Let's 'get it right'.

"It is not simply that our national discourse rests on a foundation of evasions, complicated by equivocations, twisted by avoidance, and rendered into meaningless insignificance by an uncountable series of lies...

See it all.

Silver breakout

Git 'er done, Frenchies

Oooooha...

“France is under the obligation to investigate and prosecute Rumsfeld’s accountability for crimes of torture in Guantanamo and Iraq," said FIDH President Souhayr Belhassen. "France has no choice but to open an investigation if an alleged torturer is on its territory. I hope that the fight against impunity will not be sacrificed in the name of politics. We call on France to refuse to be a safe haven for criminals.”

“The filing of this French case against Rumsfeld demonstrates that we will not rest until those U.S. officials involved in the torture program are brought to justice," said CCR President Michael Ratner. "Rumsfeld must understand that he has no place to hide. A torturer is an enemy of all humankind.”

Full article.
'
Now there are unconfirmed reports Rummy's running.

On Track for U.S. Collapse

Bush and Cheney are steering the U.S. into a collapse. Only strong public voices by influential people can prevent the coming disaster. We desperately need for men and women who are known to the public and have credibility to speak up in the critical period ahead to avoid catastrophe.

If they're running for office when they do
speak up, you'd best ignore them.

They have nothing to offer.

Full essay.

The Wages of Force

To the socialist, the human is a bit of protoplasm which
can be shaped by his environment. Therefore, having decided
on his ideal, he proceeds to manufacture the environmental
mold into which he shall pour this protoplasm.
The principal feature of this mold is the elimination of the
institution of private property; this institution, the socialist
maintains, is the cause of man's fall from grace. If he finds
difficulty in inducing the human to relinquish his interest
in private property, the socialist does not ascribe this reluctance
to a human instinct, but rather blames it on his
previous conditioning; he has been trained for so long to
look upon the possession of the fruits of his labor as desirable
that he cannot conceive of the blessings of relinquishing
possession to society. To put this concept into his
mind, it is necessary to forcibly take from him all he produces
until at long last he will be re-conditioned to the
new ideal. Force, therefore, is the necessary instrument of
all forms of socialism. -- Frank Chodorov

Earthmonkey is a primitive animal, is he not, being
pissed on as he is.

The quote above found in the online book Out of Step
downloadable here. (pdf, 272 pages)

Ripped from Montag.

Note: Please don't feed the trolls in the comment
section.

Few seem to notice

Are they from another planet, the blind?

Distractions abound...

Why should any self-respecting citizen endorse
an institution grounded on thievery? For that is
what one does when one votes. If it be argued
that we must let bygones be bygones, see what can
be done toward cleaning up the institution of the
State so that it might be useful in the
maintenance of orderly existence, the answer is
that it cannot be done; you cannot clean up a
brothel and yet leave the business intact. We
have been voting for one "good government" after
another, and what have we got? --Frank Chodorov

The Revolution has Begun...

...and you won't see it on the 11:00 o'clock news.

This can go far beyond workers and wages.

Use your imagination.

The added advantage, at this point, is that the real
value of those wages is increasing for the holder
not counting the taxes saved. (See gold and silver
prices) The latter will give you a 42% raise instantly.

The headline was, "IRS Suffers Staggering Defeat". In short, the guy paid his employees with old silver dimes, silver dollars and old gold U.S. coins according to their face value. Thus, he could pay his workers with silver dimes, silver quarters, silver dollars and gold coins, and thus the employee made so little money (according to the face value of the coins) that they fell below minimum income reporting thresholds, and thus no income tax was due.

Mr. Rense explains, "In other words, if a worker is paid with such coins, his taxable 'income' (if any) can only be the face value indicated upon the coin money paid - i.e., $1.00 for a circulating silver dollar or $50 for a circulating gold U.S. coin."

Full article.

Thanks to Rick White.

The Last Irony Before Collapse

I've said it before.

Force always eats itself.

Stated differently, politics always
destroys itself.

See why...

The imperviousness of economic law to political law is shown in this historic fact: in the long run every state collapses, frequently disappears altogether and becomes an archeological curio. Every collapse of which we have sufficient evidence was preceded by the same course of events. The state, in its insatiable lust for power, increasingly intensified its encroachments on the economy of the nation, causing a consequent decline of interest in production, until at long last the subsistence level was reached and not enough above that was produced to maintain the state in the condition to which it had been accustomed. It was not economically able to meet the strain of some immediate circumstance, like war, and succumbed.

Preceding that event, the economy of society, on which state power rests, had deteriorated, and with that deterioration came a letdown in moral and cultural values; men "did not care." That is, society collapsed and drew the state down with it. There is no way for the state to avoid this consequence — except, of course, to abandon its interventions in the economic life of the people it controls, which its inherent avarice for power will not let it do. There is no way for politics to protect itself from politics.

Highly recommended.

The Ever Shrinking Freebie

In addition to banning permit-fee waivers, which do away with the cost of providing traffic control at special events, other new programs that could be cut are "City Attorney's Office's gang-prosecutor program, expense accounts, fuel purchases, homeless shelters, various anti-gang programs, new police and fire stations and workers' compensation attorneys."

Full report.

The Only Path To Tomorrow - by Ayn Rand

The whole essay...

The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.

Totalitarianism is collectivism. Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group — whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called "the common good."

Throughout history, no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing "the common good." Napoleon "served the common good" of France. Hitler is "serving the common good" of Germany. Horrors which no man would dare consider for his own selfish sake are perpetrated with a clear conscience by "altruists" who justify themselves by-the common good.

No tyrant has ever lasted long by force of arms alone. Men have been enslaved primarily by spiritual weapons. And the greatest of these is the collectivist doctrine that the supremacy of the state over the individual constitutes the common good. No dictator could rise if men held as a sacred faith the conviction that they have inalienable rights of which they cannot be deprived for any cause whatsoever, by any man whatsoever, neither by evildoer nor supposed benefactor.

This is the basic tenet of individualism, as opposed to collectivism. Individualism holds that man is an independent entity with an inalienable right to the pursuit of his own happiness in a society where men deal with one another as equals.

The American system is founded on individualism. If it is to survive, we must understand the principles of individualism and hold them as our standard in any public question, in every issue we face. We must have a positive credo, a clear consistent faith.

We must learn to reject as total evil the conception that the common good is served by the abolition of individual rights. General happiness cannot be created out of general suffering and self-immolation. The only happy society is one of happy individuals. One cannot have a healthy forest made up of rotten trees.

The power of society must always be limited by the basic, inalienable rights of the individual.

The right of liberty means man's right to individual action, individual choice, individual initiative and individual property. Without the right to private property no independent action is possible.

The right to the pursuit of happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own, private, personal happiness and to work for its achievement. Each individual is the sole and final judge in this choice. A man's happiness cannot be prescribed to him by another man or by any number of other men.

These rights are the unconditional, personal, private, individual possession of every man, granted to him by the fact of his birth and requiring no other sanction. Such was the conception of the founders of our country, who placed individual rights above any and all collective claims. Society can only be a traffic policeman in the intercourse of men with one another.

From the beginning of history, two antagonists have stood face to face, two opposite types of men: the Active and the Passive. The Active Man is the producer, the creator, the originator, the individualist. His basic need is independence — in order to think and work. He neither needs nor seeks power over other men — nor can he be made to work under any form of compulsion. Every type of good work — from laying bricks to writing a symphony — is done by the Active Man. Degrees of human ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence and initiative determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man.

The Passive Man is found on every level of society, in mansions and in slums, and his identification mark is his dread of independence. He is a parasite who expects to be taken care of by others, who wishes to be given directives, to obey, to submit, to be regulated, to be told. He welcomes collectivism, which eliminates any chance that he might have to think or act on his own initiative.

When a society is based on the needs of the Passive Man it destroys the Active; but when the Active is destroyed, the Passive can no longer be cared for. When a society is based on the needs of the Active Man, he carries the Passive ones along on his energy and raises them as he rises, as the whole society rises. This has been the pattern of all human progress.

Some humanitarians demand a collective state because of their pity for the incompetent or Passive Man. For his sake they wish to harness the Active. But the Active Man cannot function in harness. And once he is destroyed, the destruction of the Passive Man follows automatically. So if pity is the humanitarians' first consideration, then in the name of pity, if nothing else, they should leave the Active Man free to function, in order to help the Passive. There is no other way to help him in the long run.

The history of mankind is the history of the struggle between the Active Man and the Passive, between the individual and the collective. The countries which have produced the happiest men, the highest standards of living and the greatest cultural advances have been the countries where the power of the collective — of the government, of the state — was limited and the individual was given freedom of independent action. As examples: The rise of Rome, with its conception of law based on a citizen's rights, over the collectivist barbarism of its time. The rise of England, with a system of government based on the Magna Carta, over collectivist, totalitarian Spain. The rise of the United States to a degree of achievement unequaled in history — by grace of the individual freedom and independence which our Constitution gave each citizen against the collective.

While men are still pondering upon the causes of the rise and fall of civilizations, every page of history cries to us that there is but one source of progress: Individual Man in independent action. Collectivism is the ancient principle of savagery. A savage's whole existence is ruled by the leaders of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

We are now facing a choice: to go forward or to go back.

Collectivism is not the ``New Order of Tomorrow.´´ It is the order of a very dark yesterday. But there is a New Order of Tomorrow. It belongs to Individual Man — the only creator of any tomorrows humanity has ever been granted.

Link.

What Debates?

Ron’s [Paul] situation is not unlike that of the high-school student, Tammy, in the 1999 movie Election. It is time for school elections to be held and Tammy, a noticeable outsider at this school, decides to run for the meaningless job of school president. At a school assembly, each candidate encourages students to vote for them for all the vacuous reasons that have become synonymous with modern politics. Tammy, on the other hand, tells the students: “The only promise that I will make is that if I’m elected I will immediately disband the student government so that nobody will ever have to sit through one of these stupid assemblies again!” Virtually the entire student body emits a loud cheer on her behalf. When the assembly is over, the school administrators retire to the principal’s office and decide that Tammy’s name must be removed from the ballot; that her views are too disruptive.

Whole essay.

Bad Day at Black Rock

See the whole story.

Are you ready?

...all brought to them by Everyone's Favorite Aberration...

If you don't know what that is by now, you have my
undying pity.

The recent economical crisis in Argentina didn't wait to show its devastating effects: in a few months many companies closed, the acquiring power of money has decreased to less than one third and for many people has become a serious problem to find out the way to survive. Probably the most evident aspect related to this situation is the phenomenon of the cartoneros. With this name are called people (owning, just a few months ago, a normal job) that make a living from collecting paper from the trash bags in Buenos Aires streets and selling it to the recycle industry. An organized community of cartoneros living on the suburbs of Buenos Aires has recently obtained a special train service to go from their town to the downtown districts of the city.

See the photos.

Inside North Korea

If all politics is a sort of mental illness that gets worse as the politicians' power increases, then this is the locked ward where absolute power has brought absolute insanity.

Full report.

Ron Paul's Plain Talk

Texas Congressman Ron Paul said in Seattle on Friday that America is approaching an economic and constitutional crisis due to growing debt, bad trade deals and assaults on personal liberty.

And even if he beat all the odds and won the presidency next year, he said, the problem would be beyond what he alone could fix.

The man doesn't have an ounce of bullshit
in him that I can see, but the Constitution
is irrelevant.

Read.

30,000 to be laid off at GM

The massive layoffs at GM, the top car seller in the United States, have many wondering if the American auto industry will ever come back -- or even survive.

Read

Leaving Liberty

Richard Rieben was a frequent commenter on this
blog for a long time before he died.

Here he is again.

Back from the grave and shining.

Those who have, through historical duplicity – not innocent misunderstandings – attained power over others, in violation of the sovereignty of each human being, are loath to part with such power, or even to acknowledge that their power is illegitimate. They will go through many intellectually convoluted and dishonest rationalizations to prove the legitimacy of slavery, supported by intellectuals, religions, and academia, but, ultimately, it is “proven” at the end of a gun.

They know (and most of their subjects also know) that the state does not hold power by virtue of any rational or moral argument, nor through the “implied” consent of the subjects, but only by means of force. Those holding power strenuously avoid openly revealing this “final argument,” but, in the end, that is all there is or ever has been – for any state authority.

If you're happy with all that, you're fucked because
the end result will roll your socks down.

Good luck.

You're going to need every little piece of that you
can collect.

Read

One of many to come

[Arizona] Gov. Janet Napolitano on Wednesday said the state faces a projected $600 million shortfall in its $10.6 billion budget. She cited the housing slump as a big factor in tax collections being lower than expected. [My emphasis.]

Full article.

The State is not God

Doug Casey moves to Argentina

I've talked to a number of people who've been there
recently.

They all spoke highly of it.

If you're looking to bug out, listen to Doug.

And let me give you a tip, okay? Forget about Europe, it's going to become a petting zoo. It's like Disneyland with real stones instead of paper Mache stones. I mean, Europe is on the slippery slope. I wouldn't touch Europe with a ten-foot pole. If this war with Islam gets out of control, Europe is going to be an epicenter. It's going to be a disaster. I'll tell you where you ought to look. Argentina is the place to be. It's the cheapest country in the world. It has low population, incredibly beautiful, the climate is great. One hundred years ago, it was in competition with the US for being the best place in the world and the richest place. But it went downhill radically, radically.

But let me tell you something. It's turning around I think. And what's going to happen is driven by the fact that everything in Argentina costs between 10% to 30% of what it costs in North America. That's correct. It's that cheap. It's free. It's free. It's free for us as North Americans. But the Europeans really think it's free with that strong Euro. So you're getting a massive immigration from rich Europeans that can see the handwriting on the wall and like it down there. And I really like it down there. It's just a great society, great society, great place to hang out, prices are right. I mean this can solve most of your investment problems right there, just by transplanting yourself, if you've got some capital. Furthermore, Argentina is going to be insolated from WWIII to a good extent.

Full article.