Over on The Line is Here, they are hosting the Carnival of the Libertarians, where various folks sound off about, surprise surprise, issues to do with liberty.
Check it out.
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There is a great little article in Slashdot about a well known German hacker group, Chaos Computer Club, publishing the fingerprints of German Secretary of the Interior as part of their protest against state use of biometric ID.
Sweet. I suppose that is a ‘hardware hack’ of sorts! March 29th, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
 From NRO ‘The Campaign Spot’:
Holy. Crap. And this is the Republican candidate. Read that again: “government should support parents, and how it should help, not complicate, how parents pass on their values to their children”. Just de-construct that for a moment. Is that not a phrase that should send cold shivers down the spines of anyone who thinks civil society has been fucked over by the state quite enough for the last fifty or so years, thank you very much? Clearly the government does not want any old values passed on to the kiddies, so John McCain must see a role for state approved politically vetted family values. And what if someone want to pass on the values of respecting the property of others and so not tolerating proxy theft via third parties (like, say, the state), is Johnny going help out there somehow? How about atheism? Contrary to the popular perceptions, I know a great many God-Free Americans (almost all of whom are self-described hyphenated Republicans). Will the state give them a hand passing that one on to Junior too? How about utter contempt for the political elite and their army of functionaries? John McCain’s kind offer to ‘help‘ is another manifestation of the baseless arrogance of so many members of the political class who think that civil society revolves around the state and is something for them to tinker with. So John, let me tell you how to “help, not complicate, how parents pass on their values to their children”… mind your own goddamn business. There is nothing complicated about that. March 28th, 2008 | 59 comments - (Comments are closed)
I previously reported on the saga of Mikko Ellilä. Here is the trial (in English) and now the state has spoken its verdict: guilty. So it has happened: thoughtcrime is now officially a crime in Finland. Stating your opinion, moreover stating your opinions based of government statistics, is illegal. Finns may now only express a politically sanctioned range of opinions subject to supervision by official Gauleiters like Mikko Puumalainen. The fine is small but so what? The message is clear. Dissent will not be tolerated by the Finnish state. It should not matter a damn if you agree with what Mikko Ellilä says, it is outrageous that he is not being allowed to say what he thinks. The thing I find so nauseating is these sanctimonious pathological control freaks act as those they are not repressive government thugs using force to prevent dissent. The freedom to only state popular opinions is no freedom at all because freedom of speech is the right to say what some other people do not want to hear. It is the right to express opinions that may offend because if you cannot do that, you do not have freedom of speech. People like Finnish bureaucrat Mikko Puumalainen exist everywhere (see the Ezra Levant case in Canada) and they must be resisted by any means necessary. March 28th, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
The crazy guys from VBS have 14 parts of strange-but-interesting video footage from that open air prison known as North Korea… check it out. I do not think they are going to be invited back. March 25th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Can you believe this place?” Admiral Driscoll said to me. He sounded like a bit like a kid on Christmas morning. I felt weirdly like a jaded old man who had seen it all even though he is older and more accomplished. I understood then what some American soldiers and Marines mean when they say the top brass lives and works at “echelons above reality”. I’m not blaming the admiral. His job requires him to be isolated from nuts, bolts, and the street most of the time. March 24th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Michael Totten’s latest from Iraq is up and as usual highly recommended:
In less dissembling mealy-mouthed times, that would simply be described as saying it the ways he sees it. March 24th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
I came across a couple articles that puzzled me. Advocates of all beliefs, be they religious, political or philosophical, generally try to argue their position and convince other people their view of the world is the best one. Of course some religions (and pretty much all political systems) are evangelical, whereas some, like Judaism for example, are not. Nevertheless even Jews will argue their corner on why their beliefs are sensible and it is far from unheard of for people to convert to Judaism, something most Jews would probably regard as A Good Thing. Yet strangely as of late, some Jews and Muslims seem a bit bent out of shape when another religion, the Roman Catholic Church, either lands a high profile convert or prays openly for non-believers to convert. Being God free myself, I have no dog in this fight but this all strikes me rather like shop owners protesting that some other shop is advertising and therefore ‘stealing’ their customers. Guys, like everything else, religion is a market… why are you shocked that the Boys in Rome engage in marketing? March 24th, 2008 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
So there I was, your typical history buff aviation enthusiast, when I overhear a discussion in a cafe that there is a movie out called Horton hears a who. “Oh fab!” thinks I, fully expecting said movie to feature the coolest Nazi jet fighter ever conceived (and if you know anything about conceptual late war German aviation, that is saying something). Maybe some contra-factual Luftwaffe 1946 scenario? Woo hoo! …Sadly it is about an elephant. March 22nd, 2008 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
The police in the UK have admitted that regardless of whether or not an Members of Parliament broke the law regarding expenses (i.e. helping themselves to our money), they see no point in attempting to prosecute any of them as the laws are so arcane, it is almost impossible to know if any have in fact been broken. I believe it was a Roman senator (Crassus?) who when asked if he would use his power and privilege to prevent himself being punished for some small transgression, he replied “as we make the laws, it behoves us to obey them if we want other to as well”. Clearly this is not the view prevailing in Westminster. March 21st, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
…rather a lot actually. Michael Totten continued to climb in my estimation after a very good article called The Israel of the Balkans on the interesting parallels between Kosova and Israel. Strongly recommended. March 20th, 2008 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
The rioting in Lhasa seems to be continuing and now it has been reported that some discontent is boiling over elsewhere in Chinese occupied Tibet. Of course if the official death toll says:
It is safe to say it is probably ten times that, at least on the side of the resistors. It seems that Chinese colonists have also been involved in attacking Tibetans, so this does appear to be far from over. Sadly I cannot see China having any serious trouble remaining in control given the sheer size of their security apparatus. So, all you activists out there who have made a career out of excoriating Israel, do you have anything to say about this? Update: I received the following e-mail from a person called Lee Ming:
Some Chinese claims assert they have ruled Tibet since the 13th century (the Peace Treaty between Tibet and Britain in 1904 is strangely forgotten): 1. Chinese rule was always debatable 2. The historical claim is largely irrelevant. Scotland has been part of the UK since 1707 and it was in a loose de union with England since 1603… yet if a majority in Scotland vote to become independent now, do you think UKGov will send in the riot cops and troops? No. Hell, if a majority in Wessex want to go their own way, I quite like the idea of that too. There is nothing sacred about nation states. The fact a majority of Tibetans want to be independent of China rather than live under colonial occupation is all the justification needed. March 17th, 2008 | 75 comments - (Comments are closed)
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