Author: Christopher Burg

Rise Again

The Spanish government dealt a blow to Catalonia last year when it brought the boot down on the autonomous community. However, while the Catalonians may be down, they’re not out:

MADRID/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Catalonia’s parliament nominated former leader Carles Puigdemont, sacked by Spain for unilaterally declaring independence, as candidate to rule the region again in a sign of defiance to Madrid and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government.

Puigdemont and his suporters say he can rule from self-imposed exile in Belgium, where he fled to in October to avoid arrest for his part in organising a banned referendum on a split from Spain and the consequent declaration of independence.

I’m glad to see that the Catalonian parliament, unlike any state level government in this country, has enough backbone to stand up against the national level of government. This move should also demonstrate to the Spanish government that it’s attempt to continue oppressing Catalonia isn’t likely to succeed. One of two things can happen when a government brings the boot down on its subjects. The first thing is that the subjects are frightened enough to roll over. However, if that doesn’t happen then more often than not the subjects are emboldened to resist further. In the latter case there is very little a government can do outside of wiping out the entire rebellious population.

In the long run, if the Catalonians keep up their current pace of resistance, Catalonia will will likely win its independence.

Welcome to Costco. I Love You.

Tide Pods have been in the news as of late. A series of challenge videos made predominantly by teenagers have been cropping up and apparently the challenges are being accepted by other teenagers. I would argue that if you survived at least 13 years on this planet, you should be smart enough to read the warning label on the Tide Pod bag that specifically warns against consuming the product. However, if you’ve made it all the way to college and still can’t read the warming label, you’re a unique level of stupid:

A Utah State University student was reportedly rushed to a hospital Saturday after ingesting a Tide Pod, which has become a dangerous trend on social media as teens dare each other to eat the miniature, neon, detergent-filled pods.

I’ve understood that education has been diminishing here in the United States for a long time. I didn’t realize just how far it had diminished though. At this point I’m convinced that the only inaccuracy in Idiocracy was the timeline. It won’t take 500 years for humanity to reach the level of stupidity portrayed in that movie. That level is already being achieved today.

Political Euphemism are My Favorite

Politicians come up with a lot of euphemisms to make their decisions appear friendlier than they are. For example, when you break a law you’re not kidnapped, you’re “arrested.” When you buy a home you’re not required to pay rent, you’re required to pay “property taxes.” Furthermore, when the government steals from you it’s not theft, it’s “taxation.” But politicians are at their absolute best when they’re creating euphemisms related to war.

The United States of America hasn’t been in many declared wars since World War II. It has been engaged in many “policing actions” though. Likewise, the United States isn’t planning to occupy Syria, it’s planning to have an “open-ended military presence.”

The US will maintain an open-ended military presence in Syria to ensure the enduring defeat of the jihadist group Islamic State, counter Iranian influence, and help end the civil war.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said President Donald Trump did not want to “make the same mistakes” that were made in 2011, when US forces left Iraq.

The US has about 2,000 troops in Syria.

See? The United States isn’t making the same mistake it made in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan because it’s not occupying Syria. It’s merely keeping 2,000 soldiers in the country as an open-ended military presence! Think of it as the United States giving Syria a warm, friendly hug!

War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength!

The Government Was Shutdown? I Couldn’t Even Tell!

The media wouldn’t shut up about the government shutdown. Apparently it was shutdown all weekend. While this news was treated apocalyptically by many partisans wanting to blame the other party for the shutdown, people who weren’t wasting their weekend with politics and didn’t watch the news would have had a hard time knowing that the government was shutdown. Why is that? Because a government shutdown doesn’t actually mean the government is shutdown. It means a few services that will inconvenience the plebeians are shutdown while the “essential services” remain operational:

Mulvaney said the closures would inflict less pain on citizens who use government services than the last time Congress failed to pass a spending bill in time. The 2013 shutdown closed down many government functions for 16 days until House Republicans relented on their demands that a spending bill include a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Mandatory spending like Social Security and disaster relief will continue, as they have in past shutdowns. Military troops, police and other essential workers would also continue, but their pay could be held up if the shutdown lasts more than a week. Even federal workers told not to report to work would likely be paid eventually — Congress has historically voted to pay them retroactively.

Federal workers who didn’t show up to work get retroactively paid? Talk about a sweet gig. A shutdown for government employees is effectively a paid vacation. This is also why I just roll my eyes when some statist tries to make me feel guilty for cheering government shutdowns by pointing out that federal employees aren’t getting paid. Not that I care that parasites get paid but I do like to point out that those employees will end up being retroactively paid so their pain will be, at most, temporary.

Unfortunately, as a libertarian anarchist, government shutdowns are mostly disappointing to me. They’re sold as government ceasing to function, which fills me with happy thoughts. But then the government continues to function and I’m left disappointed.

Making Up Numbers

The economic boost provided by major sporting events can’t be emphasized enough… by how lackluster it is. Those who argue for public funding to build stadiums or host major sporting events like the Olympics and Super Bowl will show a bunch of numbers to make their point. One of their favorite numbers to bring up is the number of visitors the hosting city will receive from events. For example, we’ve been told that Minneapolis will receive about 1 million visitors during the Super Bowl. That number sounds impressive until you realize that it’s bullshit:

The number is tossed about frequently in national and local media reports: 1 million people are expected to visit Minneapolis for the Super Bowl.

[…]

“What’s a visitor?” I asked Kenneth McGill, managing director of West Chester, Pa.-based Rockport Analytics.

“A visitor is one of two things,” McGill said. “It’s a person who has stayed overnight in some sort of paid accommodation. In that context it doesn’t matter where they’re from. The could live downtown and move to a hotel just to experience it all.

“The second definition of a visitor is someone who has traveled more than 50 miles, one-way, to get to the event.”

If McGill’s visitor estimate comes true, it means that roughly 874,600 of the 1 million visitors expected by the Host Committee already live in the Twin Cities, a metro area with a population of 3.5 million.

So Minneapolis shouldn’t expect 1 million visitors. It should expect roughly 125,000. While 125,000 people might bring a bit of business to the Twin Cities that wouldn’t have existed without the Super Bowl, I have my doubts that it will be anywhere near enough to compensate the tax cattle of Minneapolis and Minnesota for the publicly funded security expenses alone.

I guess on the upside the arrival of the Super Bowl has forced the state and municipal governments to fix some of their damned roads. Even though I’m told that I have to pay taxes to maintain the roads it seems like the roads are only maintained when people from out of town are visiting. Why I have to pay for road repairs to impress people from out of town is also a mystery to me.

A Reasonable Response by Reasonable People

Nuclear weapons provide humanity the capability to wipe out an entire city with a single missile. However, with the exception of the end of World War II, they haven’t been used in warfare. Each country that has developed nuclear weapons has performed a lot of test detonations to show the world how big their dick is but nobody has dared use them because they’re not seen as a reasonable response to anything other than weapons of mass destruction.

The Pentagon wants to change that attitude. Instead of treating nuclear weapons as an unreasonable response to anything other than weapons of mass destruction, it wants to treat nuclear weapons as a reasonable response to a list of other things including malicious hackers:

WASHINGTON — A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.

For decades, American presidents have threatened “first use” of nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons against the United States. But the new document is the first to expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons.

The paradox of nuclear weapons is that they offer a terrible power but are only useful as a deterrent. If you have nuclear weapons and your enemy has nuclear weapons, peace can exist because you both have the power to wipe the other side out. Neither side will launch because it will result in their demise as well. But what happens when a nuclear armed country acts in an unreasonable manner? What happens when one decides to nuke a nonnuclear power? In all likelihood that nuclear power would be seen by other nuclear powers as unreasonable, unstable, and an imminent threat. Their fear could lead them to bring aggression, possibly nuclear aggression, against the unreasonable nation.

As WOPR in the movie War Games concluded, when nuclear weapons are involved the only winning move is not to play.

Rand Paul Threatening a Filibuster Should Be Treated as Guarantee of Passage

I have quite a few friends who remain deluded about the political process in this country. They still believe that the right man in the right office can reverse the course of the United Police States of America. With Ron Paul retired the hopes and dreams of these poor fools lies with Rand Paul.

The federal government is going through its yearly ritual of renewing its surveillance powers. As with previous years, this year’s ritual involves the members of the House and Senate pretending to debate whether or not they’re going to renew their own powers. Those who still believe in the political process also believe that these debates are genuine. Since they believe the debates are genuine they also believe that somebody like Rand Paul can prevent the passage of a bill by filibustering it. Several of my friends told me that Rand Paul would stop the renewal of the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017. I told them that Rand Paul wasn’t going to stop shit, which proved to be correct.

I also pointed out the historical precedent, which is when Rand Paul attempts to filibuster a bill the bill ends up passing. Now there’s another data point to add to that precedent:

The Senate has voted to reauthorize a controversial legal authority that enables vast government surveillance programs, including spying operations used by the NSA.

The bill was passed 65 to 34, and now moves to President Trump’s desk. He is expected to sign it into law. Earlier this week, a group of senators threatened to filibuster the bill, but lawmakers cleared a 60-vote hurdle earlier this week that allowed them to block the attempt.

The bill allows for continued spying operations under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Critics charge that the bill, which renews 702 and powers National Security Agency spying, is nominally for foreign targets, but allows the government to sweep up American communications with few safeguards.

Although this post probably comes off as a criticism of Rand Paul, it’s really a criticism of those who continue to believe in the political system.

The political system of the United States, like the political system of every nation, is designed to concentrate power in the hands of the ruling class. The Founding Fathers, like the founders of almost every nation, claimed otherwise and many people foolishly believed and continue to believe them. But the results speak for themselves. George Washington himself lead a military force to deal with rebellious whiskey distillers during his stint in office and the federal government has only continued to expand its power since. At no point in the United States’ history has the federal government’s power receded in any meaningful way.

After more than two centuries you would think that people would catch on. But they haven’t nor are they likely to do so.

Just Another Day Ending in “Y”

It’s another day ending in “y,” which can only mean that another dog has been executed by a law enforcer. But this incident contains an added bonus. Not only was a dog injured but so was a 9-year-old kid who was in the room:

On the evening of Dec. 30, Danielle Maples was making nail polishes with her children. The atmosphere in her home changed when her husband threatened to hurt himself. Maples called 911 to get help.

Then after police arrived – as she and her husband stood outside their home unarmed – she heard two gunshots from inside.

A Wichita police officer fired at her dog – in a small living room occupied by her four children, ages 6 to 10.

Suddenly, the already stressful evening turned into a nightmare.

When the officer shot at the family dog in the same room where her four children were gathered, a bullet fragmented and ricocheted off the concrete floor beneath the carpet where her 9-year-old daughter sat. The girl suffered wounds above her eye. At the hospital, Maples saw a bag with three fragments taken from her daughter’s forehead.

Bullet ballistics are the closest thing to magic that this universe offers. It’s hard to predict all of the ways that discharging a bullet in an uncontrolled environment can go wrong. In this case an officer was trying to perform a routine dog execution that resulted in a child being hit. And what response did the family receive?

An officer later told the family that “it could have been worse,” she said.

I’m not sure if that was meant to be a thinly veiled threat or just the typical hand waving towards violence individuals detached from anything most would recognize as a conscience exhibit. Either way, this story isn’t an isolated incident. Officers perform executions on dogs so frequently that there is now a database of collected reports.

What compounds this incident is that the officer wasn’t even responding to a violent situation. A family member was suffering from a mental crisis. There is no reason that the officer should have been so tooled up. But this incident does serve to illustrate an important lesson. Never call 911 if somebody is suffering a mental crisis. If you do, law enforcers will likely be dispatched and when they show up they may decide to “help” by shooting somebody (maybe even the person suffering the mental crisis).

Shutting Down the Opposition

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017, which will keep the government’s surveillance powers as they have been for ages now. I’m of the opinion that the bill will pass with little or no alterations. However, several of my political friends have challenged my opinion on the grounds that Rand Paul announced that he was going to filibuster the bill. I responded by stating that Rand Paul won’t accomplish jack shit and if history is any indicator his act of filibustering the bill will just ensure its passage. I’m not one to not say I told you so, so let me just say that I told you so:

The Senate voted 60-38 this afternoon in favor of cloture to end debate and to prevent any amendments prior to a formal up-down vote on the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017. (Small clarification: Debate will be limited to 30 hours prior to the vote. So Paul and Wyden and others will be able to speak at length, but they won’t be able to stop the vote.)

Where is your god now?

I’ve noted on many occasions that the State has builtin redundancies. Any apparent exploit that could be used to hold back its expansion can be bypassed with another form of defense. For example, the threat of a filibuster can be bypassed by voting to put a cap on the length of each individual’s argument. These redundancies prevent upstarts or well meaning individuals from accomplishing anything of note via the political process.