How Could a Voluntary Society Function–Private Arbitration and Reputation

Trade, Not Sanctions for Libya

Looks like most of the oil flowing out of Libya right now is from the eastern part of the country, and not in the control of Gaddafi.

Rajab Sahnoun, an official with the Arabian Gulf Oil Co., said a tanker bound for China with capacity for one million barrels was being loaded at Tobruk. An Italy-bound tanker is also waiting to begin loading in the coming days, he said.

"The terminal is working at 100 percent," Sahnoun told The Associated Press.

Another Agoco official, Ali Faraj, said a pipeline connecting the port to the eastern oilfields of Sarir and Misla was operating normally. The company's production of around 220,000 barrels a day had been largely unaffected, Faraj said.

European Union Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is struggling to contain a popular uprising that threatens to sweep him from power, had lost control of most of the country's oil and gas fields.

Many facilities were now controlled by regional families or provisional regional leaders opposed to Gaddafi's authority, Oettinger told a meeting of EU energy ministers.

"They have taken over control, they have taken away control from Gaddafi," he said.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/201122815340296600.html

House Passes Patriot Act Extension–Now to Senate

The House of Representatives have passed a bill to extend provisions of the Patriot Act 275-144.  Mississippi’s representatives voted as follows:

Gregg Harper(R) voted FOR the extension.
Alan Nunnelee(R) voted FOR the extension.
Palazzo(R) voted FOR the extension.

Bennie Thompson voted AGAINST it.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll026.xml

 

Now Rand Paul, a man who was criticized by Democrats for being a racist hell bent on taking back his country seems to be the most vociferous opponent of the act in the Senate. 

Here is Paul’s Letter of Opposition to his Senate colleagues, and here is a video.

Opposition to Patriot Act

Sacrificing Liberty for Liberty

From the comments:

It's personal freedom, responsibility, and the right and willingness to fight for both, or the creeping road to total slavery.

There is no middle ground.

What you need is the ability to protect yourselves, not to forfeit that to government.

If everyone on a plane had a 6 inch knife in a sheath on his hip, a free, responsible man's mind, and knew the law would fall on his side if that knife were used out of necessity.

Does anyone think those hijackers would have succeeded?

The TSA: America’s Real Child Pornography/Molestation Machine by William L. Anderson

While the government has released the fuzzy photos of actual people who have been scanned by these machines, in reality the pictures are extremely clear. Furthermore, the people wearing Transportation Security Administration costumes each day examine both full frontal and rear pictures of the nude bodies of adults and children, even though it is against the law for anyone to look at a picture of a nude child on a computer screen, something that has landed many people in prison for long terms.

I am not joking. Moreover, people who decline to be photographed are then subjected to the "pat down" searches in which TSA employees rub their hands upon the genitals and breasts of women (on the outside of their clothing). What one needs to understand is that if one does that to another person in another setting, one can go to prison for sexual assault. In fact, one does not need even to touch any of those areas to be charged with child molestation.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson299.html

Thomas Sowell Hits the Nail on the Head Regarding Multi-Culturalism

Somebody eventually had to say it – and German chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it out loud. Multiculturalism has "utterly failed."

"We kidded ourselves for a while," Chancellor Merkel said, but now it was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very different languages and cultures could "live side-by-side" and "enjoy each other" has "failed, utterly failed."

Sowell says, “The multicultural dogma is that we are to "celebrate" all cultures, not change them. In other words, people who lag educationally or economically are to keep on doing what they have been doing – but somehow have better results in the future than in the past. And, if they don't have better results in the future, it is society's fault.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sowell/sowell24.1.html

Fair and Balanced?

Can Politicians Help Us? – Kel Kelly

Kel Kelly says, “The only way politicians can really improve the economy — and our lives — is by (1) getting out of the way, and (2) undoing the policies they've previously implemented that hamper it.”

http://mises.org/daily/4726

Ludwig von Mises Quotes

A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.

Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings. To stress this point is the task of economics as it is the task of biology and chemistry to teach that potassium cyanide is not a nutriment but a deadly poison.

AND

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.

What the Hell is Conservativism and Liberalism? Who are Conservatives and who are Liberals?

You know what's interesting is the change in meaning the word "liberalism" has undergone from "classical liberalism" to the modern "social liberalism."

Also, "liberal" basically means a person that is open minded and willing to work toward political change. I think you could actually say that tea partiers are liberals, although not espousing the modern social liberalism, but a more classical liberalism.

Who we normally consider as liberals today could be considered conservative in that they are attempting to hold on to the present system of increasing taxation and centralization of power in D.C.

Food for thought.

The Private Production of Defense – Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Among the most popular and consequential beliefs of our age is the belief in collective security. Nothing less significant than the legitimacy of the modern state rests on this belief.

Here he addresses the problem concerning democratic governments’ defense practices:

“Moreover, under democratic conditions, insult will be added to injury.  For if everyone - aggressors as well as non-aggressors and residents of high crime locations as well as those of low crime locations - can vote and be elected to government office, a systematic redistribution of property rights from non-aggressors to aggressors and the residents of low crime ares to those of high crime areas comes into effect and crime will actually be promoted…[government] taxes more in low crime and high property value areas than in high crime and low property value ones, or it even subsidizes the residents of the latter locations – the slums – at the expense of those of the former and thus erodes the social conditions unfavorable to crime while promoting those favorable to it.”

How would a private system operate and solve the problems created by a democratic government’s system?  Hoppe thinks people would basically buy defense insurance and lauds the superior sufficiency of the private sector:

“Based on its continually updated and refined system of statistics on crime and property values and further motivated by the noted migration tendency from high-risk-low-value (“bad”) to low-risk-high-value (henceforth “good”) locations, a system of competitive aggression insurers would promote a tendency toward civilizational progress (rather than decivilization).

He also discusses what would happen if a state were to attack a stateless area protected by private defense associations.  What would the attacking state face?

In this case the aggressor would not encounter an unarmed population.  Only in statist territories is the civilian population characteristically unarmed.  States everywhere aim to disarm their own citizenry so as to be better able to tax and expropriate it.  In contrast, insurers in free territories would not want to disarm the insured.  Nor could they.  For who would want to be protected by someone who required him as a first step to give up his ultimate means of self-defense?  To the contrary, insurance agencies would encourage the ownership of weapons among their insured by means of selective price cuts.

People would actually have economic incentives to own weapons.  The insurance agency could weigh the risks and effectively pay people to help defend the territory voluntarily.  Futhermore, if the insurance agency failed to protect your property, it pays you.  In our world, when the government fails to protect your property, it still charges you and tells you better luck next time.

https://mises.org/journals/jls/14_1/14_1_2.pdf

Breaking News: Infrastructure Spending Ignored in the Bold New City

Car was driving down State Street until a Yazoo clay monster, similar to the monster made famous by the movie Tremors, engulfed it.

http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2010/08/north-state-street-is-falling-down.html

We’ll Just Run Our Cars on Corn.

Except that it blows up our engines.  EPA delayed a decision on a  plan to institute E15, a 15% ethanol blended gasoline.

"We are disappointed," warned food giant Archer Daniels Midland. "We find this further delay unacceptable" and a "dereliction of duty," harrumphed ethanol lobbying group Growth Energy. 

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/27/corny-capitalism

Opposing Big Government, But Not

A Tea Party Foreign Policy

Why the growing grassroots movement can't fight big government at home while supporting it abroad.

BY RON PAUL | AUGUST 27, 2010

As one who is opposed to centralization, I am wary of attempts to turn a grassroots movement against big government like the Tea Party into an adjunct of the Republican Party. I find it even more worrisome when I see those who willingly participated in the most egregious excesses of the most recent Republican Congress push their way into leadership roles of this movement without batting an eye -- or changing their policies!

As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.

Our foreign policy is based on an illusion: that we are actually paying for it. What we are doing is borrowing and printing money to maintain our presence overseas. Americans are seeing the cost of this irresponsible approach as their own communities crumble and our economic decline continues.

I see tremendous opportunities for movements like the Tea Party to prosper by capitalizing on the Democrats' broken promises to overturn the George W. Bush administration's civil liberties abuses and end the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A return to the traditional U.S. foreign policy of active private engagement but government noninterventionism is the only alternative that can restore our moral and fiscal health. I am optimistic, and our numbers are increasing!

 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/27/a_tea_party_foreign_policy

Philosophy of Liberty

Town Gets Rid of Traffic Lights and Traffic Improves

Pete Stark, United States Representative

Pete Stark

Public School Destroys Individualism Just Like in the Fatherland

From its inception in 1819 Prussia, the road to state socialism progressed.  Compulsory schooling was first instituted in Massachusetts, in 1852, before spreading to the rest of the states in the next 50 years.  Interestingly, there is an opposite movement going today; the Swedish system, which only lasts 9 years, because they’ve found children learn better at home than in public schools.  And Hong Kong, which outperforms Japan in math and science, has a shorter school year.

John Taylor Gatto lays out his view of public schools in the article from The Kossar Education Newsletter.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/gatto6.1.1.html

http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Educate/public_school_nightmare.htm

The Post-Racial Barack Obama

Thomas Sowell says:

“There is not now, nor has there ever been, anything post-racial about Barack Obama, except for the people who voted for him in the mistaken belief that he shared their desire to be post-racial. When he leaves office, especially if it is after one term, he will leave this country more racially polarized than before.

Hopefully, he may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can't judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Voters may even wise up to race card fraud.”

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell072010.php3

Unions Hire Non-Union Workers to Picket

"For a lot of our members, it's really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else," explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.

So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704288204575362763101099660.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_news