Category: News You Need to Know

Happy Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving, which is soon to be known as Black Friday Eve. But as long as we still have Thanksgiving some people are probably interested in the holiday’s history. A couple of years ago I wrote a post detailing that Thanksgiving was really brought on by a failure of socialism. This year I’m going to present an alternative viewpoint courtesy of Kevin Carson, a mutualist whom I greatly respect. According to Mr. Carson there is one key element many libertarians have ignored when using Thanksgiving to rail against socialism. Namely, the Pilgrims were victims of statism and its beloved tool incorporation:

The Plymouth story is sometimes compared to that of agriculture in the last days of the Soviet Union, where most of the food consumed came from private family plots — essentially kitchen gardens with some small livestock thrown in. Had the entire Soviet population been forced to subsist on the output of State and collective farms alone, the result would have been mass starvation — exactly like in Plymouth. This parallel is entirely accurate. What the received version of the Plymouth story leaves out, however, is that the role of the “collective farm” in the little drama is played not by the naive Puritan zealots seeking to “hold all things in common” but by a private corporation chartered by the English crown.

And as Curl describes it, the system of private plots adopted after the rebellion against the Merchant Adventurers wasn’t much like modern fee simple ideas of “private property,” either. It sounds more like the open-field system the settlers had experienced in Nottinghamshire: The family plots were ad hoc, to be periodically redivided, and not subject to inheritance.

So the proper analog to what almost killed off the Pilgrims is not, as Stossel says, “Karl Marx” or “today’s [presumably left-wing] politicians and opinion-makers.” It’s the lord of an English manor — or a Fortune 500 corporation. But the story as it actually happened is still a testament to the evils of statism and the benefits of voluntary cooperation. The Merchant Adventurers, like the Fortune 500 companies of today, was a chartered corporation that depended entirely on benefits and legal privileges conferred by the state. The living arrangements it attempted to impose on the Plymouth settlers were the same as the extractive arrangements that prevailed on an English manor, enforced by the legal privileges the state conferred on the landed nobility. And the new system the Pilgrims replaced them with were the age-old open field system that peasant villages had spontaneously created for themselves, in the absence of coercive interference, since neolithic times.

Anyways it’s something to think about while you’re scarfing down Turkey. Now you’ll have to excuse me. I plan on gorging myself and doing nothing productive for the remainder of the day.

I Laugh at the Control Freaks

The more unenforceable laws those control freaks who call themselves rulers pass the more toothless they appear to be. Busy bodies in the San Rafael City Council voted to prohibit individuals from smoking in their own dwellings:

In a unanimous decision, members of the San Rafael City Council have approved the strictest smoking ordinance in the country. Effective last week, Assembly Bill 746 bans residents of apartments, condos, duplexes, and multi-family houses from smoking cigarettes and “tobacco products” inside their homes.

How does the Council plan to enforce this law? It would require constant surveillance of every apartment, condo, duplex, and multi-family home in the city. Even if nosy neighbors rat out smokers the police still have to prove that the accused were indeed smoking. This law will join the long list of laws that get passed with no regards to enforcement. Each of those laws makes the control freaks look more pathetic. This is why I welcome more of these ridiculous laws.

A Costume and Badge Don’t Guarantee Authenticity

When people see a man dressed in a state issued custom that includes a shiny metal badge they have a tendency to trust that person. This is not a smart strategy if one wants to guarantee their safety. Putting aside the danger police officers hold, let’s consider the danger posed by people who impersonate police officers. By impersonating a police officer an individual can gain a level of authority over others that they generally wouldn’t have. That means they can more easily perform wicked acts such as rape:

A man posing as a police officer is believed to have kidnapped and sexually assaulted a Minneapolis woman Saturday in Fridley before doing the same to a second woman hours later near the University of Minnesota, an Anoka County sheriff’s official said Monday. Rarely do suspects in violent crimes impersonate police officers, say Minneapolis police and Anoka County authorities, who have been conferring over the cases.

The suspect in the Fridley rape, which occurred near City Hall at 1 p.m. Saturday, told the victim that he was a detective before kidnapping her, said Anoka County Sheriff’s Commander Paul Sommer. Early Sunday morning, a man fitting a similar description and wearing a badge approached a woman near the U. In both cases, the suspect’s small, dark-colored SUV was described as having a squad-like computer dashboard, Minneapolis police and Anoka County authorities said.

“There’s a pattern here,” said Sommer. “Basically, his modus operandi was the same. He approaches a victim, identifies himself as a police officer, kidnaps them, sexually assaults them and releases them.”

In Minnesota we are not required to inform a police officer that we’re carrying a firearm unless directly asked. There is a lot of debate surrounding whether or not one should inform an officer immediately or wait until he or she asks. I’m a firm believer that one should not volunteer such information because the police officer may not be an actual police officer. If you volunteer such information up front you may find yourself disarmed while facing a police impersonator who means you harm. Anybody can get a hold of a police costume and badge so those objects don’t guarantee authenticity.

On a side note I must also point out the brilliance of impersonating a police officer while committing crimes. What better way to blend in with a crowd a criminals than to dress as a criminal in the largest violent gang in the area?

Soon Police Will Receive Abrams Tanks

Remember when the domestic police force were considered separate from the standing military? Those days are gone. Today the domestic police are nothing more than a local army. In fact domestic police are even receiving old military equipment:

Coming soon to your local sheriff: 18-ton, armor-protected military fighting vehicles with gun turrets and bulletproof glass that were once the U.S. answer to roadside bombs during the Iraq war.

The hulking vehicles, built for about $500,000 each at the height of the war, are among the biggest pieces of equipment that the Defense Department is giving to law enforcement agencies under a national military surplus program.

At this rate local police departments will be receiving surplus M1 Abrams tanks. There is some good news though:

But the trucks have limits. They are too big to travel on some bridges and roads and have a tendency to be tippy on uneven ground. And then there’s some cost of retrofitting them for civilian use and fueling the 36,000-pound behemoths that get about 5 miles to the gallon.

Not only do these surplus machines cost a fortune to operate but they appear to be rather unstable on uneven terrain. In fact I would bet that one of these monstrosities would tip over pretty quickly if enough people ran up to one side and bang rocking it. A high center of gravity is a notoriously bad design feature in a military vehicle.

You Know the War on Terror is Lost When the Founder of Blackwater Starts Criticizing It

How can you tell when the War on Terror has been lost? When the founder of Blackwater Xe ACADEMI begins criticizing it:

Erik Prince is not the kind of man one expects to make the case for slashing U.S. intelligence and military budgets. After 9-11, his company, Blackwater, expanded exponentially, winning contracts to protect diplomats and politicians in Iraq and to train and work with CIA paramilitary teams hunting terrorists.

In an interview Monday, Prince said the national security state he once served has grown too large.

“America is way too quick to trade freedom for the illusion of security,” he told The Daily Beast. “Whether it’s allowing the NSA to go way too far in what it intercepts of our personal data, to our government monitoring of everything domestically and spending way more than we should. I don’t know if I want to live in a country where lone wolf and random terror attacks are impossible ‘cause that country would look more like North Korea than America.”

Even the people who made themselves wealthy off of the War on Terror can’t continue to promote it. Of course the state will continue to wage its war because that’s all it knows how to do. After all, the War on Terror was never about fighting terrorists, it was about expropriating wealth from foreign nations.

Lots of Money, Little Effect

The Government Accountability Office (there’s an oxymoron of a name if one ever existed) has finally announced what most of us have known since 2001. All of the money being spent to fund the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program has been wasted:

The federal government may have wasted $1 billion on a TSA program called “SPOT” that profiles people who may be “bad guys” at airports by talking to them, the Government Accountability Office reported Wednesday. There is no evidence that it works, it said.

The Transportation Security Administration’s Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program relies on training personnel to recognize indicators like fear, stress or deceptive behavior that can be used to identify persons who may pose a risk to aviation security. Those who exhibit those indicators are subjected to additional security screening.

Polygraphs, better known as lie detectors, are an instrument that fail to perform the act they claim to excel at. This is because there are no known human responses to lying. SPOT was doomed to fail for the same reason. There’s no consistent way to detect through observation, that science is currently aware of, a person who is either being dishonest or planning something violent.

It’s Time to Play Jump to Conclusions

Here we go again. A story broke a few days back about a 19 year-old woman being shot in the head by a homeowner:

It was shortly before 1 a.m. Nov. 2 and Renisha McBride was involved in an accident with a parked vehicle in Detroit.

More than two hours later and six blocks away, she was shot in the face by a man who told police he thought someone was breaking into his Dearborn Heights home. The 54-year-old homeowner, according to police, said his 12-gauge shotgun discharged accidentally.

What happened during the hours between the accident and McBride’s death on the front porch of a home in the 16800 block of West Outer Drive remains a mystery. New details surfaced in the controversial case Monday, raising more questions about the 19-year-old’s death.

Typically whenever there’s a shooting like this people immediately jump to one side or the other. This incident is no exception. Individuals typically aligned with the social justice movement, including Al Sharpton (who I’m told is a reverend but as an ordained minister I am unable to comprehend his status as a religious leader due to what he’s said and done historically), are calling for the shooter’s head and claiming this incident is a clear case of racism. I’ve already heard several individuals who are typically aligned with the gun rights movement jumping to the conclusion that the homeowner was in the right and that this case has nothing to do with racism.

Let me remind everybody that we have no idea what happened. We don’t have access to any of the information collected by police except for the little tidbits fed to us by the press. The press tend to get more details wrong than right during the early days of a story so we have to take anything we’re being told with a grain of salt. In other words we know nothing. Until we know something it’s a bit premature to jump to conclusions about who was in the right and who was in the wrong.

Instead of exploiting this incident politically let’s step aside and wait until all of the evidence has been brought to the table.

What Vigilantism Can Look Like

What do you think of when you hear the word vigilante? For many people the image of a violent revenge seeker comes to mind. But vigilantism is little more than the result o f individual taking the law into their own hands. Oftentimes the result is merely the solving of a crime that wasn’t solved by police:

The family of a kidnapped Louisiana mother tracked down and killed the father of her child in the abandoned house where he was allegedly holding her prisoner, authorities said.

Bethany Arceneaux, 29, of Duson, La., was abducted in the parking lot of a daycare where she was picking up her 2-year-old at approximately 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Department Captain Kip Judice told ABCNews.com.

[…]

Authorities searched the sugarcane field Wednesday night and all day Thursday, but to no avail, Judice said. The cane towers as high as eight feet tall and was “a brutal search area” for officials, he said.

It wasn’t until Friday morning, when Arceneaux’s family members conducted their own search in the same area that they came upon a secluded, abandoned house behind a cluster of trees.

The house was directly across the street from the field where Thomas abandoned his car, but only the home’s roof was visible from the road, Judice said.

“[The family] converged on a piece of property about a mile from where the car was found,” Judice said. “One of the family members heard what he thought was a scream.”

Arceneaux’s cousin approached the home, kicked in the door in and entered, Judice said. Inside, he found Thomas with the woman. Thomas then began stabbing Arceneaux, and a confrontation ensued.

“The cousin, who was armed, began firing several shots at Thomas,” Judice said. “After a couple of shots, [Arceneaux] was able to get free of him and they escorted her out of the house.”

People often think that vigilantism is wrong and law enforcement should be left to professionals. But professional law enforcement are often unable or unwilling to solve crimes. Sometimes you need the tenacity of an individual directly invested in the well being of a victim to achieve a happy conclusion.

Just as there are bad agents in law enforcement there are bad vigilantes. On the other hand, just as there are good agents in law enforcement there are good vigilantes. In fact I would argue that a vigilante is less likely to cause unneeded harm than police officers because vigilantes are more accountable to community members. Far too often police are put on administrative leave until their own department rules them innocent of wrongdoing after its investigation of the matter. The actions of a vigilante are most likely to be judged by community members and it’s unlikely that a community will be satisfied with a vigilante investigating his or her own actions.

Iraqis are Human Too

Even though this is an Onion article I swear many people would be floored to discover this fact:

CHAPEL HILL, NC—A field study released Monday by the University of North Carolina School of Public Health suggests that Iraqi citizens experience sadness and a sense of loss when relatives, spouses, and even friends perish, emotions that have until recently been identified almost exclusively with Westerners.

“We were struck by how an Iraqi reacts to the sight of the bloody or decapitated corpse of a family member in a not unlike an American, or at the very least a Canadian, would,” said Dr. Jonathan Pryztal, chief author of the study. “In addition to the rage, bloodlust, and hatred we already know to dominate the Iraqi emotional spectrum, it appears that they may have some capacity, however limited, for sadness.”

Something that is often forgotten in war is that both sides are human. Separated by the Iraqi invasion we only get to see one side of the story. It’s easy to boast about the greatness of the United States when we’re not witnessing the torn families left in its wake. The next time you’re championing the United States invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan stop and consider the fact that the United States isn’t the only side losing people. Then consider what the families of the Iraqis and Afghans think when one of their sons is killed by the invading American army. Does it really make sense to put American lives in the Middle East if it only breeds hatred by giving families a reason to hate the United States?

A Good Use for Prisons

Prisons have few uses beyond being a source of slave labor for the state and its cronies. At least that is until you give a prison to some creative people who are interested in providing their computer a product. After that you can turn that worthless old facility of cages into a wonderful distillery:

WARTBURG, Tenn. — Voters in Morgan County have approved a referendum that allows an old prison to be turned into a distillery.

WATE-TV reports voters approved the measure Tuesday night by a margin of 1,224 ballots.

The station reports the vote clears the way for a developer to turn the old Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary into a distillery with a campground and other attractions.

I would love to see more prisons receive this kind of treatment.