decades.
Find one in which the hero doesn't bond with the
audience in the first ten minutes by confronting
some kind of authority figure. Suspicion of
authority (SOA) is such a potent, dramatic
message, that even anti-modernist rants like the
Star Wars series play lip service to it.

The whole thing.

Don't miss the comments. Much good thinking there.

How to turn a good book into crap soup

Here's a fine, wild ride thru the Galaxy so I'm
adding it to my links here.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

That's the book.

Now the movie:

(Before you click on the next link read the whole
post.)

Get showtimes in your area by entering your zip
code in the box at the top on this page.

No, I haven't seen it yet but I won't miss it.

On second thought, after reading the movie
review, I gave up the idea.

More on the Human Comedy

Consider the ability to read or listen to any
news or conversations, and identify the routine
data contradictions or disconnects within
sentences or among each few sentences, to the
extent of either laughing or politely holding
your laughter at everything which frustrates or
anguishes nearly one hundred percent of the
humans. It is the laughter sought by all people.
It is the flawless identification of the extent
of the human comedy.

Now consider how easily the knowledge is
learned, while only a very small number of people
on Earth can understand the substance of these
words. If A equals B, and B equals C, then A
equals C, and so forth regardless of how many
equal units exist between the first and last
unit, by definition of the word, "equals". The
words simply hold their meaning, a concept that
no Americans are taught in any school or by any
parents or other adults, as is verifiable.

The human brain is a trained device. The
knowledge it holds is the result of training.

Read.

Just another in a long list of controls

This link is going on my blogroll on the right
panel.

Real Id Rebellion

In case you don't yet know what Real ID is, look
here.

More on this later.

What will they name this revolution?

"We are not going to overthrow the government.
We demand economic freedom," Egomov told The
Associated Press. "If the army is going to storm,
if they’re going to shoot, we are ready to die
instead of living as we are living now. The Uzbek
people have been reduced to living like dirt,"
Egomov said.

The trial, which has provoked some of the
angriest demonstrations yet against the
authoritarian government, is part of a broad
government crackdown on religious dissent.

Thousands of Muslims have been jailed in
Uzbekistan over the past few years in a
government campaign that critics say has affected
many innocent believers and only inflamed anger
against Karimov’s harsh rule.

Let's see. Where have we seen something similar
before? Iraq? No, that was about the WMD that was
never found, wasn't it?

Maybe it was really about economic freedom.

I'm mightly confused.

Funny thing here. Have you ever heard of anyone
asking for more economic freedom?

Bummints...making enemies under every rock, and finding 'em.

Uzbeks in recent weeks have shown increasing
willingness to challenge their leadership,
apparently bolstered by the March uprising in
Kyrgyzstan that drove out President Askar Akayev
and by the so-called Orange and Rose Revolutions
in Ukraine and Georgia. Shakirov told the AP that
the jailbreak was triggered by news that security
services on Thursday had started rounding up
people who had been involved in a sit-in outside
the court where the trial was taking
place.

Welcome to the New World Disorder, brought to you
by the very people determined to have Order.

Hilarious.

The article.

The results of a survey of air-heads

Earlier this year, a survey from the same
department gained wide attention after it showed
that American high schoolers had a rather flimsy
grasp of the First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. Half of the young people said they
thought newspapers should not be able to publish
stories without government approval. Stories
about that survey appeared in hundreds of
newspapers and it was even mentioned on the March
13 episode of the ABC drama "Boston Legal."

I expect the concept of government as God will soon
be more or less total when these dolts graduate.

Why would you expect them to think any differently?
They've been programed about the glory of their God
by an arm of their God, the pubic edykatshunal
system.

What will they do when the find out their God is
dead?

The article.

I'm wild about Harry

I'm starting a new political party, and that is
why I am writing. We could use a guy like you. We
are looking to attract people disillusioned with
the Tories. The modern Conservative Party is an
old man wanking into a sock. You have to admit
that. And look at Howard. A husk of a man,
despised by all, prematurely bald from self-
abuse. Is this what we fought the Falklands for?
If we love our country, he must hang.

Fine satire at Harry's
Place.

Don't miss the comments.

Why I don't buy into any -ism

First off, been there, done that. A number of
times.

Second, some asshole inflated with his own
importance invariably gets up on his soap box and
sets forth some plan for my life that makes the
hair on the back of my neck stand straight out so
I scramble for the exits.

What's more, I don't do 'guilt by association' at
all well.

Why anyone would buy into one of these -isms now
baffles me.

What was I thinking when I joined?

Now save the blah, blah about reforming the group.

That's akin to polishing a turd and just as much
fun.

Living free as one can, and enjoying every minute
of it, I am.

Try it.

New link

I just added A Pox On All Their Houses to my blog
list on the right panel.

He has a fine handle on The unState of Things.

Now, if Adem would just post more.

The question for all time

How did the leaders of every empire become so
laughably stupid that their empires were
collapsed by what was happening where they were
not looking?

Read.

The floundering AOL ship

AOL is jumping on the webmail bandwagon.

From today it's begun beta testing aim.com - its
free web-based email service - available to all
net users and not just those dwindling numbers of
AOL subscribers. This week it reported that 2.3m
subscribers went AWOL last year.

Desperate for publicity, they gave their last after
a whole passel of former 'fans' jumped ship. A bit
late weren't they, and not at all visionary.

I've talked to a couple of folks lately who've
tried to uninstall all that AOL crap. They're not
happy. It's like the plague. It hides everywhere
and is very hard to cure.

Hammer and anvil technology, AOL.

Good riddance, if you can manage.

Article.

Wanted to buy: cave

Sayyed Qutb: Father of Radical Islam
In the 1950s Sayyed Qutb, an Egyptian civil
servant was sent to the U.S. to learn about its
public education system. As he traveled around
the county, Qutb became increasingly disgusted by
what he felt was the selfish and materialistic
nature of American life.

When he returned to Egypt, Qutb turned into a
revolutionary. Determined to find some way to
control the forces of selfish individualism that
he saw in America, he envisioned an Arab society
where Islam would play a more central role. He
became an influential spokesperson in the Muslim
Brotherhood but was jailed after some of its
members attempted to assassinate Egyptian
President Nasser.

In prison a more radical Qutb wrote several
books which argued that extreme measures,
including deception and even violence, could be
justified in an effort to restore shared moral
values to society. He was executed in 1966 for
treason in Egypt. But his ideas lived on and
formed the basis of the radical Islamist movement.
Leo Strauss Leo Strauss was a professor of
political philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Leo Strauss: A Neo-Conservative
At the same time Leo Strauss, an American
professor of political philosophy, also came to
see western liberalism as corrosive to morality
and to society. Like Qutb, Strauss believed that
individual freedoms threatened to tear apart the
values which held society together. He taught his
students that politicians should assert powerful
and inspiring myths - like religion or the myth
of the nation - that everyone could believe in.

A group of young students, including Paul
Wolfowitz, Francis Fukuyama and William Kristol
studied Strauss' ideas and formed a loose group
in Washington which became known as the neo-
conservatives. They set out to create a myth of
America as a unique nation whose destiny was to
battle against evil in the world.

While I appreciate yet another look at the same
old fucking tune with new singers, that's just
what it is: death and destruction, a funeral dirge.

The names change, their -isms are only slightly
modified but that song's been played since dirt
was born.

Fuck.

Anyone got a good cave for sale?

Read.

Via David Brin

A poll

Of course there are only 16 votes in this poll,
but the majority of these revolutionary assholes,
should they succeed, will just end up installing
a different bunch of fucking tax collectors.

Aack!

If not, they'll just leave a lotta blood on the
pavement, a certainty with only 16 of 'em.

Double aack!

The poll.

Fred to save country

At least eighty percent of the electorate lives
in blank medieval darkness regarding any matter
of public policy or history. They might as well
vote on the incisions needed in cardiac surgery
as try to govern themselves. [So instead they vote
for some other idiot to do the job. --jo] Poll
after poll shows that even graduates of America’s
pathetic Halloween universities (where the young
disguised as students are hornswoggled by
mountebanks disguised as professors), which means
most of the universities, do not know who fought
in WWI, or within a century when the Civil War
took place, or who Galileo was. These are the
better informed. The rest barely know what
century they live in.

Unalloyed ignorance is not an obvious
qualification for governing, despite all
appearances.

Only two possible reasons exist for universal
suffrage, both bad. The first is that if you let
idiots vote, the Democrats will sometimes be
elected. That is, it is a sort of affirmative
action for the Democratic National Committee;
this is perhaps slightly more desirable than,
say, price supports for hemorrhagic tuberculosis.
The only good thing that can be said about
Democrats is that, when they are in power, the
Republicans are not.

The second reason is that, in principle, the
idiot vote will keep idiots from being maltreated
by the bright. It does not, however, keep the
bright from being maltreated by idiots, who are
far more numerous. They run the schools, for
example, which is why students often can’t read
after twelve years.
...
Reflect how we choose today’s candidates. They
are either useless gigolos like John Kerry, or
pampered drunks inflicted on the polity by Texas
in revenge for the Civil War. If they are not
unmitigated brats, they have worked their way up
in politics. This means that they began as second-
rate lawyers, attached themselves like ticks to
some party or other, and spent thirty years
learning to lie, steal, manipulate, and suck up.
Politics is a sieve eliminating the honest. It
assures that you get what you don’t want. When
these moral flatworms are finally nominated for
The Big One, they know crooked dealing. It’s all
they know. How much sense does this make?

The bright are never maltreated for long. They
just leave the scene or take power until the whole
planet is paved in idiots.

It is.

Now what?

Full rant.

More on The Death of Politics

If you do the math, you get a decidedly
uninspiring image of a political process - of a
democracy - that's supposed to be worth exporting
to the world.

So, let's imagine 100 UK residents who are
eligible to vote. However, only 61% of them do -
just 61 people. Out of these, only 37% vote for
Blair and Labour - or 22.57 people.

We now have a stark picture of the reality of
the UK political scene. Labour has won its
"historic" third term with the grand total of
22.6% of eligible voters. In other words, 77.4%
of the voting age residents of the UK did NOT
want this result.

Which means there are still a few fools left who
vote.

This says nothing of the other 15,000,000 Brits
who weren't eligible to vote.

The percentages were similar in the USA, if you
don't count the strange method of tallying the
vote that went on there.

Makes one wonder how long The Democracy Fraud
will hold up, doesn't it.

What happens when most everyone awakens?

Think about it.

Full essay.

Herding cats

I know I've posted about this before. I'll periodically
do it again because I think so highly about Eric
Frank Russell's short novel.

The link is permanently on the right panel in case
you want to come back later to read it:

And Then There Were None

...and it's all on one page.

Read it and pass it on or print it out for your
totalitarian friends...and your other not-so-
totalitarian geek friends. Who knows what could
happen if you did.

This 18 page novelette is probably the finest piece
of short fiction I've ever read...possibly soon to
become reality in some form, in some place.

It's also funnier 'n a sack full of cats.

Well, I thought it was.

More monkeys fucking footballs

I assure you, sir, the redacted portions are
completely unreadable: The Pentagon is likely
reviewing all its recently declassified documents
with a very careful eye this week after learning
that redactions to its publicly released report
on the death of Italian secret agent Nicola
Calipari could be viewed with a simple CTRL-C,
CTRL-V. The Pentagon quietly released the heavily
censored report to the Web in Adobe Systems' PDF
format last weekend, failing to realize that its
hidden portions could be revealed by simply
opening the document in Adobe's free Acrobat
Reader, hitting the select text button, copying
and then pasting that text into any word
processor. "I played around on my computer by
highlighting the text, I found out the words were
still there under the blacked-out bits,"
Salvatore Schifani , one of the first folks to
notice the Pentagon's gaffe, told Repubblica
radio. "It really surprised me, because the best
way of not making this information available
would have been not to write it down in the first
place, rather than putting it there and then
trying to conceal it in such a silly way." Makes
you wonder how many other "censored" Pentagon
documents might be readable this way.

See the document at:
link. (PDF)

or

here.

Original story at

link.

At the second site I downloaded the blacked out
version and did the cut and paste.

Salvatore was right.

Bwaaahahahahah.

Sleep tight. Ur bummint is on the job.

Soon I'm gonna hafta buy a new computer. The coffee
I'm spraying on it from uncontrolled laughter is
gonna ruin it.

Found here.

Flower power

Bush's visit, the first to Georgia by a U.S.
president, was the latest move in his diplomatic
dance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who
supported the government that Saakashvili ousted.
The new president rose to power after he and his
followers stormed the Georgian Parliament armed
with nothing but flowers.

Keep your eyes on Georgia and all the other quiet
revolutions going on in that part of the world.

There's something going on.

Read.

The latest plan

Now there's a few folks talking of impeaching Der
Burning Bush. I'm not even gonna include the URL.

Ooooha.

Can they walk it, this talk?

And now a message to all those right-pissing dicks,
left-pissing dicks and all the other dicks that have
a plan for my life:

Keep the comedy alive.

Impeach 'em all, the long, the short and the tall.

Next!

Self-deception

"Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame
upon the nation that is attacked, and every man
will be glad of those conscience-soothing
falsities, and will diligently study them, and
refuse to examine any refutations of them; and
thus he will by and by convince himself that the
war is just, and will thank God for the better
sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque
self-deception." --Mark Twain, Chronicle of Young
Satan

Thanks to simmeringfrogs

A look at uSA, Inc.

What was left out in the article below is that
Japan, Inc., Britain, Inc., and Europe, Inc. are
also complicit. In fact, every bummint does it
to some degree.

Who pays for this political/bureaucratic,
Orwellian Doublespeak called "free trade"?

The Phony "Free Trade" Lobby

Many of our politicians believe laissez-faire
doesn't work, even though they disingenuously and
repeatedly cite the imperative of free trade.
Unwilling to allow the market to correct itself,
they refuse to permit any of our trading partners
to suffer an economic setback, and they use U.S.
taxpayer dollars to bail them out — draining the
American economy.

"Many" of our pols? Bullshit. I only know one who
knows it works: Ron Paul. And he's vocal about it.

But I don't really care whether it works or not.

I'd just like to ship the thieves to Siberia or
to a corral in Kansas to shovel shit til they
howl for mercy. Anything.

Telling it like it is.

A desperate attempt to save The Ship

This is not the way the markets used to trade.
This is not the way that traders, the public and
funds trade. There is no reasonable way to
explain it without positing the existence of a
major player with a vested interest in keeping
the market from falling. And there is no private
or public player big enough to do it and
consistently get away with it. In light of the
Executive Order and Heller's 1989 ideas, one has
to conclude that the government is involved.
...
Does it matter? Is it wrong? Shouldn't the
government maintain order in the markets? We
could go on for days debating the "morality" of
it but it doesn't matter. What does matter is the
fact that this IS going on and it's having an
increasingly large impact on our investments and
market opportunities. In fact, it's eroding the
quality of both. Long-term interest rates,
stocks, gold and other markets have displayed
narrow bands of movement for years. Longs aren't
making money. Shorts aren't making money.

The Fed gave up (along with the rest of the worlds'
'Feds') controlling currencies some time ago so
they found The Last Stand in the stock market.

It too will get out of control, and what a passel
of dumb fucks they'll look like when it's all over.

Hardly anyone will know why or how it happened.

The currency markets transact $1.5 trillion/day.
This is huge compared to the bond and stock markets.
The daily trade volume on the NYSE is only $50
billion.

See what I mean?

The currency markets became too big to control.

So will they all when the stampede begins.

Is it wrong, what they're doing?

It's your money they're fucking with, ain't it?

What do you think?

Read the whole story.

Who's blowing smoke?

As of this past April, Saudi Arabia apparently
hadn't yet received the latest memos on 'Peak.'[oil]
Much to the consternation of Ruppert and his
handlers, Saudi officials announced on April 28
that the Kingdom's estimate of recoverable
reserves had nearly quintupled! (The article
below says "tripled," but the math isn't that
hard to do.)

Saudi Oil Is Secure and Plentiful, Say Officials
Tim Kennedy, Arab News [link]

WASHINGTON, 29 April 2004 — Officials from
Saudi Arabia’s oil industry and the international
petroleum organizations shocked a gathering of
foreign policy experts in Washington yesterday
with an announcement that the Kingdom’s previous
estimate of 261 billion barrels of recoverable
petroleum has now more than tripled, to 1.2
trillion barrels.

Additionally, Saudi Arabia’s key oil and
finance ministers assured the audience — which
included US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan — that the Kingdom has the capability
to quickly double its oil output and sustain such
a production surge for as long as 50 years.

[...]

"Saudi Arabia now has 1.2 trillion barrels
of estimated reserve. This estimate is very
conservative. Our analysis gives us reason to be
very optimistic. We are continuing to discover
new resources, and we are using new technologies
to extract even more oil from existing reserves,"
the minister said.

Naimi said Saudi Arabia is committed to
sustaining the average price of $25 per barrel
set by the Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries. He said prices should never
increase to more than $28 or drop under $22.

[...]

"Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves are
certainly there," Naimi added. "None of these
reserves requires advanced recovery techniques.
We have more than sufficient reserves to increase
output. If required, we can increase output from
10.5 million barrels a day to 12 - 15 million
barrels a day. And we can sustain this increased
output for 50 years or more. There will be no
shortage of oil for the next 50 years. Perhaps
much longer."

Note that the oil reserves claimed by Saudi
Arabia alone (1.2 trillion barrels) exceed what
the Peakers claim are the total recoverable oil
reserves for the entire planet. Let's pause here
for a minute and think about the significance of
that: one tiny patch of land, accounting for less
than than 1/2 of 1% of the earth's total surface
area, potentially contains more oil that the
'Peak' pitchmen claim the entire planet has to
offer! Is there not something clearly wrong with
this picture?

Somebody is quite full of shit.

Either it's the Peak oil dudes or this guy.
I'm betting it's Peak oil.

Make up your own mind.

You might have noticed oil is up around $50/barrel.
Then what do the Saudis mean when they can keep it
in the $22-$28 range? Why aren't they doing it?

Could it be the declining value of the dollar?

There's more to it...the sinking dollar that is,
among other unknowns.

Before you start spouting 'what everybody knows'
here, nobody knows squat...not you, not I, and
none of the 'exspurts' [sic], because this is the
age where we're supposed to wake up to the idea
that damn near everything we've taken for The
Gospel is wrong.

Ya suppose we'll make it in time?

Maybe but there are a planet full of
distractions.

Now you're going to want to look at the possible new
planned democide.

Thanks to simmeringfrogs

The Fallen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks slid into
negative territory on Thursday after Standard &
Poor's cut General Motors Corp.'s and Ford Motor
Co.'s debt ratings to junk status.

Never thought I'd see that.

Gonna be a whole lot more soon.

Read.

Spontaneous, er, emergent, er...

When we talk about spontaneous order, the
adjective is trying to capture the fact that no
one is in charge, controlling the economic
system—the order we see around us is spontaneous,
organic, emergent, rather than controlled,
directed or managed.

I've never liked the word spontaneous in that
context. It captures the unplanned aspect but
there's an implication of suddenness and out of-
the-blue that is misleading. Emergent order is a
little better. Hayek complains in the Fatal
Conceit and elsewhere about our language not
having phrases and words for things that are not
directed or planned.

Is that why we're stuck in this Strange Loop,
because there are no words with which to escape?

Makes sense to me.

It's also hilarious and depressing at the same
time.

The whole thing.

Out of control...again

Over lunch on the first day of the conference a
representative from the Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defence for Public Affairs discussed
strategies to counteract critical viewpoints of
the non-lethal weapons programme in the media.
She encouraged those present to keep repeating a
positive message particularly when there was a
negative story published, and not to shy away
from commenting. If there was negative coverage
about an important programme that could be
derailed by the general public or congress then
they would ‘really go after them’, she said. She
indicated that officials would give increased
information access to ‘bread and butter military
journalists’ as opposed to the ‘60 minutes type
journalists’ in return for more positive
coverage. She also advocated a strategy of
targeting military analysts working for various
news media and getting them on message. She
admitted, however, that they ‘still don’t know
how to handle the bloggers’. (emphasis
mine)

Bwaaahahahahahaha.

Yup, where does that 800 lb. gorilla sleep?

That's really all there is to the piece.

via whatreallyhappened.com

Thinking of blogger.com for your blog?

Some time ago, a bunch of us bloggers here pitched
a fit about the blogger.com servers so here's an
update.

Blogger.com/blogspot.com has been running in a
spritely manner for about 2 weeks now, no matter
the time of the day I've posted.

For now it seems they've sealed the leaks to/from
quantum space.

If things change, you'll hear about it here.

Harry's Plan

I’ve been accused of wasting the government’s
time with fatuous hoaxes. The flaw in this
argument is that it implies that what the
government would otherwise have done with its
time would have been of great value, which
strikes me as prima facie unlikely.
...
We don’t need any more stinking legislation.
When I’m in charge, if parliament wants to
introduce one new law, they’ll have to repeal two
old ones.

I might go back to voting if he made it 3 for 1.

Trouble is, that'd be like forcing a room full of
junkies to go cold turkey all at once.

What are the odds of that?

Harry's blog.

The Continuing Saga of The Shriveling Nipple

Then there's the proposed $55 million "doomsday
cuts" in [Chicago] public transportation that
would cut service by almost 40 percent and lay
off 2,000 workers unless the state legislature--
run by Chicagoans--comes up with the money.

Take a look at the scuffle and the whining.

A different look at May Day

The bubonic plague that in 1347-1353 depopulated
Europe has horrified historians and surely all
those who have read about it. Death. Death
everywhere. Cities and towns devastated. Whole
families of several generations gone. About
25,000,000 people perished.

Yet, we have had a different kind of plague in
the last century, one over four times more
deadly, and historians shy away from writing
about it. Indeed, most contemporaries did not
even know it was occurring, for the media and
politicians that were not affected by it, tended
to ignore it. It was a Red Plague. A plague of
democide.

...and made the Nazis look like amateurs.

Why did so many, supposedly in The Know, ignore
this democide?

Read about The Red Plague.

The state of things

"The positive testimony of history is that the
State invariably had its origin in conquest and
confiscation. No primitive State known to history
originated in any other manner." -- Albert Jay Nock

A look at a different truckload of fools

Meanwhile, drug smugglers and guerrilla forces
like the FARC work together more easily than
states do. The state system is old, creaky,
formalistic and slow. Drug dealing and guerrilla
warfare represent a free market, where deals
happen fast. Several years ago, a Marine friend
went down to Bolivia as part of the U.S. counter-
drug effort. He observed that the drug
traffickers went through Boyd Cycle or OODA Loop
six times in the time it took us to go through it
once. When I relayed that to Colonel Boyd, he
said, "Then we’re not even in the game."

Meanwhile the anti-money-laundering-alphabet-soup
folks are hammering 'know thy customer' rules to
banks when these druggies aren't even playing
their game. Why would smugglers use banks in that
case?

And almost no one can see the unintended
consequences.

I'll let you figure out what they are.

Full report.

Via chumpfish

The Good Ol' Boy Club

But do not suppose for a moment that the world
trading order as it actually exists is liberal or
more than incidentally connected with free
markets. A free market is a place where
individuals and groups of individuals come
together to transact voluntary exchanges without
any backing of government force. To call the
actually existing order liberal – or "neo-
liberal" – is as taxonomically accurate as
calling the old Soviet Communist Party
syndicalist. That order is based on tariffs,
subsidies and a web of other often invisible
regulations. The international institutions are a
projection of Western states. The multinational
corporations are creatures of these states. They
shelter behind the privilege of limited
liability. They get their political friends to
cartelise markets, and do favours in return.

This is not market liberalism. It is a fraud
played on us all by our ruling classes – these
being those politicians, bureaucrats, educators,
lawyers and media and business people who derive
wealth, power and status from an enlarged and
activist state.

...all kissing each others' asses in this giant
daisy chain.

Those that have never read a good book on
economics don't have a clue what's going on.

Read Sean Gabb's whole speech with comments.

Via mutualist

Physics lessons for dummies

Ever thought you'd like to learn a little more about
physics but were afraid to ask?

This rendition at the link below, then, is for you
whether you're a psychologist, brain surgeon,
dishwasher, basket weaver or drug dealer.

Not only that, it's a fine chuckle about chuckle-
headed physicists and other guessers from the past
and present.

Read.

Thanks to simmering frogs