Incompressible

Don't get too sick in the NHS - they'll pull your fluids . Of course, the NHS were certainly not the first to think of this.

End the Fed . If you want to really understand what is wrong with the US economy, the government bailouts and the general degradation of US culture and society, you need to read Ron Paul's ground-shaking book that is in danger of igniting a bloodless revolution within the United States! Dr. Paul draws on his extensive study of economics, foreign policy and decades of experience in Washington, DC - as a foreigner in a foreign land. He is that rare breed trying to represent what the vast majority of Americans actually want (freedom from government meddling, stifling taxation and condescending handouts funded on the backs of other citizens) rather than trying to monetize his Congressional seat and promote his own prestige and power and that of his family like most of the crooks in Washington are doing. If you want to see the anatomy of modern government finance and how they use their bankster cronies to take your property through inflation and cooking the books (all 100% legal, of cou...

The Medieval News Network (MNN) reports today that torture by representatives of the Holy Office has occurred. But, contrary to critics, the Holy Office reports that torture, indeed, has worked. Not everyone is happy, since torture can be an ugly business ... fingernails pulled out, wives raped, pokers applied to eye-sockets and so on. But critics are at a loss for words after the Arch-Bishop of Intelligence released documents showing that torture, in fact, works. Begging for mercy after having the soles of their feet beaten until they split like ripe tomatoes, heretics have recanted their evil plots to subvert Christendom. Some methods are admittedly a little on the harsh side - water torture being among the most feared - but invoking terror in suspects held indefinitely without legal representation or any contact with the outside world is a job that somebody has got to do. Mr. _________ is a dungeon-keep for the Holy Office. He's a normal guy with a wife and three playful kids ...

I play the piano. Krystian Zimerman is one of the greatest pianists alive today. He is the epitome of finickiness and has a reputation for non-compromise. He is an artist of the first magnitude. There are only a few pianists in every generation who define the pinnacle of artistic excellence - he is in a pantheon with names like Horowitz, Rubinstein, Padarewski, Cliburn or Kissin. If you appreciate classical music, you can get an idea of his talent and skill by listening to my favorite piano piece by Chopin here . In case you were wondering what this has to do with 9/11, Mr. Zimerman's Wikipedia entry contains this short snippet: "Shortly after September 11, 2001, Zimerman's custom-made piano was confiscated at JFK Airport when he landed in New York City to give a recital at Carnegie Hall. The US Transportation Security Administration decided to destroy his piano, claiming the glue smelled like explosives ." [Emphasis added] This was a $200,000 instrument but that does...

So much for freedom of speech, private property rights, enumerated powers and all that garbage. Farewell land of the free, it was nice knowing thee.

In an article entitled War, Peace and the State , Murray Rothbard says the following: Quote: "The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence (“aggress”) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory. Let us set aside the more complex problem of the State for a while and consider simply relations between “private” individuals. Jones finds that he or his property is being invaded, aggressed against, by Smith. It is legitimate for Jones, as we have seen, to repel this invasion by defensive violence of his own. ... if Jones finds that his property is being stolen by Smith, he has the right to repel him and try to catch him; but he has no right to repe...

This is just a general rant on US politics circa 2009. Today, I read that Obama is going to sit down for "a beer" with the racist Boston police officer Crowley and his personal friend Gates. This is populism at its most stomach-churning. It's like Obama's handlers want the American public to believe he really is Kal-El, capable of flying around the country in Santa-like manner sitting down and resolving all disputes with a peace-beer. No one stops to ask whether the police ought to be able to arrest someone for belligerency. Why is belligerency an arrestable (and chargeable) offense in the first place? Since when does someone get "the right" to not be insulted just by virtue of wearing a uniform and a tin badge? Police should not be granted the power to make lawful orders (above the power to make such orders which any citizen has) and they should not be granted exception to traffic rules. I have observed in my nearly 15 years of driving (no accidents) that p...

So, there's a lot of talk about Universal Health Care these days. Unfortunately, while the idealization of everyone having a good doctor or prescription medicine available any time they need one, free of charge, receives a lot of hot-airtime, the reality of exactly how putting the government in charge of managing medicine suddenly makes doctors and medicines cost less doesn't get so much discussion. More importantly, I don't see anyone talking about why "health care" should be universal instead of, say, food staples or tickets to Disneyland, for that matter. Through redistribution, the government can make any subset of goods and services "universal", i.e., provide them free of charge. Roads are one example of a good that the government universalizes, that is, provides largely free of charge to everyone for good or ill. So, a lot of people feel that roads, doctors and medicines should be universally available. Everyone understands that not everything can...

You can see video evidence of the IDF's use of White Phosphorus (WP) at the following link: White phosphorus in Gaza: The victims The video contains extremely disturbing images of medical damage, so I have not made the link live, you can copy and paste it into your browser if you are comfortable with R-rated medical images. The other article I quoted in my last post on this, said, "The report repeats charges -- denied by Israel --- that white phosphorus was fired indiscriminately into Gaza streets." So then how did this Palestinian kid and half his family get WP burns, most of them to death? The poor kid in this video saw his sister and grandfather shredded bodily by the rockets. How terrible it is to have to say that it is unfortunate that his sister did not die immediately. The use of violence is only justifiable in defense against the initiation of force by someone else, and only to the extent required to stop the aggression and/or administer conscionable punishment. I...

Peter Schiff slams calls to raise the minimum wage in this insightful article . You might point out that raising the minimum wage raises the income of many people who are currently making minimum wage. Remember, however, that there are many other effects - unseen effects - of raising the minimum wage. An employer will likely lay off his weakest performing workers. If the minimum wage is raised 10%, he may lay off as much as 10% of his workforce to maintain profitability (maintaining profitability is a prerequisite for maintaining the jobs of the other 90% that didn't get laid off). For those who were looking for jobs, more employers are now laying off instead of hiring. If you didn't have a job when the minimum wage got increased, finding one just became that much more difficult. So, while it is true that minimum wage earners benefit by an increase in the minimum wage, this comes at the cost of job losses among the presently employed and a decrease in the prospects that the pr...

The Israel "Defense" Force has again committed wanton war crimes . Please, conservatives, don't let the occurrence of the label "Israel" scramble your ability to think clearly and rationally. It does not matter what group thinks they have what claim on whatever basis to have the lines drawn on the map this way or that way. War crimes are war crimes. It's high time that American evangelicals took a clear stand on the side of morals, Christian morals, and stopped lending active, passive or other implicit assent to this Nazistic regime in Israel that conscientiously adopts its "Left Behind" role as supposed victim of unbelieving Muslim aggression to deflect all moral criticism of its actions, no matter how wantonly bloodthirsty or depraved they may be. "Oh but the Muslims suicide bombers..." Doesn't matter what crimes suicide bombers commit, it doesn't justify war crimes. "But, but the Muslims want to wipe Israel off the face o...

Just watched this video . I'm convinced. John Senior. Robert. Two attempts on Ted. John Jr. The Kennedys are clearly the targets of a violent conspiracy. Could you imagine what a crap storm would have been unleashed on the entrenched interests in the government if someone like JFK Jr. took the Presidency? I'm not saying the Kennedys are great heroes who only care about the American people and aren't out to secure their own power and interests. But it's obvious that they are a threat to some very violent people.

Let's start with the criminal counterfeiter. A criminal counterfeiter creates new money. He spends that money in his local community. As he does so, the prices of things he buys will tend to go up (because he is increasing the demand for them). Those he buys from will then have the newly counterfeited money and they, in turn, will spend it, driving up the prices of the things they buy. And so on. Over time, the money spreads out through the community and the prices of everything are a bit higher. A fraction of the wealth of the community has been stolen and transferred to the counterfeiter and those who got early use of the new money (before prices rose, generally) by diluting the purchasing power of everyone's savings. To paraphrase Hoppe, inflation (counterfeiting) transfers wealth from the later users of new money to the early users of new money. Kings and emperors have been doing this through the debasement of coins for millenia. They take in a batch of 10,000 coins of puri...

I propose that most people reason about gun control in the following manner: - Guns enable the more efficient production of violence, much like textile machines enable the more efficient production of clothing - Since violence is undesirable, we should want its production to be as inefficient as possible. This is in contrast to the production of desirable things, like clothing, which we want to be as efficient as possible. - Obviously, it's impossible for guns, once invented, to be wished out of existence entirely since someone will always produce them, and the fewer there are, the greater the incentive to do so. - Therefore, we should desire the fewest number of owners of guns possible since this will make the production of violence less efficient for all but the few persons/organizations which do own guns. And, we can then turn our attention more fully to the oversight of these few gun holders. However, I think that this analysis is deeply flawed in that it misidentifies what it ...

Victoria Sprouse has been wrongfully convicted and may be sentenced to as much as 40 years in Federal prison. Sound like a wild claim? Check it out for yourself. We need to break the back of the monstrous legal monopoly before it becomes so emboldened that it begins victimizing the public en masse. Americans need to be free to seek justice in foreign courts, if necessary, to escape the rampant abuse and injustice of the American courts

There are several contemporary political debates surrounding the issue of privatization - should defense be privatized (as in Blackwater), should health insurance remain privatized or should it be socialized or nationalized? Should banking be privatized or nationalized? Often, people point to the obvious corruption of "privatization" programs as nothing more than corporate welfare - private industry soaking taxpayers through sweetheart contracts with the government. Furthermore, there is a certain extent to which some government agencies and programs can be held more accountable since there is a presumption, for most government agencies, that government records are a matter of public record, whereas the records of private companies are not subject to public scrutiny except under certain conditions. Unfortunately, the only problem with these observations is the association of this kind of crony privatization with capitalism . Expropriation, whether performed by the state direc...

I think there is a connection between the folk myth of just prices and the ability of governments (and their enabling private banks) to inflate. The two primary reasons given for monopolizing currency issuance and creating central banks are: 1) Controlling inflation and maintaining "price stability" 2) Minimizing unemployment The concept of "just price" is a folk myth that there is a certain price above which a seller is "unjust" to charge. This price is usually held to be around the going price in "normal" circumstances. For example, theatres "gouge" their customers by charging them 3x or more the price they would pay for drinks and popcorn if purchased almost anywhere else. The implication is that the theatre is, in some sense, immoral and engaging in unconscionable behavior by charging far above the "going rate" for refreshments. However, this analysis neglects to note that everyone who is holding property (and not selling)...

Looks like the Fed's nefarious goings-on during the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch merger are finally catching up with it. Here's to hoping this story doesn't get buried with freshly printed Federal Reserve Notes sent out to the editors at all the major media outlets.

The essence of government is territorial monopolization of law and security . Global government, then, would be a worldwide monopoly on law and security. Naturally, the monopolists of law and security that exist today (national governments) will be reluctant to give up their territorial monopolies to a global monopolist. However, faced with the prospects of losing their monopolies (by increasing competitive production of law and security by private individuals within their respective jurisdictions) or joining a larger cartel and preserving the status quo of non-competition within their jurisdiction (at the cost of yielding ultimate control to a higher, global monopoly of law and security), I think national governments will rationally choose to cartelize. However, cartels are inherently unstable . In this case, each government stands to profit at the expense of other governments by providing a "better deal" in terms of lower taxes and better infrastructure over against its ...

"I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks... The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself ; the people who are a part of the U.S. system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive. They can be anyone, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia... What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks... The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which makes us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this...

The AP reports here that the US military admits that not all rules were followed during combat operations and this resulted in the deaths of 26 Afghan civilians last month. 78 Taliban fighters were killed in the process, they claim . Even giving the military the benefit of the doubt - that they are not exaggerating the number of killed who were Taliban and minimizing the number who were civilians - the ratio of collateral damage is 25%... one in four people killed by the military last month were civilian. That is nothing short of carnage. Do you think killing those 26 civilians in order to kill the other 78 Taliban fighters got us any closer to capturing OBL? Would you be as indifferent if there had been 26 civilian American casualties? Why should you care less if 26 human beings are murdered in Kandahar than if 26 human beings are murdered in Podunk, USA? Odds are, you are no more closely related to any given American than you are to any given Afghan. But the US commander says there ...

Do we really want an organization which is responsible for the deaths of 262 million people in the 20th century (that comes out to 5 human beings killed every minute for 100 years) to be the sole possessor of firearms? The professor who maintains the above website has defined the term democide to mean death at the hands of the government. A vast ocean of humanity has died at the hands of the state throughout history. Given that fact, think carefully about the following question: Does an organization become legitimate by virtue of there being only one of its kind in existence in a given territory? Is it the fact that the city police are the only police in the city limits (not strictly true, but close to true) that makes them legitimate? Does having a multiplicity of gun owners make gun ownership illegitimate for all but the one, legitimate organization, i.e. the police, the state? What is it about there being only one organization in a given territory permitted to use firearms (the s...

I've been conflicted about whether or not 9/11 was a government conspiracy for quite some time. For what it's worth, let me give a run-down of my position. Before I spell out my position, allow me to make some brief comments on probability and induction (reasoning from specifics to generalities). First, consider the idea of independence in probabilistic events. If there is a 0.01% chance that your tire will blow out while driving down the highway and a 0.5% chance that you will sneeze at any given time, then the chances that you will sneeze at exactly the same time as your tire blows out while driving down the highway is simply 0.01% x 0.5% = 0.00005%. As you add more simultaneous - but unrelated events - to the mix (say, the probability of seeing a green car, sneezing and blowing a tire all at the same time), the probability approaches zero exponentially quickly. Two events are dependent if they are not independent. Another way to say this is that if two events occur simultan...

Alfred McCoy, professor of history at UW-Madison and author of A Question of Torture , discusses in this audio interview the history of the CIA's torture programs and their manifestations in the so-called war on terror. For more information, you can read an article by McCoy where he discusses what he calls the CIA's "Manhattan Project of the Mind". It is plain to see that the US government is actively involved in torture. Everyone in the world but Americans knows it. It's time we stopped accepting the implausible "plausible deniability" arguments that the government-media complex keep suckering us with. This is not medieval Europe, this is the home of the free and the land of the brave. Wake up, people!

There are three individuals stranded on an island, without radios and with no other way to contact the rest of the world and no one knows they are stranded on this island. The first individual is a doctor, and he has all the tools he needs for his practice with him. The second individual is a policeman, he has a gun, and all the other accoutrements of police work. The third individual is a heart attack victim. Now, the heart attack victim is in a life and death emergency. The heart attack victim and the doctor have a long history of ill will with the doctor having been the victim of repeated threats and attempts on his life by the now heart attack victim. As a consequence, the doctor refuses to care for the heart attack victim and save his life. At this point, the police officer decides he must intervene: after all, if the doctor does nothing, the heart attack victim will die and this is almost tantamount to murder since the doctor has the capability to save the man's life but is r...

I don't know who Chris Hedges is but this piece on the sin of war is powerful. As an ex-neocon (ideologically, that is), I feel a great deal of shame about my unapologetic support for the US government's imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I fell trap to the human fascination with war, which Hedges uncompromisingly lambastes, "... the awful knowledge that is hardest to digest [about war is] the knowledge that the line between the victims and the victimizers is razor-thin, that human beings find a perverse delight in destruction and death, and that few can resist the pull. At best, most of us become silent accomplices." Worse, I was a vocal accomplice. The least I can do to recompense for my sins in this regard is to become a vocal opponent of mass murder, i.e. war. War is sin. I supported the US government's wars of aggression and I regret that.

What is the truth about your government? Murray Rothbard eviscerates every myth surrounding the State in this short essay . The truth about the government of whatever country in which you reside is that it is nothing more than a crime syndicate with a monopoly on law and force that maintains the perception that it is morally legitimate. Does this sound like insanity to you? If you are scientifically inclined, do you remember the feeling of bewilderment and borderline disbelief the first time you read about Einstein's theory of relativity or Schrodinger's and Heisenberg's formulations of quantum mechanics? If you are mathematically inclined, do you remember how you felt the first time you encountered Newton's and Leibniz's calculus of variations? Anyone who has experienced a mental "conversion", that is, a realignment of the mental model by which they interpret the world has experienced the initial feeling of disbelief and disorientation upon encountering a...