Category: News You Need to Know

Be Careful When Buying a Used Vehicle

If you live in the state of Ohio you’ll want to look over the next used car you buy with great care, not doing so may get you nailed with a felony charge this plan goes through:

A hidden compartment in your vehicle, with or without drugs, could mean big trouble as Ohio officials get serious about slowing down drug-smuggling.

A proposed state law, advocated by Gov. John Kasich, would make it a fourth-degree felony to own a vehicle equipped with secret compartments. A conviction would mean up to 18 months in jail and a potential $5,000 fine.

The insanity of this drug war keeps reaching new heights. Just the idea of having a secret compartment in a vehicle being a felony is ridiculous. What’s next? Having a concealed pocket in your jacket being a felony? You know I probably shouldn’t be giving the state any ideas.

Kickstarter Demonstrates the Effectiveness of Voluntary Giving

I’m a huge fan of voluntary charity, which is why I like the idea behind Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a service where people can post ideas in need of funding and people can voluntarily donate money to the ideas they like. In essence Kickstarter has established site based on a form of mutual aid and they’re kicking some major ass:

Kickstarter is off to a running start this year. As Alexis Madrigal reported, the crowdfunding platform saw its first two million-dollar projects in one day, within four hours of each other, and a third reached that benchmark this past Monday. Earlier this month, people on the site pledged more than $1.6 million in a 24-hour period, more than doubling the previous record, which had been set the day before. Now, Carl Franzen of Talking Points Memo is putting that cash flow in perspective. He reports that the company is expecting to bring in $150 million in funding total this year — more than the $146 million provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency charged with supporting the arts (many Kickstarter initiatives are art projects of one kind or another).

Instead of using government coercion to take money from people and redistribute it to others Kickstarter simply asks members to donate money to project they want to see happen. Kickstarter’s success demonstrates that people are more than willing to give to causes they support, a fact that many collectivists deny.

More Proof that Humans Natural Tendency is to Cooperate

According to Thomas Hobbes humans are natural brutish beasts that will use violence before cooperation. Logically Hobbes’s argument made little sense because he believed the only way to overcome our naturally violent tendencies was to implement powerful governments to keep everybody in line. The hole in his theory is this: if humans are naturally brutish then giving a handful of them power over the rest will only lead to those few elite reigning violence down upon everybody else. In essence if Hobbes was right humanity is almost completely fucked.

Thankfully more and more evidence keeps cropping up that demonstrates humans have a natural tendency to cooperate:

Biological research is increasingly debunking the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish.

“Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies,” Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Monday.

New research on higher animals from primates and elephants to mice shows there is a biological basis for behavior such as co-operation, said de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society.

Until just 12 years ago, the common view among scientists was that humans were “nasty” at the core but had developed a veneer of morality – albeit a thin one, de Waal told scientists and journalists from some 50 countries at the conference in Vancouver, Canada.

But human children – and most higher animals – are “moral” in a scientific sense, because they need to co-operate with each other to reproduce and pass on their genes, he said.

The fact that humans around the globe came together to form societies demonstrates our natural tendency to cooperate. If Hobbes was right societies should never have formed because members of our species would have been too busy committing acts of murder and theft against one another to actually cooperate enough to found communities. Communities, after all, developed when humans started understanding the value of dividing labor. Even the cavemen realized it was valuable to have some people out picking berries, some fashioning tools and clothing, and other hunting. Sadly this fact is lost on a large number (possibly a majority) of people.

It’s 1984 in Britain

The Stasi are going to be working overtime in formerly Great Britain now that they’ll have records of every phone call, e-mail, and text message sent in the country:

Details of every phone call and text message, email traffic and websites visited online are to be stored in a series of vast databases under new Government anti-terror plans.

Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to the security services under the scheme.

If you live in that forsaken realm of the damned it would be wise to personally run your own e-mail server that only accepts SSL-secured connections. While the Stasi are claiming they won’t store the contents of intercepted messages that matters not because once they know messages exist they can obtain records of them through glorious court orders (or if they have the equivalent to the United States National Security Letters they don’t even have to putz around with that). Remember that deleted e-mails may no longer be accessible to you but they’re likely accessible on some backup somewhere.

I would say denizens of Britain should attempt to flee to free America but we’re no longer free either. The best hope of not being spied on by your government is to live in a region controlled by a government that is too poor to implement a police state.

70 Years Ago Today

Today, February 19th, 2012 marks 70 years since Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed military personnel to round up Americans of Japanese Decent and place them in concentration camps. Well known actor George Takei was placed in one of these camps as a child and was later interviewed about it:

Without so much as charges Americans of Japanese decent were rounded up, put onto trains, and hauled to concentration camps where they spent years behind barbed wire under the watchful eyes of machine gunners standing in surrounding guard towers.

What’s even more disgusting is what Takei explains regarding the questionnaires prisoners were required to fill out when it became apparent a labor shortage existed in the United States. After being imprisoned for a year the prisoners were asked if they would take up arms in defense of the United States and if they would swear allegiance to the United States while forswearing allegiance to the Japanese Emperor. The second question was a catch-22 because it insinuated that the prisoners, many of whom were born in the United States, had sworn an other to the Japanese Emperor and thus justifying their detention. I’m glad to hear Takei’s parents refused to take up arms in defense of the United States or swear allegiance to this country. Nobody should take up arms in support of tyrants and those held in the concentration camps were getting a front row seat to tyranny in action.

Welcome to Fourth Generation Warfare

The United States has the best military equipment available. In the government’s arsenal lies battle ships, aircraft carriers, fighter jets, bombers, tanks, spy satellites, guided missiles, and unmanned drones. All these things are sophisticated, expensive, and practically useless in fourth generation warfare. For those who are unaware fourth generation warfare is the new paradigm being used and can be summarized by the following tactics:

  • Are complex and long term
  • Terrorism (tactic)
  • A non-national or transnational base—highly decentralized
  • A direct attack on the enemy’s culture
  • Highly sophisticated psychological warfare, especially through media manipulation and lawfare
  • All available pressures are used – political, economic, social and military
  • Occurs in low intensity conflict, involving actors from all networks
  • Non-combatants are tactical dilemmas
  • Lack of hierarchy
  • Small in size, spread out network of communication and financial support
  • Use of Insurgency and guerrilla tactics

Instead of massive armies equipped with the most powerful and sophisticated weapons available, fighting forces today are using tactics that can be done very cheaply and are brutally effective. Using such tactics a $4.5 billion aircraft carrier can be legitimately threatened by a man with a small boat, a warhead, and no desire to continue living:

“They have increased the number of submarines … they increased the number of fast attack craft,” Vice Admiral Mark Fox told reporters. “Some of the small boats have been outfitted with a large warhead that could be used as a suicide explosive device. The Iranians have a large mine inventory.”

“We have watched with interest their development of long range rockets and short, medium and long range ballistic missiles and of course … the development of their nuclear programme,” Fox, who heads the U.S. Fifth Fleet, said at a briefing on the fleet’s base in the Gulf state of Bahrain.

Some may laugh but this tactic was successfully deployed by Japan in World War II and against the USS Cole in 2000. An Iranian mine also caused severe damage the USS Samuel B. Roberts in 1988. Big powerful ships are sitting ducks to small maneuverable weapon systems.

The days of a militarily superior force being guaranteed to obliterate another force are gone. Vietnam demonstrated what a determined but militarily inferior force can do. Many people believe that a war with Iran would be an almost guaranteed victory for the United States but that is far from the truth. While we have more powerful ships, they have people willing to do for their cause. People who are willing to die for a cause are more powerful than the largest warships because they can use suicidal tactics. What is an aircraft carrier going to do if 50 small speedboats equipped with warheads comes hurtling towards her?

A war with Iran will be costly and an entirely pointless act as opposed to peaceful coexistence this is possible so long as we give up our desire to create an ever-expanding empire.

Payback is a Bitch

Car bombs have been used to target several of Israel envoys in India and Georgia and you can guess who the Israelis are accusing:

Bombers have targeted staff at Israeli embassies in India and Georgia, officials say, with Israel accusing Iran of masterminding the attacks.

All I can say is that this isn’t surprising considering the recent use of car bombs to kill Iranian nuclear scientists being blamed on Israel:

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.

I think this demonstrates succinctly that violence will beget violent. If you are going to use violence to kill somebody don’t be surprised if violence is then employed to kill you. This is why a foreign policy built upon the concept of preemptive war is so dangerous. Preemptive war advocates claim we need to kill an potential enemy before they kill us. What a preemptive war actually does is take the possibility of war and turn it into a guarantee.

For the same of argument let’s say we have two countries who strongly dislike each other; the United States and Iran. Setting history aside let’s assume these two countries strongly hate one another and have been threatening each other for years. In the decades that the threats have been flying back and forth no actual war has broken out but both sides are insinuating that they are willing to make a first strike. While both sides are rattling sabers no actual war has broken out and the loss of life has been minimal, isolated to a handful of incidents. Things could remain in this tense but mostly peaceful state for decades to come. Now let’s assume the United States makes a preemptive strike against Iran sparking off a war. Instead of a tense situation where war was a possibility but so far avoided we have an actual war. That is all preemptive war can get you, war.

Israel, hoping to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, has been a likely culprit in the recent bombing of Iranian nuclear scientists. Any idiot could tell you that Iran was eventually going to retaliate in kind. Now Israel will feign surprise and pretent they have no idea why Iran is targeting Israeli officials while many people in the United States will scream about the need for us to go over and help our “friend” Israel.

The Argument About Contraceptive Coverage Misses the Point

The current distraction of the week is the battle over whether or not employers should be forced to provide health insurance plans that cover contraceptives. As you can predict there is a huge divide on this issue between religious fundamentalists and everybody else. Unfortunately those fighting over this topic are missing the whole point, employers shouldn’t even be involved in your healthcare:

Why is it considered normal for your boss to determine your healthcare options in the first place?

Relying on employers for healthcare means the company has more leverage over the worker. If you’re out of work then you might be out of luck when it comes to your health. And if the boss decides what kind of healthcare the employee can get — at issue in the current discussion of religiously-affiliated institutions and contraception — this can mean an extension of the boss’s control outside of work hours.

How did we get to where it’s typical to rely on employers for healthcare?

As Roderick Long describes in his article “Medical Insurance that Worked — Until Government ‘Fixed’ It,” it was once common for workers to join a friendly society or fraternal society. These were essentially mutual aid organizations where monthly fees created a pool of resources that participants could draw on in time of need. They often negotiated contracts with doctors to serve members for a reasonable expense paid by the organization. Regulation and government programs prevented these organizations from continuing to serve the public.

I’ve talked about mutual aid societies in the past and how they were effectively legislated out of existence once the government decided it was going to enter the welfare market. Abolishing mutual aid societies is something we’re still feeling the effects of every day. Instead of each person or family being able to freely choose between numerous competing societies each person or family is usually forced to accept whatever health insurance company is being provided by their employer. Part of this is because health insurance has gotten so expensive that employer contribution is needed by many just to afford the cost.

People arguing over whether or not employer provided health insurance needs to provider contraceptive coverage need to take a step back, look at the situation, and ask themselves why the hell their employer is even involved in providing health insurance in the first place.

If I Wasn’t on the Terrorist Watch List Before I am Now

Well if I wasn’t on the terrorist watch list before I certainly am now:

Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

As a sovereign individual who does not submit to the authority of the state I guess I’m the primary target. There is something that is in desperate need of being cleared up though. Sovereign citizen is a contradiction of terms. A sovereign is a supreme ruler while a citizen is a subject of a state. You can not be a supreme ruler and a subject at the same time. On the other hand a sovereign individual is a supreme ruler of an individual, him or herself. If you’re going to make us appear as a threat please get the terminology right at the very least.

And while the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) try to smear voluntaryists such as myself let me explain something. Most people who refer to themselves as sovereign citizens also abide by the non-aggression principle meaning they have a moral objection with initiating violence. I will not initiate an attack and will use violence only in the act of self-defense. Somehow this fact makes me dangerous according to the FBI.

“We are being inundated right now with requests for training from state and local law enforcement on sovereign-related matters,” said Casey Carty, an FBI supervisory special agent.

FBI agents said they do not have a tally of people who consider themselves “sovereign citizens.”

If any FBI agents are monitoring reading this blog let me inform you that I am a sovereign individual so you can just put me down on the little list you’re writing up. Please update your terminology and replace “sovereign citizen” with “sovereign individual” so you don’t look like completely idiots. Also go fuck yourselves. You don’t have to do those things in that order though.

Congress Approves Drone Usage Over the United States

Congress has once again decided that the American people aren’t submitting to enough surveillance and have thus have approved the usage of drones in United States airspace:

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.

The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

[…]

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA clears their use.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.

30,000 drones? Hell they can keep an eye on a large majority of Americans 24/7 with a fleet like that. While privacy advocates are rightfully up in arms I see a far more dangerous outcome to this decision. The drones will obviously be used by police departments for reconnaissance just like they were in North Dakota. In the North Dakota case the drone was used because officer safety was at risk and that excuse will eventually be used to justify the usage of armed drones to take out suspected criminals. Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son were both American citizens killed by drones without so much as charges being brought against them so a precedence has already been set for the usage of armed drones against American citizens. Basically drones will become the new SWAT Team, when a situation looks potentially dangerous and local law enforcement doesn’t want to risk their own skin they’ll just send in an armed drone and blow up whoever is the current target.

Militarization of the police continues to increase and with it the potential of civilian deaths during police operations.