Incompressible

Authors@Google

I just wanted to jot down some of the ways that I've noticed the US government cooks its books. I'm sure other governments have their own variations on these themes and, taken together, these methods represent a certain "state of the art" in taxation. The central problem of taxation is that it is plainly and simply morally and legally unjustifiable. If you could challenge your government's taxation somewhere other than your government's courts, your government would be unable to produce a coherent moral or legal justification for why you must pay the taxes it levies on you. The result of this problem is that governments must live in constant fear of a beast that lies dormant in the popular consciousness... the tax revolt. I think most people, at least in the West, are fairly well indoctrinated into believing that there exists some valid legal and moral reason for why they must pay taxes. The vast majority of those who are disgruntled with taxation and actively...

I found the number 13 in it. If you calculate a standard "life path number" on the date of the attack, you get 13: 11/26/2010 11+26=37 2010+37 = 2047 2+0+4+7=13 Now, the 13 should reduce to 4 (1+3) but I find it interesting that there's a 13 along the way. Accident? Maybe. But this whole "plot" is just an incarnation of the FBI's own dark imagination.

33 is an important number to Freemasonry. I can't seem to get a clear picture of why. It could be nothing more than that Jesus was ostensibly crucified at 33 years of age. The masons seem to be pretty eclectic about where they get their symbols from. In any case, here's some places I've found the number 33. 11/22/1963 - JFK assassinated 11+22 = 33 9/11/2001 - WTC attacks 9*11 = 99 2+0+0+1 = 3 99/3 = 33 Admittedly, these are "data-mining" but it's not torturous data-mining. The Wikipedia article for the number 33 claims that 33 is somehow related to the Star of David but doesn't explain how. There are 13 points in the star, 24 edges and 12 triangles. Sums and differences of these yields 1, 11, 25, 36 and 37. I see no relation to 33. The only way I can squeeze 33 out of the star is to consider it as two triangles super-imposed - each with 3 points (or sides) yielding 3, 3. However, 3, 3 is not the same as the number 33. The highest degree of freemasonry is n...

Hartry Field . Pretty cool.

There were 33 miners trapped in the Chilean mine collapse. Fine, 33 is just one number among many. But it happened on Aug. 5th and 8+5 = 13. I'm becoming less and less inclined to believe in coincidences in dates and other numbers in major news events. This got me thinking about something I've been pondering for a while. If governments are basically just gangs that happen to have captured the moral high-ground of legitimacy ( Rothbardian theory of government), then it makes sense that they might have gang-signs. Flags, emblems and other visible signs of affiliation have long served the same roles that gang signs serve: marking territory, vouching loyalty, intimidating victims, warding off enemies, and so on. For example, this fellow insightfully noticed that the number of dead in the plane-crash that killed the President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and quite a few other high-ranking Polish officials was initially (correctly) reported to be around 95 persons but later (incorrec...

The supposedly "liberal" 9th circuit court threw out a lawsuit by five men who were kidnapped and tortured by CIA - the lawsuit was not even against the government, it was against a private corporation for its role in aiding and abetting the government in the commission of these crimes. The majority judges have essentially hinted that the victims in this case should just sue for hush-money and be done with it: "In the 55-page opinion, replete with ambivalence, the six judges voting for dismissal pointed out that the plaintiffs could still pursue compensation or redress from the U.S. government or Congress. They alluded to the Japanese Americans interned during World War II who were later paid reparations for the violation of their civil rights." Yeah, you were tortured. No, we won't permit you to sue any private corporation that assisted the US government in torturing you because then we'd have to dig through the dirty actions of the CIA-military-industrial...

Here . Al-Awlaki is probably a piece of shit but he's probably also a former CIA asset. In any case, it's all about precedent and once the precedent has been set that the government can do X, then when the government subsequently re-interprets the precedent to include X-squared, the law goes right out the window. "We can kill a US citizen without due process in this one instance " becomes "We can kill US citizens without due process, we've done it before, it's the law." We are definitely entering an eclipse of human progress. I hope people do come to their senses before they drag society all the way back to the Dark Ages.

As if the schools were not already merely glorified meat-processing centers, now they want to install chips in our kids. Where do they make the people who think this kind of stuff is a good idea? That's all I want to know!

They can track your every move. Not that they couldn't before, just that one government employee (judge) has rubber-stamped baseless snooping and voyeurism by other government employees. Surprise!

I search "oil" in Google News at least once a week. There are more oil accidents since my last blog post. Mexico's third-largest oil refinery exploded today. An oil rig off the coast of China has begun listing , with two people apparently trapped. Hopefully, these are just some of the ordinary, random, uncorrelated accidents that, of course, occur in the oil industry every year.

OK, I didn't call the explosion, but I did say the Deepwater Horizon explosion was fishy and I smelled funny business. How many "coincidences" are required before sabotage is considered a respectable hypothesis? Now we have another explosion. Come on, this is just blatant! The author of the linked article notes (apparently not seeing any irony in his statement), " Just as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as worked its way out of the news , a new explosion has taken place." [Emphasis added] A quick Google search shows that the oil rig company (Mariner Energy) is in the midst of a big merger deal with Apache Corporation which has also bought up a bunch of stakes from BP on the cheap because BP needed the cash to pay for costs incurred by the Deepwater Horizon spill. That gets a big, fat "Hmmmmmmm" from me (complete with eyebrows raised). Oh, and don't forget the mysterious exploding box of chocolates . Houston seems to be a nexus of corruption.

Oh my . Where do they make the people who take these kind of security measures seriously? I mean, do they really believe they're Superman fighting Brainiac? Check out this super-creepy promo video. My only thought is this - if governments can own these things, then everybody can. I'll be waiting for Backscatter Bang Bus on Blu-Ray or you could do your very own ride-along with Ray's Backscatter Experience Inc. permitting the ordinary voyeur to immerse himself in the full-spectrum experience of technological peeping.

I've been puzzling for some time over why gold took off when it did. Looking at this chart: ... you can see that gold "turned a corner" in the second half of 2005. This is a well-defined corner, the kind of corner that you see in the charts of the Great Depression or other significant economic events. Yet the global economy did not begin melting down until the last half of 2008, nearly three years down the road from that 2005 corner. So, I asked myself, what was happening in mid-2005? Were there any significant events that year? It turns out that there was a significant event... the 7/7 London train bombing. If you accept the hypothesis that the gold market is heavily manipulated and if you accept the hypothesis that 9/11 and 7/7 were likely false-flag events, then it's not a big leap to suggest a correlation between 7/7 and the gold price turning a corner in 2005 at almost exactly the same time. Just a thought.

Here 's a piece celebrating Schiff's loss in Connecticut (McMahon's "victory") as a win for anti-establishment sentiment (dare I say "Tea Party"?). Of course, McMahon spent $24 million of her own cold, hard cash just to win the primary. Schiff reportedly spent $1 million. The narrative I've heard that makes the most sense to me is that the RNC realized that Schiff really could beat their boy in Connecticut, Simmons. Terrified at the thought of a Senatorial Ron Paul , they sent out an SOS to all the Connecticut big-shots, looking for somebody that could do a "big, big favor", and Vince McMahon's wife answered the call. The McMahons are not millionaires, they are billionaires . That $24M was pocket change and will be repaid a hundred-fold, one way or the other. At this point, it doesn't matter whether Linda McMahon wins or loses. Mission Accomplished: Schiff has been neutralized.

This guy stood up to the FBI's terrifying Holy Office-style powers in the form of the gagging NSL. He's got some huevos. Hopefully, this is the first chink in the new police state's seemingly impenetrable armor.

Here . Whenever someone important dies of something other than natural causes, my suspicions are automatically raised. Interesting that Sen. Stevens was convicted in 2008 of charges that were then later overturned but only after his conviction caused him to lose his re-election. Was he supposed to go away but was just as much of a nuisance out of office as he had been while in office? It's a thought.

One of my favorite quotes, ever: I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint. - Hesiod, Eighth Century B.C.

I was watching Gerald Celente today and Iran came up. For some reason, the thought of buying a nuclear weapon on the black market flashed into my head. If Iran were intent on "wiping Israel off the map" - as the imperialists claim - why wouldn't they just buy nukes off the black market? They have a fully operational intelligence service. Its acronym is, ironically, MISIRI. So, if drug lords can buy these things, surely a nationally funded intelligence service can. Here's a YouTube video discussing the trek of some freelance journalists to hunt down black market nukes in Bulgaria. It might be a bit of a tall tale but it can't be far from the truth. These nukes are far from accounted for. It just goes to show that the saber-rattling from Washington DC & Co. is all a big farce put forward by the war-mongers to justify the war they want.

Check this out, from 1993. Something similar happened back in 1951 and 1952, the US Navy was responsible for that outbreak. Given the dead-end of the investigation in Milwaukie, my first suspicion is that this was a public experiment.

Thank God for the government . What is interesting to me is that people can comprehend that the State's cartel enforcers are coercive bullies only in the instance of a little girl selling lemonade without a "license." But why is it only heartstring-pulling little girls innocently selling lemonade who get a pass to break the rules? Logically, there is no difference between her and, say, a Mexican burrito wagon. Both are looking to make a little money by providing a good which is - they hope - demanded by consumers.

Here's a little gem. This goes to reaffirm my running hypothesis that there is some serious coziness between Google and CIA (or US intelligence more broadly). In principle, I don't see anything wrong with the idea but I think they've got it turned around backwards. They want to predict what you and I are going to be doing. That's easy. We'll wake up in the morning, go to work, eat lunch, go back to work, go to the gym, go home, watch TV, eat dinner, relax and then go to bed. Repeat. Peons have very predictable lives. A much more interesting (and useful) problem to solve is what the wealthiest and most powerful individuals will be doing with themselves. What choices will they next make? For that, you'll likely need a crystal ball.

Here . Of course, this was fishy from the beginning. I would add that this disclosure was completely voluntary and likely calculated to ward off further prying by feigning full disclosure from the beginning. If so, then this is probably just the tip of a fairly sizable iceberg. What other agreements go on between the BIS and central banks, either to manipulate the gold price or (what is the same thing) to push currencies up or down?

There have been suggestions from the more conspiracy-theoretic end of the spectrum that Wikileaks may be a CIA front. After this latest " leak ", I think it's pretty obvious. I saw this news item on CNN which is what tipped me off that it must be "safe for public consumption." If it's safe for public consumption, it sure isn't a leak that's worth a damn. Why would someone go to all the risk to themselves and their career to submit Secret clearance docs that get handed around to thousands of people? It doesn't make sense. And why would the only really sensitive documents finger the ISI? Isn't the point of leaking to blow the whistle on your boss ?? This seems like a rather transparent attempt to put public pressure on ISI to reduce their support for the Taliban while pretending that it was an uncontrolled "leak". What also doesn't make sense is where Wikileaks gets its money. If Wikileaks really were the grassroots organization i...

I enjoy power-elite analysis. I did some amateur research on the JFK assassination last weekend and have been piecing together all sorts of decade-spanning conspiracy theories for some time. These theories exist in a sort of "quantum superposition" since there is so little solid information and evidence to work with. When dealing with such difficult problems, it's helpful to use metaphors to keep things straight in your head. One such metaphor I've recently adopted I call "Kingpin theory." The Kingpin is a character in the Spiderman comics. He has no superpowers but he is Spiderman's arch-nemesis, more powerful than all the other villains who do have superpowers. The Kingpin's power comes from his mastery of human nature, his willingness and ability to manipulate people by threatening their loved ones and his uncanny ability to remain at least one step ahead of everyone else. In the real world, there are villains and then there are Kingpins. Pablo Es...

Here 's an astounding news item: an "oil executive's wife" in Houston has been targeted by an exploding box of chocolates. I would desperately like to know if this "oil executive" is in any way connected with BP. Godfather Part IV?

Rothbard and Hoppe use the idea of a "natural order" against which to criticize the State. One of the difficulties of this approach is that it makes an arbitrary distinction between what is "natural" and what is not - why is it the case that the State is unnatural and what does it even mean for something to be "unnatural", given methodological naturalism? Whether the government is "natural" or not, the question remains: why does it exist? Here's my video on what the government is . My current view regarding why government exists: The essence of the State is the accepted or legitimized double-standard This is puzzling since humans generally find double-standards revolting... the Golden Rule is a culturally universal ethical principle My solution is as follows: Humans evolved from primates which largely engage in alpha-male mating patterns Alpha-male mating separates the males into two categories, the commoners and the elite (alpha) The costs...

I've noticed a collectivist under-current in some of the thinking of folks involved in the Free-State Project and other libertarians. This collectivism is subtle but real. Sure, "live free or die" as a personal motto or ethic is ultimately an expression of individualism. But many libertarians incorrectly diagnose the ills of modern statist society to be due to a lack of willingness to die for one's liberty on the part of the masses. They are asserting something along the lines of "if only people were more generally willing to die for their liberty, we'd all be truly free." The idea is that a tyrant can't dominate a people composed of individuals who are mostly willing to die rather than be enslaved to the tyrant. But I think this is subtle or stealth collectivism because dying for one's liberty is not really dying for one's own liberty (you can't be free when you're dead). Instead, dying for liberty is dying for the liberty of others...

So, I spent all weekend watching JFK assassination videos and doing armchair JFK assassination research. Here are my notes: 1) Most of the debate seems to rage around trying to get evidence or proof that JFK's assassination was a conspiracy. This is silly because it grants - from the outset - the bizarre assumption made by the official theories that political figures are as likely to die at the hands of "mad attention-seekers" as they are to be assassinated by their enemies who actually stand to benefit. How many people are insane enough to think that the electric chair is a fair trade for "being remembered" by history, even if in infamy? And of those people how many are resourceful enough to pierce the security perimeter of the President of the United States? Kennedy was threatened by Richard Pavlick in 1960 after Nixon lost the election and, by all accounts, Pavlick was a lone nut. But all we know of his "assassination attempts" are his own tall tale...

A gaggle of Senators including Chuckie Schumer are clamoring that BP may have been involved in the repatriation of the Lockerbie bomber back to Libya as a concession for removing drilling restrictions off the coast of Libya. Clearly, there's some kind of political tug-of-war going on under the surface.

OK, now I'm sure that the gulf oil spill was sabotage... a "Presidential commission" is going to " investigate " the explosion. Whenever the government insists on investigating something, you know there's corruption. My current wild-guess theory is that this strike is payback against whoever shot down the Copenhagen summit.

Just watched this fascinating lecture on the "secret" history of Silicon Valley. One of the most spectacular facts revealed at the end of the lecture ( spoiler alert ) is that the godfather of the computer chip, William Shockley - whose proteges Bill Noyce and Gordon Moore founded Intel (full disclosure: I work for Intel) - was heavily involved in the signals intelligence community, working for the Army Air Force during WWII and later working on projects related to the development of ICBMs. The lecturer also discusses the incestuous relationship between Stanford University and the US intelligence agencies that developed out of WWII, spearheaded by Frederick Terman, a big electronics spook type in academic research. Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, were educated at Stanford University. I have another blog post discussing possible incest between Google and CIA here . Specifically, I am suspicious of this whole "the government was taken by surprise ...

P.T. Leeson, an economist of the Austrian bent, wrote an article a few years ago titled, "Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse" where he presents a persuasive case that much of the world would be better off without a government, judging from the case of Somalia. Since the time he wrote this article, things have changed a great deal. The existence of even one government, especially a democratic government, is a threat to freedom everywhere. Hoppe says something to the effect that, in a private law society, crime insurance agencies would charge higher premiums in areas that are next to government-controlled territory. He reasons that government employees would likely be categorized, for crime insurance purposes, the same as other criminals... it would be difficult for a government employee to live in a decent neighborhood in free territory because no one would want to be neighbors with him because their premiums would go up. What's amazing is t...

In this awesome mises.org daily (excerpted from Journal of Libertarian Studies), Hans Hoppe makes the case that the state's predation has increased inexorably under democracy vis-a-vis the levels of State predation which prevailed under monarchy. I think Hoppe's case is historically and logically sound. However, there is another interpretation of the increasing invasion of the State into everyday life which I think deserves some consideration. If we go back to the origins of the State, it began with simple robbery ... plunder and tribute collected from tribes by war raiders. These war raiders, through one means or another, eventually transmuted into "steady-state" plunderers, extracting regular payments from a subject population rather than running one-off raids. In the beginning, the State existed without apology. Might did make right. There was no other reason to obey the State than that they could put a spear through you. As time went on, however, alliances between...

There are a variety of manifestations of intellectual property - trademarks, copyrights, patents. Many things can be copyrighted and patented ... even business methods can be copyrighted! Famously, Amazon patented its so-called "1-click" purchase option, threatening other online sellers who dared to imitate its brilliant invention with lawsuits! Leaving aside conceptual definitions of IP, what are its ultimate effects? The ultimate effects of IP are to prohibit certain sorts of actions by individuals which are construed to be violations of the "intellectual property" rights of others. Now, the essence of property - in a Hoppean/Rothbardian conception - is to assign rights to exclusive use of a physical resource to a specific individual. If John owns a car, that means John has the exclusive right to operate and control the car and to determine who else is allowed to operate and control the car. When the State arrogates to itself the authority to license John's op...

What the hell??

Case closed .

Well, it looks like the Prohibitionists aren't giving up on California without a fight. LA city council voted 9-3 to impose heavy new regulations on medical marijuana distribution centers, including capping the total number of distribution centers in the city to 70 (there are currently estimated to be 800 to 1000 in the city). This is disappointing, as California has thumbed its nose at Washington more than any single state with its de facto nullification of Federal drug laws on marijuana. We'll just have to sit back and see how this one turns out. It will be a good barometer of the strength or weakness of US drug policy. If the Feds can be defied in California, they can be defied almost anywhere... and if that starts happening, our international drug policy will begin crumbling around the world. The repercussions would be widely felt.

This spending cap is a joke. It only applies to a tiny fraction of the Federal budget... $350B out of, what, close to $4T? Exempt are DHS, DoD and foreign aid. How transparent can you get? US gov won't stop sending more welfare to international bankers (through foreign aid) and won't stop spending even more on its already ridiculously outsized war budget. The charade is getting to be downright unbearable. I would prefer it, for sanity's sake, if these assholes would just own up... "yes, we're bilking you for close to 50% of everything you earn because we can... so get used to it." At least I could have the satisfaction of bitching about it and having everyone in the room nod their heads in agreement. How do they pull this off?? I'm in the wrong line of work.

Law What is law? Frederic Bastiat, in his treatise The Law, defines law as the collective use of force. As much as I love Bastiat’s treatise, I think his definition is not sufficiently analytical. It is certainly the case that the law plays a role in the collective use of force but the law is something more basic than this. We can begin by looking at law as it is today. The website for the Oregon courts has an excellent summary [1] of modern law and courts. I will quote it at length: Throughout history, people have had disputes and have needed some means to settle their disputes. As civil societies develop, they need an orderly system of conflict resolution. One system that developed in "western" cultures is the "law court" or court of law. In England, those early law courts developed a "body of law" called the common law, which defined both the rights of the people and the government and the duties people owe each other and their government. T...