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Showing posts from October, 2010

Gang signs and major news events

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...