Month: September 2012

Greece Serfs Also in Revolt

It appears as though Spain isn’t the only country where the serfs are revolting, the Greece serfs aren’t taking things lying down either:

An estimated 50,000 people have joined the protests.

A march past parliament turned violent as anarchists wearing black balaclavas and carrying sticks threw petrol bombs and broken bits of concrete at riot police on Syntagma Square, says the BBC’s Mark Lowen in Athens.

Wednesday’s strike has brought the whole country to a standstill, adds our correspondent, with doctors, teachers, tax workers, ferry operators and air traffic controllers all joining the protest.

Normally I would bitch about the media again blaming anarchists but considering this is Greece and considering how hard the Greek people are being raped I’m not surprise the anarchists are making a big stink. As much as I detest violence I understand why it’s being employed in Greece. The Greek state has been seizing money from suspected tax evaders’ accounts (not that the state is seizing money from suspected tax evaders, not convicted tax evaders), almost a quarter of the population is unemployed, and their state continues to take more and more while giving less and less.

You can only beat the serfs so long before they decide to rise up. It appears as though a general strike is effectively in place in Greece, which is good. A general strike doesn’t mean trade has ceased, it merely means official trade has ceased. Since all trade occurring during a general strike is off the records books it’s not taxed and thus the state is deprived of its usual taxes. It’s actually a pretty effective way of grinding a state to a halt while causing minimal pain to the people living in the state.

I’m glad to see some people still have fire in their bellies because the average American does not.

When the Serfs Revolt

While the manor lords continue to reign over the serfs their reign only lasts as long as the serfs are unaware of their numerical superiority. It seems the serfs in Spain are starting to understand they outnumber of manor lords:

More than 1,000 riot police blocked off access to the Parliament building in the heart of Madrid, forcing most protesters to crowd nearby avenues and shutting down traffic at the height of the evening rush hour.

Police used batons to push back some protesters at the front of the march attended by an estimated 6,000 people as tempers flared, and some demonstrators broke down barricades and threw rocks and bottles toward authorities.

Television images showed officers beating protesters in response, and an Associated Press television producer saw five people dragged away by police and two protesters bloodied. Spanish state TV said at least 28 were injured, including two officers, and that 22 people were detained. Independent Spanish media reported higher numbers that could not immediately be confirmed.

Americans will rant and rave when some referee makes an unpopular call in a football game but when they’re getting fucked by their government they merely complain that the wrong party is in power. It’s nice to see America’s apathy isn’t universal, people in other countries actually begin to rise when they’re being raped by the state.

6,000 people showing up to surround parliament is impressive and the Spanish should be proud that they can rally such large numbers to protest the state.

The Problems with Keynesian Solutions to the Current Depression

I apologize but real life has been interfering with this blog quite frequently as of late. As you can guess it’s interfering again today so instead of a critique of a story, a discussion on anarchism, or other such common content I’m going to be lazy and let Robert Murphy explain why Keynesian solutions to the current depression are wrong:

A Serf by Any Other Name is Still a Serf

What do you call an agricultural laborer work is forced to work a lord’s land? A serf. What do you call an agricultural laborer who is forced to work a lord’s land but is allowed to keep half of his produce? A serf:

North Korea plans to allow farmers to keep as much as half of their produce in an attempt to boost agricultural output, it has been claimed, in a move that would be a major economic reform for the beleaguered country.

How fucking generous of the North Korean government. They’re only going to take half of the serfs’ food! Obviously the new Dear Leader is far more benevolent and generous than the list. At this rate North Koreans will be free individuals within 1,000 years!

Seriously, if the population of any country should be revolting it’s North Korea’s.

Just a Minor Mistake

When you or I kick in some innocent schmuck’s door and gun him down it’s called murder. When the police do it it’s called a mistake:

A 61-year-old man was shot to death by police while his wife was handcuffed in another room during a drug raid on the wrong house.

Police admitted their mistake, saying faulty information from a drug informant contributed to the death of John Adams Wednesday night. They intended to raid the home next door.

Yes, the police admitted their “mistake.” Of course their mistake would be deemed murder if anybody without a state issued costume and badge did it. True liberty cannot exist so long as one set of individuals enjoys legal privileges other sets do not.

A Look at Things to Come

Things are not looking good for this country. The rate of unemployment continues to increase, the police state continues to expand, and now the average life expectancy is decreasing for certain individuals:

For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is now mounting evidence that this enduring trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites, an increasingly troubled group whose life expectancy has fallen by four years since 1990.

Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said its findings were persuasive.

This is merely the beginning. First the life expectancy of the poor decreases and soon the average life expectancy across the board will begin to decrease. We cannot sustain our combination of an ever more regulated healthcare market, unhealthy eating habits, and lack of exercise forever. Reality is a harsh bitch who eventually catches up with people who continuously make bad decisions.

OpenNIC

The Internet remains one of the few communication tools that has avoided falling entirely under the state’s control. This is likely due to its decentralized nature. Unlike communication systems of yore that relied on centrally managed systems the Internet was designed to avoid centralization. Anybody can setup and run a web server, e-mail server, instant messenger server, etc. As it currently stands one of the central points of failure that still remain is the Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is the system that translates human readable uniform resource locators (URL), such as christopherburg.com, to addresses understood by computers.

Most people rely on the DNS servers provided by centrally managed authorities such as their Internet service provider (ISP) or other companies such as Google or OpenDNS. Unfortunately these centralized agencies are central points the state can use to censor or otherwise control the Internet. The United States government has exploited this vulnerability in order to enforce copyright laws and it is likely they will exploit this vulnerability to censor other content they deem undesirable. Thankfully there is no reason we have to rely on centralized DNS servers. DNS, like every other protocol that makes up the Internet as we know it, was designed in a way that doesn’t require central authorities. Enter OpenNIC, a decentralized DNS.

I haven’t had much time to experiment with OpenNIC so it may not even be a viable solution to the centralized nature of DNS but it looks promising. OpenNIC is a network of DNS servers that not only resolve well-known top level domains (TLD) but also resolves OpenNIC specific TLDs such as .pirate. Since the system is decentralized there are no single points of failure that can be easily exploited by the state. I plan on experimenting with OpenNIC to see how well it works and, if it works for my needs, switching over to it for my domain name needs. I’ll also write a followup post overviewing my experience with the system and whether or not I can recommend it for general usage. It is my hope that OpenNIC will serve the purpose of avoiding the state’s influence over DNS and thus assist those of us who are actively fighting against the state.

Destroying Evidence

A gun buyback program is a great way to destroy evidence:

Because the guns are destroyed and not tested, it’s impossible to know if any of them were ever used in crimes, Sheppard said.

“That’s part of the offer, we’re not going to check it for anything, we destroy it,” he said. “As part of our offer to bring the guns in, we’re saying there will be no questions asked. There will be no investigation about where the gun came from and what it was used for.”

Which is probably why inmates convicted of murder and other gun-related crimes were more than happy to raise money for a gun buyback:

A group of Orleans Correctional Facility inmates — some incarcerated for murder and other gun-related crimes — raised $1,050 in the prison to pay for the buyback. About 100 inmates participated in the program, raising just dollars per day, and have been dubbed the Civic Duty Initiative Team.

They are probably trying to help ensure fellow murders don’t end up in the click with them. The state continues to claim that gun buyback programs get dangerous weapons off of the streets but in reality they are effective at destroying evidence of gun-related crimes. If somebody murders another person with a gun they know they can dispose of the evidence, namely the firearm, by taking it to a gun buyback program and having the state dispose of the evidence. On the other hand if a criminal is in possession of a gun that isn’t evidence in a crime they will have no motivation to surrender it to the state. Why give the state a useful tool for your trade?

Keeping Us Safe from the Most Dangerous Criminals

It’s a good thing we have police officers to defend us against double amputee wheelchair-bound schizophrenics armed with pens:

A Houston police officer fatally shot in the head a schizophrenic, wheelchair-bound double amputee threatening people with a pen at a group home for the mentally ill after authorities said the man advanced on the officer’s partner, police said.

[…]

Claunch, who lost an arm and a leg in a train accident, trapped one officer with his wheelchair in the corner of a room “where he couldn’t get out,” said a Houston police department spokesperson who declined to be identified. The double amputee was “advancing towards” the officers and “refusing to show his hands.”

According to police accounts reported in the media, including by KTRK, Claunch attempted to stab the officer with an object that turned out to be a pen.

Officer Matt Marin, “in fear of the safety of his partner and the safety of himself, discharges his duty weapon, striking the suspect,” Silva said.

The unnamed Houston police spokesperson said later Sunday that Marin himself was not cornered, unlike his partner, when he shot the wheelchair-bound man in the head.

You’re telling me that a wheelchair-bound man with one arm and one leg armed with a pen warrants deadly force? This situation couldn’t have been resolve by having the officer’s partner pull the wheelchair back? One of the officers couldn’t have just flipped the wheelchair over? Hell they could have used those Tasers they’re so fond of employing whenever somebody gets rowdy and stood a lesser chance of killing the man.

Of course nothing will come of this. The officer that shot the man will likely receive a paid vacation until this fiasco blows over. Once the dust settles the officer will be found innocent of any wrongdoing and will return to work where he can kill another mentally ill individual.

Monday Metal: God Punishes, I Kill by Iron Mask

I decide this week was going to be dedicated to neoclassical metal since it’s a genre that doesn’t get enough attention. Neoclassical metal is metal that takes its inspiration from classical music. Unlike symphonic metal, which often relies on instruments used in classical music, neoclassical metal generally relies on traditional metal instruments played in a classical manner. A great example of this is the band Iron Mask and their song God Punishes, I Kill is perhaps one of their better examples of neoclassical metal: