Friday, March 31, 2006

Yet another slam of Internet Explorer

I use Firefox. It's open source, but what's much
more important than that is that it's safer, much
safer than Internet Explorer.

What I want to know is why any of you are still
using Internet Explorer? I mean how many attacks
does it take?

That's what I want to know.

Why?

Take a ride on Firefox.

Full report.

Anarchy on the rise

WASHINGTON – How does the United States count
the cost of at least 11 million immigrants living
and often working outside the law?

For business groups - now urging a path to
citizenship or other legal status for such
workers - it's the lower cost of a head of
lettuce, new home construction, or a restaurant
tab, because these people will do the work that
Americans won't.

...outside the law?

My, oh my. What will they do?

Read.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

The local bar

"So,. .you want to go the local bar, you're
planning on consuming vast quantities of a liquid
poison that kills brain cells and eventually
turns your liver to stone, then, you're hoping to
have unprotected sex with a total stranger, and
your number one health concern is the possibility
of encountering second-hand smoke. . .are you
fucking nuts?" --unknown

Not to worry. There's a puritan born every minute.
It'll all soon be illegal.

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone,
somewhere, may be happy." -- H. L. Mencken,
A Book of Burlesques, "Sententiæ" (1920),
quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of
Quotations

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Business

Business is a means - the only means - to increase
the quantity of goods available for preserving
life and rendering it more agreeable.
-- Ludwig von Mises

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

More scofflaws, please

The First Minister of Scotland insisted the vast
majority of people would adhere to the new
smoking ban north of the border despite research
suggesting that more than a fifth of smokers
intend to flout the new law.

Indeed.

Break from The Collective and have a go at scoffing
your most unfavorite of laws.

Read.

In memory of Richard Rieben

The quest for liberty, for individual
sovereignty, and for human dignity has
degenerated into a hopeless, lost, idealistic,
foggy 'cause' in this philosophically compromised
culture. Authoritarianism is so intrinsic to this
context, that people have come to think that
liberty is compatible with authoritarianism,
corporation, hierarchy, and patriarchy - because
that is their visible, tangible reality. The U.S.
Constitution is in force today; it never was a
solution - not for individual liberty. In this
framework, any effort to liberate the individual
will be co-opted by the framework -politically,
socially, culturally, and morally.

If you want liberty, the only alternative is to
opt-out of the framework.

Done.

Let The Collective destroy itself in the New
World Disorder.

Fuck 'em.

Full essay.

Monday, March 27, 2006

The Big Protection Racket has failed

We have entered the age of the faceless, agile
enemy. From London to Madrid and Nigeria to
Russia, stateless terrorist groups have emerged
to score blow after blow against us. Driven by
cultural fragmentation, schooled in the most
sophisticated technologies, and fueled by
transnational crime, these groups are forcing
corporations and individuals to develop new ways
of defending themselves. The end result of this
struggle will be a new, more resilient approach
to national security, one built not around the
state but around private citizens and companies.
That new system will change how we live and work--
for the better, in many ways--but the road
getting there may seem long at times.

Read.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

War, ego and the hunter-gatherers

The lack of evidence for warfare is striking.
There are no signs of violent death, no signs of
damage or disruption by warfare, and although
many other artefacts have been found, including
massive numbers of tools and pots, there is a
complete absence of weapons. As Ferguson points
out, “it is difficult to understand how war could
have been common earlier in each area and remain
so invisible.” Archaeologists have discovered
over 300 cave prehistoric “art galleries,” not
one of which contains depictions of warfare,
weapons or warriors. In the words of the
anthropologist Richard Gabriel, “For the first
ninety-five thousand years after the Homo sapiens
Stone age began [until 4000 BCE], there is no
evidence that man engaged in war on any level,
let alone on a level requiring organised group
violence. There is little evidence of any killing
at all.”4

Why would there be? That was BG, Before
Government, the cause of war.

If you can overlook the Borg-like attitude of the
author while calling "ego" a destructive force,
this article is interesting. After all, what could
have been Borg-like in hunter-gatherer societies?

Now the ones that came after...? oh, yea.

Read.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

The Last Gasp?

Anyway, to make matters worse, the Fed bought
up, for itself, $2.2 billion in government debt.
Hahaha! What a scam! The Fed snaps its fingers
and creates $2.2 billion, and then uses it to buy
$2.2 billion in government debt! Hahaha! What in
the hell can you do but laugh at the sheer
audacity! Somehow, a government creating more and
more money and spending it is not, for the first
time in history, going to turn out to be a BAD
thing? And especially one where the money is just
paper and computer blips that they can create on
a whim? Hahaha!

Full essay.

Friday, March 24, 2006

V for Vendetta - the movie

I still can't think of even one way to improve the
movie...script, actors or action.

One lesson the film writ large was one I've said
here before numerous times:

Leave your firearms, pitchforks, hachets, bludgeons
and other sharp objects at home if you're going to
join a mass revolt.

The guilty were still taken out.

What you might like to do after seeing this film
is buy a red can of spray paint. You'll know what
I mean after you see it.

Now who's going to make the next blockbuster,
And Then There Were None?

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Richard Rieben has left the room

Rieben was a very frequent contributor in the
comment section of my blog. I never met him.
I'll miss him. He was doing what I tried to do
years before with his Contract for Liberty. We
discussed changes on his forum.
(registration required)

He reminded me of Arthur Koestler somewhat in
that his writings could be brilliant or elicit
the response in me like 'Brevity, man. Brevity'.

His web sites have been linked on my blog for a
long time:

Just do it.

Sign..or not.

He left lasting value behind.

Could anyone ask for a better epitaph?

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Confuse then control

The cubicle enforces groupthink. Cubicles are
meant to break down individuality, privacy, and
the notion that one can be "territorial" or
perhaps even be homesteading. It is a wee bit
like the military in that the cubicle design
seeks to displace any thoughts of "me," and
instead, one look around from any seat in the
cubicle cockpit reminds you that you are not you,
but "we." In addition, the cubicle arena offers
managers a greater sense of control. The same way
that a border collie herds and controls the
sheep, so does the manager round up his scrubs so
they remain close enough to be reminded of who is
in control. But then again, humans aren’t sheep.
Or are they?
...
In a great number of workplace self-therapy,
psychobabble books – such as Susan Jackson’s
Diversity in the Workplace: Human Resources
Initiatives – there’s always a heap of
suggestions as to how you too can be more group
oriented. You can be instructed in the ways of
meaningful workplace diversity by allowing
yourself to engage in silly exercises such as
gathering with your group and doing the following:

Never leave the other members of the group.

Never refer to oneself by name, only by group
membership.


Thus does "diversity" come to mean oneness. No
wonder why people are so confused. And you
thought Ayn Rand’s Anthem was silly?

Ms. Jackson seems the one confused here, not
knowing how to spot a contradiction. To think so
many pay money to read that kind of drivel.

Full essay.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Bird flu debunked?

Yea, I know. Stats are easy to manipulate but does
anyone see any holes in the author's logic?

Now if you can ignore the part in the last half
of this report about the cabals running the
planet, this is good reporting and analysis...

753 deaths in 2002 (page 16 of report)

257 deaths in 2001 (page 16 of report)

1,765 deaths in 2000

1,665 deaths in 1999

“How does the CDC get from 753 flu deaths to its
statement that 36,000 flu deaths occur annually?

“By combining flu deaths with pneumonia deaths.
The CDC National Vital Statistic Report for 2002
lists Influenza and Pneumonia as the 7th leading
cause of death in 2002. You probably already
guessed it – only 753 of those deaths were flu-
associated and the rest of the 36,000 were
pneumonia-associated. If all flu-associated
deaths are removed, pneumonia associated deaths
still ranks number 7 by itself. The media used
the false 36,000 deaths number in its coverage –
50 times the actual 2002/2003 number.

“Are the 257 to 1,765 reported annual flu deaths
from 1999 to 2002 even accurate?

“No. It is not possible to determine the actual
number of deaths caused by the flu because the
CDC has no death certificate category for deaths
caused only by the flu.

Further into the article the "difference" between
bird flu and other types of flu is analyzed.

Full report.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Wisdom and humor from The Onion

WASHINGTON, DC-A Gallup/Harris Interactive poll
released Monday indicates that nearly nine out of
10 Americans are "tired of having a country."

Oooha.
...
According to study organizer David Griffith,
poll respondents were surprisingly uniform in
their opinion that the nation is too much of a
hassle.

"I already belong to a health club, a church,
and the Kiwanis Club," Tammy Golden of Los
Angeles wrote. "I'm a member of the Von's Grocery
Super Savers, which gets me a discount on certain
groceries. These are all well-managed
organizations with real benefits. None of them
send me a confusing bill once a year and make me
work it out myself, then throw me in jail if I
get it wrong."

Take heed, you other 10%. When the figure reaches
around 99% the country will vanish. Funny thing
is, no one will notice til much later.

Then what will you do?

Bwahahahah.

Full report.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Cargo Cult science

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of
crazy ideas, such as that a piece of of
rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a
method was discovered for separating the ideas--
which was to try one to see if it worked, and if
it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method
became organized, of course, into science. And it
developed very well, so that we are now in the
scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in
fact, that we have difficulty in understanding
how witch doctors could ever have existed, when
nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or
very little of it did.

But even today I meet lots of people who sooner
or later get me into a conversation about UFO's,
or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded
consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and
so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a
scientific world.

Most people believe so many wonderful things
that I decided to investigate why they did. And
what has been referred to as my curiosity for
investigation has landed me in a difficulty where
I found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First
I started out by investigating various ideas of
mysticism and mystic experiences. I went into
isolation tanks and got many hours of
hallucinations, so I know something about that.
Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this
kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you
should go visit there). Then I became
overwhelmed. I didn't realize how MUCH there was.

On the other hand, all new ideas were once thought
beyond science.

Could it be that we're on the verge of many new
discoveries with all this "scientific" speculation
going on?

It's a tough line to walk.

Bottom line: Forget theory. Does it work...or not.

Read.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Out of town without even an American Express card

"When foreign investors and central banks stop
demanding dollars, U.S. bond prices will fall,
which is another way of saying that U.S. interest
rates will rise. Mortgage and credit card rates
will soar, bursting the housing bubble. Home
prices in hot markets like California and New
York will fall by 50% or more in a matter of
months, bankrupting millions of over-extended
homeowners. The U.S. government will respond by
opening the monetary floodgates, printing as many
paper dollars as necessary to keep the economy
from collapsing. This surge in supply will send
the value of the dollar through the floor. Prices
for most things will skyrocket, and people whose
life savings are in cash, bank CDs or dollar-
denominated bonds, will be wiped out. Most U.S.
consumer finance companies will be ruined, along
with their stockholders."

Which means, you deal in cash or credit you're
screwed.

What else is there?

Got your donkey yet?

Full rant.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

New blog discovered

"The broader our principles, the freer our lives.
Any rule created after the ten commandments is
superfluous. We probably don't need all ten of
those."

Via anselpixel

He has a number of fine short quotes on his right
side panel.

As always, tread with a critical mind, looking for
contradictions.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

From the man who invented the motor of the world...

...among many other things.

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics
for experiments, and they wander off through
equation after equation, and eventually build a
structure which has no relation to reality."
-- Nikola Tesla

Via Ali's Voice

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

More on The New World Disorder

Many will tell you that it's a New World Order.

Do you really believe that?

What Spengler fails to make clear in this article
is that chaos can not be contained to just the area
outside of US borders.

It's contagious.
What compulsion requires the US to wage
"holistic and ideological wars of the past", in
Hanson's words, "such as those waged against
Italians, Germans, Japanese, Koreans, and
Vietnamese, where we not only sought to defeat
entire belief systems, but to stay on and craft a
stable government in the hopes of stamping out
fascism, Nazism, militarism, or communism"? One
can suppress the putrefactive power of chaos, but
it will reassert itself. A fifth to a half of the
constituent nations of the former Soviet Union
and Warsaw Pact will die out by mid-century,
about as many as would have died in all-out
nuclear war.

Better the former, wouldn't you say?
Part of America's impulse is Christian. "The
West cannot endure without faith that a loving
Father dwells beyond the clouds that obscure his
throne. Horror - the perception that cruelty has
no purpose and no end - is lethal to the West," I
wrote in Horror and humiliation in Fallujah
(April 27, 2004). By contrast, "The Islamic world
cannot endure without confidence in victory, that
to 'come to prayer' is the same thing as to ;come
to success'. Humiliation - the perception that
the ummah cannot reward those who submit to it -
is beyond its capacity to endure." The Western
god of agape and chesed does not castigate
without reason; the Muslim god of sovereignty and
power does not withhold reward for service
performed without reason.

I'll be damned if I can make sense of that last,
but, all in all, a good article.

Read.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Pure hubris, no water added

"Is it moral or legal to resist the commands of
your betters?" --unknown pol

At least the twit* was honest. How often do you
see that in a pol?

So now you know what us "lesser" types are up
against.

*Thing not Worthy of Intense Trepidation

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Freedom on a leash

This essay has been a link here for a long time
as "Rights, the Bad Con".

It's a classic so I'll occasionally refer to it
again.
Now my reader may say that most are like the law-
abiding, free-minded individual, just obeying to
avoid punishment, but in fact that is not the
case. Government has become a deeply engrained
religion of sorts, and people have become
dependent on the security (illusory and
otherwise) which the group mentality provides.
They see presidents, governors, soldiers,
policemen, and pieces of carefully printed paper
as holy and sacred. They believe deeply that
rights granted are freedoms. Except when
encouraged to do otherwise, they assume that the
law is right, and that which breaks the law is
wrong. They rarely question the basic fabric of
their beliefs. It is unthinkable.

Further, even aside from the influence of their
governments proper, people are greatly influenced
by the subtle pressures and taboos of their
neighbors. They sacrifice themselves and their
liberty to blend in, not merely because they fear
the consequences of being different, a reasonable
fear even for a free-minded individual, but
because they honestly come to believe themselves
to be wrong, broken, sick. They come to hate
themselves as others do.

The difference between those who are free at
heart, yet lack liberty, and those who are deeply
conditioned to believe in authority, cannot often
be clearly seen in times of peace. Those who have
forgotten freedom will often claim they are free,
ironically pointing to their leashes, their
rights, as proof. But when the opportunities for
change come, as they always do eventually, these
people will cower and try to retain 'the system'.
They have grown dependent on it. They will
respond to those who welcome change with violence
and hatred, much like a trained dog on a leash
angrily barking at a stranger. Others will
welcome change, and will struggle through it,
still able to see that greater things can be
accomplished.

Full essay.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Things are looking up...for a very few of us

What we are witnessing today is the end of the
Western Enlightenment. As usual, the end is
predicated on the beginning, and the sole culprit
was and is the tacit belief in political
government, that is, government based on the use
of force and fraud. It never worked. Never. It
can’t be fixed. Thoreau knew this:

“That government is best which governs not at
all. And when men are prepared for it, that will
be the kind of government which they will have.”
--Civil Disobedience, 1849

We should begin to prepare. The State is
crumbling.(slightly modified clip -jo)

Highly recommended.

There are some fine links you'll want to read
within the article.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Joe, The Exterminator, still loved by fools

The imminent opening of a museum devoted to
Josef Stalin has stirred outrage among relatives
of the millions he persecuted and has prompted
claims that Stalinism is on the march again.
...
The total number who died under Stalin's regime
is disputed but Western historians put the figure
at 20 million.

There's a new fool born every minute, wanting to
have some savior kick someone else's ass, never
realizing their own may be the one ultimately
kicked.

But that's putting in very mildly.

Read.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Statist agitprop discussed

The State has perpetually enabled its concubine
media to pump up the propaganda well for the
furtherance of its own cause célèbre, and why
not? The general masses – otherwise engaged in
nighttime sitcom snigger, video things-go-boom,
and unremitting mall-hopping – have provided a
fertile ground for sowing the seeds of a cerebral
takeover by the US Politburo.
...
Ancient civilizations, such as Rome and the city-
states of Greece, encouraged persuasion through
learned debate and argumentation. Plato,
Aristotle, the Sophists, and Cicero certainly
differed in terms of their thoughts on the
usefulness and role of persuasion. However,
decision by persuasion, in those times, was of a
different sort: more often than not it involved
the rigorous use of enlightened techniques as
opposed to shoddy sloganeering to fulfill instant
psychological needs.

History shows us how much more successful that
was, doesn't it. Where are Rome and Greece when
you need 'em? [/sarcasm]

How do you debate with power? Isn't that like
debating with the guy holding a gun to your head?

Modern media pop psychology has emerged as a
herding technique of men over mice. The
propaganda of soft-and-fuzzy war mutilation
stories is a means to an end, the end of which is
the stiffening of resolve in the face of an
unjust and immoral war. Hence do the atrocities
of war receive a warm spin. Those in the public
hear these stories and they come to believe that
if the soldier himself can find purpose in death
or devastation, then they too must give in to
popular song, and oblige the media masters in
their quest for obedience to Leviathan.

Amen, mice.

Full article.

--This has been another Zombie Alert brought to
you by jomama...not directed at Karen De Coster.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Cojones

“The American’s conviction that he must be able
to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to
hell is the very essence of the free man's way of
life.” -- Walter Lippmann

If only they still had these cojones.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Consultations with Padre Kino

I have decided to become a drunk and live under
a bench, maybe in a radiation suit. It only makes
sense. The times are dire. Dark shapes twist in
the international fog. The US, in the hands of
puzzled children of low moral character, flaps
about like a damp rag in a high wind. Anything
could happen.
...
The great fallacy of childhood is the belief
that grownups must know what they are doing.
There is no evidence for this in the historical
record. You would do better by grabbing a
government at random from the denizens of a rural
high school. Democracy brings us twerps,
psychopaths, ambitious ciphers, short men, and
well-born drones. They are what they are. They
can’t change any more than a leper can change his
spots. I need some really strong drugs or someone
to hit me on the head with a rubber mallet. Opium
is the religion of the masses. Let us pray.

The greatest fallacy of our day is that all children
eventually grow up.

Full rant.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Kicking the Matrix

Earlier this year, a series of news reports
revealed that the government’s tax enforcers were
applying disproportionate pressure on the working
class and the working poor. It turns out,
extensive audits showed, that quite a few
backyard auto mechanics, diner waitresses, and
clock punchers of all sorts weren’t reporting all
their income.

Well now. Don't that beat all.

Nothing new about that. Been goin' on since before
the Fall of the Roman Empire.
...
A typical case cited in the campaign involves a
scheme promoted by Ernst & Young that used
foreign currency transactions to eliminate taxes.
Others involve setting up off-shore companies and
creating partnerships to redefine income as
business expenses. Another class of cases is more
famous now: people who have credit cards from
offshore banks where taxes do not exist. This is
said to be the easiest means of avoiding taxes,
and up to 2 million Americans use it, so of
course it must be smashed.

Made illegal, yes.

Smashed?

Bwahahahahaha.

Now you can join the fun that the other 2 million
Americans have, a debit card without requiring any
Social Security Number or name, usable in ATMs around
the world along with many other privacy tools.

Check it out. (link fixed, I hope. Let me know
in the comment section, please.)

Full essay.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

And then we were One...

"We are one in all and all in one.
there are no men but only the great we,
one, indivisible and forever."


We repeat this to ourselves, but it helps us not.

These words were cut long ago. There is green
mould in the grooves of the letters and yellow
streaks on the marble, which come from more years
than men could count. And these words are the
truth, for they are written on the Palace of the
World Council, and the World Council is the body
of all truth. Thus has it been ever since the
Great Rebirth, and farther back than that no
memory can reach.

But we must never speak of the times before the
Great Rebirth, else we are sentenced to three
years in the Palace of Corrective Detention. It
is only the Old Ones who whisper about it in the
evenings, in the Home of the Useless. They
whisper many strange things, of the towers which
rose to the sky, in those Unmentionable Times,
and of the wagons which moved without horses, and
of the lights which burned without flame. But
those times were evil. And those times passed
away, when men saw the Great Truth which is this:
that all men are one and that there is no will
save the will of all men together.

Go ahead. It's a short novel, take a look.