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So London was attacked and hundreds were killed or wounded by Islamic fanatics (showing incidently why we are utterly right to be fighting these vermin wherever they are to be found)… and having ID cards would have made not one damn bit of difference. Next time some pontificating dissembling jackass holds up ‘terrorism’ as why Britain need these odious things, I am likely to spit in their face. July 8th, 2005 | 71 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The retirement of a Supreme Court justice is always big news in the USA. Coming on the heels of a ruling which made big business developers grasping municipalities across the United States rub their hands together with glee, it is vital that the mindset which produced one of the most monstrous anti-liberty trends in America today not be reinforced with yet another ultra-statist. To her credit, although Sandra Day O’Connor was neither a darling of the right nor consistently supporting of civil liberties, she did dissent quite strongly from the monstrous Kelo verdict. Perhaps now that more people are seeing past the simplistic left/right divide on the issue of eminent domain abuse, the importance of insisting on a judge who does revolt at the very idea of such a predator’s charter should become the main focus not just for George W. Bush but people of any party who think that being secure in your property is one of the very lynchpins of a free society. July 5th, 2005 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today is the 4th of July, when Americans celebrate their independence and much talk of freedom and constitutions occurs. This day is in many ways an orgy of self-congratulation, much of which is entirely justified (I make no secret of my pro-Americanism Atlanticism). But perhaps, just perhaps, the ‘shot heard around the country’ that was delivered by the Supreme Court of the United States with the Kelo verdict will snap a great number of Americans out of their understandable but entirely misplaced complacency regarding the benevolence of their own nation-state. Not only does Eminent Domain now pose a threat to anyone whose property happens to catch the eye of a well connected property developer, the USA also has outrageous ‘asset forfeiture’ laws that allow suspects to have their property taken by the state, reversing the burden of proof and making the accused (but un-convicted and usually un-tried) person prove their property is not the proceeds of some crime in order to have the property returned (they cannot prevent it from being taken in the first place). So much for ‘due process’. Americans would do well to remember that it was the use of British sedition laws to seize private property from political activists was a major cause of disaffection in the colonies in the lead up to the Revolution in 1776. Moreover those sedition laws were far less capricious and more respectful of due process than modern ‘asset forfeiture’ laws (colonial era sedition laws at least required you to actually be convicted). The fight against Al Qaeda and any who ally with them must go on but the greatest threat to liberty (and in the long run that inevitably means life) facing the people in the United States comes not from without but from within. Until the entire scope of what government can do is radically cut back, Kelo is pointing the way to a grim future. I hope that the Supreme Court’s destruction of the 5th Amendment by allowing the state to take private property for the private use of property developers, will be reversed long before it requires the active use of the 2nd Amendment to make private property secure against those who would rather use political power rather than markets to enrich themselves. Happy birthday America. July 4th, 2005 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
You know we have a greedy government. Even if they cancel the debt, it will not help if the government is greedy. Senior government officials should cut their salaries first. July 3rd, 2005 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
The original Live Aid back in 1985 was something I supported. I watched it, gave them my money and continued to vote for Margaret Thatcher in the next election because, just like in Africa, extreme statism needed to be opposed in the country I lived in too. Back in those days the Tory party had at least some intellectual coherence. Live Aid was a very specifically targeted project: there was a catastrophic famine in Ethiopia and regardless of the fact that it was the result of a war vastly exacerbating the effects of a drought, I felt at the time that specifically aiding civilians with emergency assistance was neither going to destroy the local economy (it had already collapsed to less that subsistence) nor would it significantly enrich the Marxists at the top who were in no small way responsible for that state of affairs. Most importantly, Live Aid was asking for private money, and as it was mine to give, I gave some. This time things are rather different and far less straightforward. It is not all bad, mind you. The Live 8 extravaganza has quite a few people associated with it making demands for the developed world (of which Russia is not truly a member, it should be noted) to open their markets to the Third World… and this is rightly targeted at the G-8 leaders. Quite so. What the hellholes of the world need is more globalization, not less, if they are to lift themselves out of their dire conditions. But alas the main thrust of what Live 8 seems to be about is to induce the governments of the G-8 to take money from their taxpayers and assign it to nebulous and frequently counter-productive projects in Africa, often in effect propping up the regimes who are the single biggest cause of their own nation’s problems and directly responsible for local poverty. As with any large gathering of the music illiterati, coherence and cogency are going to be as rare as pelicans in Perthshire. Yet some of the people listening to the streams of babble at this event will come away with the simple idea lodged in their brains that making trade freer is one of those things that would make the world a better place. So whilst I have no interest in supporting Live 8 myself and I had better things to do than watch it yesterday, perhaps some good will come from it in spite of the toxic statist message at this event’s core.  July 3rd, 2005 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
When blogging about something that has caught your eye, sometimes the other people reading what you have written can add a new dimension to the subject. Over on Media Influencer, a seemingly off-hand blog about a controversy regarding some questionable business practices and the way journalist cover such stories in the mainstream media has got both the parties mentioned exchanging forthright views in the comments section, which I think is quite interesting. July 2nd, 2005 | Comments are closed
I was cruising the net and saw an article titled Time magazine defuses CIA stoush. Sure, the story is interesting but… what the hell does ‘stoush’ mean? July 1st, 2005 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is a list of the MPs who voted in favour of trying to make you have an ID card. Do you see your MP here? Let them know what you think of what they have done. Special kudos to the 20 Labour MPs who put decency before party and refused to be go along with this disgraceful attempt to control you. July 1st, 2005 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a new outfit calling itself the Smokers Liberation Front which is taking a no retreat, no surrender line regarding the ‘health fascists’ (taglines are: “No More Passive Smoking. Welcome to Active Smoking!” and “Separate & Ventilate. Don’t Legislate!”). My view is that if you are on private property (and that includes businesses), and if the owners elect to allow smoking there and you think this could damage your health, feel free NOT to go in or take a job at that place. Simple really.  June 30th, 2005 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
verb. To record (usually spoken narrative) audio files (usually in MP3 format) and make them available on-line so that they can be downloaded and listened to rather like an ‘on-demand’ radio show. Although podcasts can be listened to on any suitable hardware (i.e. a computer or MP3 player), the term ‘podcast’ derives its name from the iPod, a very popular portable MP3 player made by Apple. June 30th, 2005 | Comments are closed
There is a serious plan being master minded by pro-liberty activists to use powers of ’eminent domain’ in New Hampshire to take a house belonging to Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and build a hotel on the site.
The way the systems works is that you need to make sure at least five of the Selectmen have a nice fat stake in the project personally (and why bother to hide it? That is how this process works). Justification? Easy: it will draw pro-liberty activists and tourists into Weare and thereby increase tax revenues to the town. This is one of the most splendid ideas I have heard in a while as I have long liked the idea of using the impositions of the state against the very people responsible for imposing them on others. When it comes to such things, there is no ‘public and private sphere’, there is just a private sphere. June 29th, 2005 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
The ID card is at hand in the UK and we should now start thinking very hard about how to wreck the government’s plans at every level. Every options needs to be considered because if this can be made into a political fiasco of epic proportions and is remembered as ‘Labour’s Poll Tax’, then it will be a long time before any party tries this sort of abridgement of civil liberties again. It is important to remember that the Poll Tax was not defeated in Parliament, it was defeated in the streets. June 28th, 2005 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
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