If somebody starts shooting a gun at me, don’t expect me to defend myself with a condiment.
– Steve Daniels on pepper spray
Note: even pepper spray is illegal in the UK
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March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
How could I pass on such a friendly challenge? I remember my mother telling me a story from her childhood. There was a woman just up the block, a sad case no one spoke of very much: a Morphine addict. The family kept her at home, got prescription “medication” from the local pharmacist… and tried to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible. I imagine her life was pretty much a waste. I have no way of knowing the when of this. It was in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, some years before well intentioned people tried to “put an end” to such misery. Some 60 years of drug prohibition later, I was a young Libertarian activist appearing on radio talk shows. Good intentions had resulted in a human disaster beyond the imagination of those unwittingly responsible for it. The percentage of the population using hard drugs hadn’t even changed. But the total population had grown and with drug users concentrated in ghettos it seemed as if drug use was an epidemic. I made the comparison to the interviewer of that woman’s life sixty years ago versus what it would now be like for her. She’d have left home and cut all ties with the famiily after having lost her job and alienated all her friends by begging and stealing money for her expensive criminalized habit. She’d be living in total squalor in an inner city squat with her pimp boyfriend. He’d be beating her for not turning enough tricks and they’d both be robbing houses, shoplifting and commiting other petty crimes to feed their habits. Their pusher would get it all. They’d have to dive for cover when the pusher’s gang fought gun battles in the ‘hood to protect a valuable territory against rival gangs. The local cops would be on the take from the gangs. Wholesalers and importers upstream would take care of the bigger payoffs to the DEA, the Coast Guard and governments of third world countries. The couple would be re-using dirty needles and shooting up heroin of uncertain quality and random cut. Overdose, poisoning, hepatitis, violence, withdrawals on bad days… they’d be lucky to live to be thirty. Little needs changed to update the description by twenty more years. In 2002 the couple are probably HIV positive; and the heroin importers are financing terrorist networks and buying nukes. Yeah, the prohibition of hard drugs sure did improve the world… March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Over on Blithering Idiot, blogger Will Sulik has a hilarious post called Hermeneutics in Everyday life which needs some libertarian perspectives added: 14. An anarcho-libertarian refuses to acknowledge the validity of the repressive state to place force-backed STOP signs and accelerates past. 15. A minarchist libertarian halts at the STOP sign and waits for evolutionary epistemology to transform the understanding of society-state relationships to the point where all roads become private property. 16. An Randian refuses to see any objective reason to STOP at the sign and plows into the back of the minarchist, causing automotive catallaxy. March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Harry Browne has a new item online at Worldnet Daily. It’s an interesting take on why the loss of Enron’s employee pension money can be laid at the IRS’s door. The income tax laws are the reason employee pensions are handled inside companies rather than by the employees themselves. I’d never looked at it this way before, but he’s right. March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
New blog Global Grumpy raises an interesting point about the surprising lack of reaction from the US media and muted reaction from conservative bloggers regarding the asinine steel tariffs. He also links to a somewhat pointless article on Slate on the legality of the subject, as if the problem was a legal one rather than an economic and political one. The fact left wing bloggers have little to say is hardly surprising but one can only speculate why the neo-con bloggers are not howling much louder. Bush’s action is clearly damaging to the US economy due to the inevitable knock-on effects it will have on international trade, not to mention the increased costs passed on directly as US steel becomes more expensive. I was expecting to hear people making much stronger remarks about ‘The Bush Steel Tax on US consumers’ (for that is what it is). The headlines I was expecting were:
I hope the reason for this is not the flip side of a phenomena I saw many times during the ghastly Clinton years: even when Clinton occasionally got something right (very occasionally), so great was the detestation of several otherwise analytical commentators (and friends) that they opposed policies which if conducted identically under any US president except Clinton, they would have supported without question. I wonder if ‘wartime’ admiration for Bush has not cause a similar blindness in the other direction towards a truly inane policy. This is not a trivial issue and could have disastrous implications for the international trade system that are far more important than an industry which employs 150,000 people out of a population of 260 million. [Note to ‘Global Grumpy’: the two e-mail addresses I have for you both bounce] March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
‘Crypto-Libertarian-in-denial’ Brian Linse is mistaken as to which weapon was the result of the humourous ‘which weapon are you?’ test: Dale Amon was the H&K PDW…my result was  Alas as Brian points out, the only weapon I can legally own in Britain is… a squirt gun. At least if I am attacked by a female mugger, I can try to instigate an impromptu wet tee-shirt contest. March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I do not know why I do it to myself. I watch Enterprise, the latest and by far the lamest of the Star Trek series and have to restrain myself from throwing things at the television. In the latest idiotic episode, the crew of a freighter starship which has been repeatedly attacked by non-human pirates finally captures one and tries to strong arm information out of the prisoner to gain a tactical advantage in order to retaliate effectively against their tormentors. However we are shown that the virtuous Star Fleet crew of Enterprise do not approve of this. Not just the fact the freighter crew are trying to beat information out of the captive but the very fact they are holding him at all, we are lead to believe, is bad. I wonder what Captain Archer of the Enterprise would have to say about Guantanamo Bay? Many TV shows have fantastical settings and an implausible premise underlying them, but this is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is fiction after all. The socialist future for humanity posited by Star Trek is implausible but sadly by no means impossible. The technology theorised for the future is likewise as good a guess as any other. All that is okay. What is not okay is the fact that the human characters simply do not act like humans. They are utterly implausible as future examples of homo sapiens: people simply do not act that way when in life threatening situations. We are shown that tracking down and attacking the people who have been repeatedly attacking you is bad. I wonder what Star Fleet would do if some alien species hijacked a starship and flew it into the 23rd Century equivalent of the World Trade Centre? Well they certainly would not a George Bush style “smash the Taliban” on them, that is for sure! Any culture that demanded such behaviour would simply not survive contact with less squeamish cultures or more rational disaffected members of its own culture. Star Trek is truly TV with rocks in its head. Then look at Alias, the new spy-drama with the superb Jennifer Garner. It too has fantastical settings and a highly implausible underlying premise (a college girl/spy-commando). And yet whereas the dismal Enterprise fails miserably to convincingly portray human interaction within its given premises, Alias does so triumphantly. Quite apart from the fact Jennifer Garner can act the socks off any of the current Star Trek cast, the show is superbly written and the characters plausibly drawn. Within the extraordinary fictional settings in which the show occurs, the people act like humans. They act the way you or I might act is suddenly plunged into the scripted situations. Jennifer Garner’s character, Sydney, was shown being tortured (none of the namby pamby crap of many shows… we actually see her being electrocuted and Garner makes it look very unpleasant indeed). Later in the episode, she escapes and in doing so takes an electro-prod from a guard. We see her standing over the man who had earlier presided over her torture and, if this had been Star Trek, we would have been treated to a brief sermon on the importance of non-violence or some disdainful grimace as she asserts her moral superiority as ‘New Socialist Woman’ over her ex-captor. But fortunately it was not Star Trek. Sydney steps over to the prone helpless man, jabs him with the electro-prod and as he screams says words to the effect, “Yeah, it hurts, don’t it?” So which do you think makes for a more engaging story? Alias rocks! 
Jennifer Garner as ‘Sydney Bristow’ in Alias March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
And quite reasonably too I might add. Josh Marshall lays out what he meant and raises the valid point that his remarks were aimed with an American audience and context in mind. But the Internet being what it is, one’s audience can be far more diverse than a person might expect and thus the context within which the remarks will be read can be quite different. I had this brought home to me a week ago when I got a detailed and intelligent critique of my views on the EU from a man in Dakar, Senegal. Although I suspect I do not entirely agree with all of Josh Marshall’s views on the subject, for the most part I actually do. His post is measured and intelligent and in reality there is not that much daylight between his and Natalija’s views either. What is more, the point that increased Natalija’s blood pressure was really more a matter of how she interpreted what was being said. As she is off on a business trip I doubt she will be posting herself for a few days but I did speak to her on the telephone, repeated the article to her and she does concede that perhaps she did read a more negative spin on the original piece than was really justified. In truth the recent ‘Free Slobodan Milosevic’ petition and associated procession of totalitarianism’s “useful idiots” has made her a tad sensitive on certain matters. March 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
As the leader of all illegal activities in Casablanca, I am an influential and respected man. March 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
The We The People Foundation held their own hearing as the US Federal Government broke its word to do so. They claim testimony taken under oath shows the entire income tax system to be unconstitutional. Decide for yourself. The hearing webcast is available here. March 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Monday’s Belfast Telegraph headline read Church Facing Priests Crisis. As it was not immediately obvious to me what a priests crisis might be, and because the free copy had been shoved in my bag at Eason’s along with my magazine purchases, I spent a few minutes to actually read it. It seems the Church in Ulster is not attracting many young men to the life of celebacy. Of course, rather than look at itself, the Church blames it on people like us:
Perhaps if they went back to the old ways: the way things were before Rome tried to use Henry to enforce their will on the Irish Church and got used by him instead. Priests would marry, have great big Irish families and all would be well. I’ll bet this pronouncement did more to up the popularity of individualism in Ulster than all the pub chatter I’ve done in 15 years. March 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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