Southern Avenger: A Decade Of Empire

Southern Avenger: The Scam Of Social Conservatism

U.S. Soldiers Are Waking Up

Quote - Hippocrates

There are, in effect, two things: to know and to believe one knows. To know is science. To believe one knows is ignorance.

Hippocrates

The Last Check Has Failed: The US Government Is A Rogue State

After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.” They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

From here.

Peter Schiff Is A True Patriot

Christmas Weekend

Gary Johnson: The Next Ron Paul?

Southern Avenger: Person of the Year: Ron Paul

Bullion Is A Girl's Best Friend

How Government Competes

Corporatism

Lord Monckton Interviews Global Warming Activist Who Relies on FAITH

These people are just as dangerous as any other religious extremist.

Blair Publicly Displays Honest Disdain The Ruling Elite Has On The Poor

I often thought it funny, the left-wing complains about the right-wing capitalist policies big business push through government and the right-wing complains about the left-wing socialist policies liberal-elites push through government. The right-wing will fire back that those big business policies do not represent capitalism and are more in light with fascism or even socialism (not real capitalism); the left-wing will fire back that those liberal-elite policies are centrist and capitalist (not real socialism). Mean while, the ruling elites gain more control and we sit here watching, fighting back and forth about definitions. Well, that actually doesn't seem funny.

This paradox has led me to two conclusions: 1. The left/right paradigm is false and distracts the masses and even politically intelligent from the real issues. 2. The ruling elite might have disagreements and factions, but they do not reflect the left/right paradigm. Its more of a disagreement on how to properly control the people and direct them to their own interests, whether via the military industrial complex and war, or via climate change and taxes on CO2.

Despite the apparent disagreements, what I think both sides of the ruling elite do agree on is much more comprehensive. One perspective I'm sure they all share is a complete disdain for poor people as they share no regret for the harm and death their policies give to them.

As Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright did before him, Tony Blair blurted out a completely insensitive comment over the weekend making very clear the disregard the elite have for the people harmed by their policies while making it very clear this man should be put on trial for war crimes. From theRawStory.com:

In the absence of explicit UN approval, Blair justified the war on the basis of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and long-range missiles and its non-compliance with UN weapons inspections, in defiance of numerous UN resolutions.

The alleged chemical and biological weapons were never found, but Blair said he would have gone to war even if he had known they were not there.

"I would still have thought it right to remove him (Saddam Hussein). Obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat," he said.

He added: "It was the notion of him as a threat to the region, of which the development of WMD was obviously one, and because you'd had 12 years of United Nations to and fro on this subject, he used chemical weapons on his own people -- so this was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind."

Lord Christopher Monckton Tears Apart Man-Made Climate Change Activists and Copenhagen

Lord Christopher Monckton gave a very thorough interview on King World News over the weekend that completely tears apart the activists in Copenhagen; the activists negotiating and the activists on the streets. Listen to it here.

Monckton also announced over the weekend he is joining the UKIP with Nigel Farage in an effort to bring governance back to the people of the United Kingdom away from the European Union. He discusses the problems with the European Union in the second half of the interview linked above. An issue he ran into with free-range eggs is rather interesting.

Here's a clip of a speech he gave in the United States a couple of months ago:



Here's the full speech that he gave:

John Stossel Argues Against Global Warming

Our Christmas Tree

Ron Paul Was Right

MEP Nigel Farage on what is wrong with the EU

Letting Be

Peter Schiff debates David Epstein of Columbia University

This is certainly a debate worth watching. There are those in the audience that support either side of the discussion and both individuals are given great amounts of time to make their case and argue over the underlying merits.

Matt Taibbi: Obama's Big Sellout

I don't necessarily agree with solutions Matt Taibbi often promotes to resolve the issues he diagnosis, but his diagnoses are typically spot-on. Here's the intro to his latest diatribe on Obama and the Bankers...you can read the full article here:

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we've been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Whatever the president's real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial "reforms" that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street's political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer's role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. At one point in the debate, Obama's top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals.

How did we get here? It started just moments after the election — and almost nobody noticed.

One aspect I didn't like about this piece: toward the end Taibbi goes on a mini-rant about the tea-baggers, which, even though deserved (as rants against ignorance is always deserved), it is misplaced. He accuses them as being the problem voter that allows Obama to get away with his misdeeds, but he's wrong. Its the apologetic liberal, the person that looks to Obama and thinks he'll eventually bring peace, help the poor, support the unions, and legalize pot, if only we just let him do his job. They are the problem. At least the teabaggers are protesting SOMETHING. Where are the left-wing peace activists when Obama sends 30,000 troops into Afghanistan? Where are the left-wing socialist activists when Obama is bailing out wall-street and leaving main street to fend for themselves? Some write about it, but noone is putting their feet on the street. They are the problem for the same reason the Christian right were the problem when Bush was president: they excuse all of the major fuck ups, rip-offs, and infringing on individuals because they've been fed enough propaganda to make them think that their president views life the same way they do, and that's all they need to have that warm and fuzzy feeling when they sit down at night and watch American Idol.

Glenn Greenwald: The Strange Consensus on Obama's Nobel Address

Reactions to Obama's Nobel speech yesterday were remarkably consistent across the political spectrum, and there were two points on which virtually everyone seemed to agree: (1) it was the most explicitly pro-war speech ever delivered by anyone while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize; and (2) it was the most comprehensive expression of Obama's foreign policy principles since he became President. I don't think he can be blamed for the first fact; when the Nobel Committee chose him despite his waging two wars and escalating one, it essentially forced on him the bizarre circumstance of using his acceptance speech to defend the wars he's fighting. What else could he do? Ignore the wars? Repent?

I'm more interested in the fact that the set of principles Obama articulated yesterday was such a clear and comprehensive expression of his foreign policy that it's now being referred to as the "Obama Doctrine." About that matter, there are two arguably confounding facts to note: (1) the vast majority of leading conservatives -- from Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich to Peggy Noonan, Sarah Palin, various Kagans and other assorted neocons -- have heaped enthusiastic praise on what Obama said yesterday, i.e., on the Obama Doctrine; and (2) numerous liberals have done exactly the same. That convergence gives rise to a couple of questions:

Why are the Bush-following conservatives who ran the country for the last eight years and whose foreign policy ideas are supposedly so discredited -- including some of the nation's hardest-core neocons -- finding so much to cheer in the so-called Obama Doctrine?

How could liberals and conservatives -- who have long claimed to possess such vehemently divergent and irreconcilable worldviews on foreign policy -- both simultaneously adore the same comprehensive expression of foreign policy?

Read the rest here.

Canadian Science-Fiction Writer Beaten and Arrested at US Border

Read about it here.

Not letting a journalist into your country certainly conveys an ugly smell (as we did with that left-wing activist lady...Amy Goodman I think?), but at least we did it politely and without harm; beating a man, throwing him wet and cold into a cell for three hours, arraigned and charged for a crime not committed without legal representation, and then released on foot, without a jacket, personal belongings withheld, into Ontario's first winter storm, is this not the markings of a fascist government?

Lew Rockwell: The Left Fell into the Climate Morass

It might take a while to sink in, but the global warming cause is on the skids. Two issues are taking the whole project down: it is getting cooler not warmer (and hence the change of the rhetoric to a vague concern over "climate change"), and the email scandal of a few weeks back proved that this really is an opinion cartel with preset views not driven by science.

Oh sure, people are saying that climategate is not really very serious and is only being exploited by Fox News and the like. And it's true that not all measures of global temperature show cooling and that the science can be complex.

On that basis, the New York Times urges us to ignore the outpouring. "It is also important not to let one set of purloined e-mail messages undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in Copenhagen."

Yes, a clear case. Come on. The whole political agenda of these people is now being seriously questioned. It is no longer a slam-dunk case that we are going to have world central planning in order to control the climate and protect the holy earth from the effects of industrialization. Oh, and tax us good and hard in the process.

But you know what is most tragic to me about this? This whole hysteria led to a fantastic diversion of energy on the left side of the political spectrum. Instead of working against war and the police state, issues on which the left tends to be pretty good, instincts were diverted to the preposterous cause of creating a statist system for global thermometer management.

Read the rest here.

Rand's Tea Party

Neil Reynolds @ TheGlobeandMail: Operation Audit: Fed up with a rogue central bank

For Congressman Ron Paul, the lonely libertarian from Texas who first championed an audit of the Fed, the committee vote was, in itself, a revolutionary declaration. First elected as a Republican to the House of Representatives in 1976, Mr. Paul has since drafted innumerable bills to audit the Fed - all of which his colleagues greeted either with indifference or disdain. This time round, it was different. In the 435-seat House, Mr. Paul signed on 320 co-sponsors, a remarkably bipartisan alliance with enough pledged votes to approve the proposed Federal Reserve Transparency Act.

Not often is Dr. Paul mentioned in the Canadian media. You can read the full article here.

Kucinich: Afghan War A Racket

Lieutenant Allen West: Congressional Candidate

I'm sure this guy is no Ron Paul, but its a pretty good speech.

Ron Paul: Imagine

Justin Raimondo: The Antiwar Right: Our Time Is Near

The political rationale for Democratic hawkishness is always that the Republicans will supposedly beat up on Obama and the Democrats in Congress if they show "weakness." With a strong anti-interventionist tendency in the GOP, the Democratic Leadership Council and its "centrist" allies will have to come up with a different excuse.

Yes, it’s true that politics in Washington is all about partisanship, and to be against this president and his programs is to at least call into question the conduct and motivating principles of his foreign policy – and anti-interventionists shouldn’t hesitate for one moment to take full advantage of this. During the run up to the second world war, Republican opposition to FDR"s strenuous (albeit largely covert) attempts to drag us into the European side of the conflict provoked antiwar sentiment on the Republican right. The group that came together to oppose the Rooseveltian program of war abroad and a highly-centralized, semi-socialist state at home – those we call, in retrospect, the Old Right – came from very disparate points on the political spectrum: the Hooverites, Liberty Leaguers, and Taft Republicans on the right, and on the left disillusioned old-fashioned liberals like the journalist John T. Flynn, and anti-war, anti-Washington Midwestern progressives, such as Senator Burton K. Wheeler, of Montana. Together, they built the biggest antiwar movement in American history, the America First Committee, which, at its height, had 800,000 dues-paying members, and a large activist contingent.

This is the model we should emulate when building a contemporary movement against our policy of perpetual warfare. It will take a broad-based coalition, one that spans the political spectrum and allows for a high degree of variety, to stand against the Empire. But if we’re going to have our old Republic back, it will be a battle worth fighting.

Read the entire article here.

Glenn Greenwald: My Friend The President

Over the past couple of days, Andrew Sullivan has linked to and published protests from various individuals who are quite angry that people "on the left" are being so mean to President Obama, and several of them are so upset that they have decided they are "leaving the left," whatever that might mean. What's most striking about these valiant defenses of Obama is how utterly devoid they are of any substantive points and how, instead, suffuse with weird, even inappropriate, emotional attachments they are. These objections are grounded almost exclusively in (a) a deep-seated conviction that President Obama is a good and just man who means well; (b) their own rather intense upset at seeing him criticized; and (c) a spitting ad hominem fury of the type long directed by Bush followers at any critics of their leader, and generally typical of authoritarian attacks on out-groups critics. Just marvel at some of this:

"Thank goodness people are starting to leave the left. Their abandonment of Obama is as unconscionable as the right's refusal to work with him. . . . This is about decency and working together to solve problems. . . . Obama is almost solitary in his desire and ability to tackle problems of epic proportion while realizing that we live in a very heterogeneous society. . . . The loud-mouths on the Left are becoming nearly as hysterical and vicious as those on the right. . . . I marvel (unhappily) on a daily basis on how myopic and stubborn many of those on the left have become in regards to President Obama. I wonder if any of these people have ever truly had to make hard decisions in their lives. Have they not ever had to weigh all consequences?. . . . These are real choices people, not a schoolyard fantasy, in which our guy, king of the geeks, is finally captain of the kickball team, and now he can pick us fellow geeks and play us all in sweet revenge against the jocks. He is not playing. He is leading. Not even one year in, I am willing to continue to trust his instinct, his grace, his patience and his measured hand. . . .These are the reasons I voted for him. Hope for a leader, not hope for "everything to be completely different from the previous guy regardless of the consequences", which is what I think many immature democrats are upset about. What a bunch of selfish babies. . . . The stuff coming out of "progressive" mouths is all too often on a par with Glenn Beck's abusive rants--both sides (right and left wingers) playing thousand-pound national football with the President as the ball--meaning, kick kick kick, until you bust his dick. This truly makes me sick."

These outbursts include everything other than arguments addressed to the only question that matters: are the criticisms that have been voiced about Obama valid? Has he appointed financial officials who have largely served the agenda of the Wall Street and industry interests that funded his campaign? Has he embraced many of the Bush/Cheney executive power and secrecy abuses which Democrats once railed against -- from state secrets to indefinite detention to renditions and military commissions? Has he actively sought to protect from accountability and disclosure a whole slew of Bush crimes? Did he secretly a negotiate a deal with the pharmaceutical industry after promising repeatedly that all negotiations over health care would take place out in the open, even on C-SPAN? Are the criticisms of his escalation of the war in Afghanistan valid, and are his arguments in its favor redolent of the ones George Bush made to "surge" in Iraq or Lyndon Johnson made to escalate in Vietnam? Is Bob Herbert right when he condemned Obama's detention policies as un-American and tyrannical, and warned: "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House"?

Read the rest here.

Southern Avenger: Weather of Mass Destruction

Where's the outrage?

I open up theGlobeandMail.com and read the headline: "Greenhouse gases a threat to human health, U.S. agency rules". I think to myself, isn't heart disease and the over consumption of meat the greatest threat to our health? Cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of death in the West. Where is the outrage toward that?

For those lemings who believe in man-made global warming, get upset about meat. The damage done to the environment at the hands of our consumption of meat is monstrous and we don't even need it. You'd kill two birds with one stone if this get-together in Copenhagen was directed toward decreasing the consumption of meat.

Anyway, who trusts any "U.S. Agency"?

Greek Government Acts to Repress Anarchists

The Greek government has arrested 101 individuals for no apparent crime prior to the violent protests today. Apparently this is just the first of many other planned crack-downs by the socialist Greek government on groups of anarchists:

The bourgeois media report that this is a first leg of an operation involving storming many anarchist havens around the city.

Well, thankfully Hayek was wrong in that socialism obviously does not lead to fascism. One of the linked articles also mentions:

10.000 cops are reported to be in operation in Athens for the prevention of riots.

Doesn't sound like a police state to me.

20,000 Lemings March Through London

Read about it here.

We really should stop man from polluting Mars and causing its northern polar ice cap from melting too...

Difference between bush and obama...

From here.

Southern Avenger: Obama Adopts The Bush Doctrine

Barack Obama: More Of The Same

From www.dailypaul.com.

The War On Kids

The New War President

Justin Raimondo's Obama’s War Speech: An Unconvincing Flop

Michael Moore's letter to Obama here.

Cindy Sheehan's 30,000 Wrongs Won't Make It Right

From MichaelMoore.com:

Obama: "We Did Not Ask for This Fight"
Bush: "We Did Not Seek This Conflict"

Obama: "New Attacks are Being Plotted as I Speak"
Bush: "At This Moment ... Terrorists are Planning New Attacks"

Obama: "Our Cause is Just, Our Resolve Unwavering"
Bush: "Our Cause is Just, Our Coalition [is] Determined"

Obama: "This Is No Idle Danger, No Hypothetical Threat"
Bush: "The Enemies of Freedom Are Not Idle"

Obama: "We Have No Interest in Occupying Your Country"
Bush: "I Wouldn't Be Happy if I Were Occupied Either"

Automatic Mario: Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now"

Automatic Mario: Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" - Watch more Game Trailers

One of FDR's Legacies Goes Broke

The FDIC is broke. If you're American, get your money out of the bank. Buy gold and protect your wealth. The government cannot do it for you.

Scientists Hiding Evidence of Global Cooling

Recently some hackers obtained 160 megabytes of email from scientists working for the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. These emails contain evidence of climate scientists attempting to hide or skew data that would prove damaging to global warming theorists. You can read an editorial in regard to this in the Washington Times here.

There is a lot of damning evidence about these researchers concealing information that counters their bias. In another exchange, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann: "If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone" and, "We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind." Mr. Jones further urged Mr. Mann to join him in deleting e-mail exchanges about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) controversial assessment report (ARA): "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re [the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report]?"

In another e-mail, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann, professor Malcolm K. Hughes of the University of Arizona and professor Raymond S. Bradley of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst: "I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!"

At one point, Mr. Jones complained to another academic, "I did get an email from the [Freedom of Information] person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn't be deleting emails." He also offered up more dubious tricks of his trade, specifically that "IPCC is an international organization, so is above any national FOI. Even if UEA holds anything about IPCC, we are not obliged to pass it on." Another professor at the Climate Research Unit, Tim Osborn, discussed in e-mails how truncating a data series can hide a cooling trend that otherwise would be seen in the results. Mr. Mann sent Mr. Osborn an e-mail saying that the results he was sending shouldn't be shown to others because the data support critics of global warming.

Neil Young Sings "Fresh Prince" Theme

Muppets Sing Bohemian Rhapsody

The Dollar Bubble

Ron Paul on Afghanistan

Part 2

Rand Paul Is Wrong On Guantanamo

Today the following press release was issued from the Rand Paul U.S. Senate campaign:

“Foreign terrorists do not deserve the protections of our Constitution,” said Dr. Paul. “These thugs should stand before military tribunals and be kept off American soil. I will always fight to keep Kentucky safe and that starts with cracking down on our enemies.”

There are several things wrong with this press release and Rand Paul should apologize immediately for his mistake if he wishes to be a leader in the liberty movement. If he wishes to be a leader in the Tea Party movement, well, he probably struck the right chord. The difference between a Paulian and a Tea Partier might be slim-to-none to some, but for those who have followed Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Peter Schiff, Tom Woods, Thomas DiLorenzo, James Ostrowski, and Karen De Coster, it is understood that while some perspectives between the two groups on the role of government are similar, the difference in intellectual ability of a typical tea-partier and typical Paulian to support their argument is monstrous. Why? Because a Paulian is on a non-stop search for truth, no matter how inconvenient, while a tea-partier would rather make ignorant slogans that serve no constructive end while ignoring inconvenient truths. Rand Paul's quote is more the latter than the former.

Over the past 8 years the use of the word "terrorist" has been pounded into our heads by so many propagandistic politicians simply looking to get a head in the polls; it is hard to take seriously anyone who uses it, especially when the terrorist is someone who was taken away from his home, without charge, possibly tortured, and imprisoned for years against his will. I've been following Rand's senate campaign daily from up here in Nova Scotia and it has been very encouraging. Even if he loses, he will have won simply because he is continuing in his father's footsteps and educating his peers. The amount of work he appears to be doing has been substantial; all the more reason I felt like I was punched in the face when I read this quote.

All men are created equal. All men deserve protection from those who wish to do them harm and violate his inalienable rights. Therefore, these thugs deserve a fair trial, under the constitution the founding fathers wrote, even in its most weakest state. If they cannot be proven guilty, then they should be given the choice as to whether or not they can stay in the United States and live free (if you consider it free) or go back home where they were kidnapped from.

The lives of these men are not worth a few points in the polls. We cannot make the choice to sacrifice their freedom simply to elect someone that supposedly shares our principles.

The U.S. is suffering a huge divide in ideology right now and the liberty movement has a fantastic opportunity to grow because its principles are clear, consistent, and honest. Lets keep it that way and not muddy up our message with the use of neo-con speaking points.

The Southern Avenger: Selective "Hate"

Ron Paul: Gold, Peace, and Prosperity

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The Southern Avenger - George W. Obama

Ron Paul on MSNBC

Ron Paul on Financial Fraud

The Southern Avenger: Which Way Alternative Right?

Revolution

Ron Paul on Larry King

Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Ron Paul @ Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

This was pretty funny; it's worth a watch. Neither politically nor economically related. . . well, maybe a little economics.

Hayek on Keynes

Quote - F.A. Hayek on Economic Dictatorship

"Most planners who have seriously considered the practical aspects of their task have little doubt that a directed economy must be run on more or less dictatorial lines. That the complex system of interrelated activities, if it is to be consciously directed at all, must be directed by a single staff of experts, and that ultimate responsibility and power must rest in the hands of a commander-in-chief whose actions must not be fettered by democratic procedure, is too obvious a consequence of underlying ideas of central planning not to command fairly general assent. The consolation our planners offer us is that this authoritarian direction will apply "only" to economic matters. One of the most prominent economic planners, Stuart Chase, assures us, for instance, that in a planned society "political democracy can remain if it confines itself to all but economic matters." Such assurances are usually accompanied by the suggestion that, by giving up freedom in what are, or ought to be, the less important aspects of our lives, we shall obtain greater freedom in the pursuit of higher values. On this ground people who abhor the idea of a political dictatorship often clamor for a dictator in the economic field."

F. A. Hayek, The Road To Serfdom, 1944.

Lord Chrisotpher Monckton: Obama to cede US Sovreignty In UN Climate Change Treaty

Ron Paul On Afghanistan

Southern Avenger - Lindsey Graham vs. Ron Paul

Quote - F. A. Hayek

The fashionable concentration on democracy as the main value threatened is not without danger. It is largely responsible for the misleading and unfounded belief that, so long as the ultimate source of power is the will of the majority, the power cannot be arbitrary. The false assurance which many people derive from this belief is an important cause of the general unawareness of the dangers which we face. There is no justification for the belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; the contrast suggested by this statement is altogether false: it is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary. Democratic control may prevent power from becoming arbitrary, but it does not do so by its mere existence. If democracy resolves on a task which necessarily involves the use of power which cannot by guided by fixed rules, it must become arbitrary power.

F. A. Hayek, The Road To Serfdom, 1944.

Cartoon in The Chronicle Herald

I'm lovin' it. Taken from The Chronicle Herald website.

Dollar Losing Reserve Status To Yen and Euro

Over the last quarter, banks put 63% of their reserves into the Yen and the Euro. Read about it here.

Talking Politics With IT Admin In New York, NY

IT Guy: Where are you located?

Me: Halifax, Nova Scotia

IT Guy: Oh ya, you don't sound like you're from outside the country. Probably better you're not in the US.

Me: Yea, things are a mess down there.

IT Guy: No kidding.

Me: So what do you think the problem is?

IT Guy: Its the government, and the shadow governments that control it, WallStreet and the Fed.

Me: Yea, sounds about right. So who were you routing for in the last election?

IT Guy: Neither of them. If I could have voted for him I would have voted for Ron Paul. He's been fighting this stuff for years.

Southern Avenger: The Nobel Police Prize

On Obama

“When a small man casts a long shadow the sunset is near.” — Lin Yutang

From LewRockwell.com.

Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Banks Shift Reserves

Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades.

Read about it here.

Ron Paul: What If?

I've posted this before, but this will be a video I'll post every once in awhile as it will continue to have significance.

Grayson on Afghanistan

Who Obama Beat For The Nobel Peace Prize

From LewRockwell.com:

Sima Samar, women’s rights activist in Afghanistan: “With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women’s Affairs.”

Ingrid Betancourt: French-Colombian ex-hostage held for six years.

Dr. Denis Mukwege: Doctor, founder and head of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. He has dedicated his life to helping Congolese women and girls who are victims of gang rape and brutal sexual violence.

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition: “These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon.”

Hu Jia, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, who was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for ‘inciting subversion of state power.’

Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China’s communist system. He now lives in the United States.

absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize

From the TimesOnline, Michael Binyon wrote a scolding commentary, entitled absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize, in regard to the Norwegian committee's inability to "seperate hopes from achievement." Here's a gem from the article:

The spectacle of Mr Obama mounting the podium in Oslo to accept a prize that once went to Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Mother Theresa would be all the more absurd if it follows a White House decision to send up to 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. However just such a war may be deemed in Western eyes, Muslims would not be the only group to complain that peace is hardly compatible with an escalation in hostilities.

And, as I previously compared this absurdity to the absurdity of Henry Kissinger winning the prize, so does Mr. Binyon:

Mr Obama’s prize is more likely, however, to be compared with the most contentious prize of all: the 1973 prize to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for their negotiations to end the Vietnam war. Dr Kissinger was branded a warmonger for his support for the bombing campaign in Cambodia; and the Vietnamese negotiator was subsequently seen as a liar whose government never intended to honour a peace deal but was waiting for the moment to attack South Vietnam.

Obama and Nobel: A Follow-Up

Thomas DiLorenzo makes the following observation over at LewRockwell.com:

So Obama joins Woodrow Wilson in the pantheon of American presidents who have won the Nobel Peace Prize (Wilson won it in 1919). I learned this morning that nominations for the prize had to be in by Feb. 20, about one month after Obama was inaugurated. That means that the prize went for his rhetoric during the campaign, not anything he could have actually accomplished. As I recall, his two most memorable foreign policy pronouncements during the campaign were 1) advocating that the U.S. bomb Pakistan; and 2) escalating the war in Afghanistan. He did order the murder of some people in Pakistan by bombardment shortly after taking office. I’m still surprised, though, that he won the prize after killing so few people. Usually, one must be a major league murderer like a Wilson or a Teddy Roosevelt to win such a prize.

Michael Moore: Babbling Idiot When Challenged

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize while bringing war to Iraq and Iran, advocating harmful sanctions against 70 million Iranians, and providing $16 billion to a corrupt government in Pakistan.

I think the credibility of the award just flew out the window. Others would probably correct me and advise this happened in 1973 when Henry Kissinger won it.

Obama has prisoners held indefinitely in American prisons all over the world (well at least in Guantanamo Bay and Bagram), he has failed to prosecute individuals responsible for torture, he's conducting two wars in two countries while bombing another and threatening another, he's murdered scores of innocent civilians (starting during his very first week of office), he's bailed out the wealthy at the expense of the poor, and has yet to stop Israel from developing on Palestinian land (not that its his business to do so, just sayin', he's trying really hard and failing).

Jimmy Carter must be pissed it took him decades of promoting democracy around the world the win it.

But thank god for Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Obama often does remind me of Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Of course, next to Henry Kissinger, Obama might be considered a saint, so in that respect it makes sense.

Quote - F. A. Hayek

"while for the immediate improvement liberalism had to rely largely on the gradual increase of wealth which freedom brought about, it had constantly to fight proposals which threatened this progress. It came to be regarded as a "negative" creed because it could offer to particular individuals little more than a share in the common progress - a progress which came to be taken more and more for granted and was no longer recognized as the result of the policy of freedom. It might even be said that the very success of liberalism became the cause of its decline. Because of the success already achieved, man became increasingly unwilling to tolerate the evils still with him which now appeared both unbearable and unnecessary."

F. A. Hayek, The Road To Serfdom, 1944.

Quote - Ivor Thompson

"from the point of view of fundamental human liberties there is little to choose between communism, socialism, and national socialism. They all are examples of the collectivist or totalitarian state . . . in its essentials not only is completed socialism the same as communism but it hardly differs from fascism."

British Labour MP Mr. Ivor Thompson, The Socialist Tragedy. Ivor Thompson left the Labour party to join the Conservative party in 1948.

Southern Avenger: Iran, Iran So Far Away

"World Is Giving America A Collective" Middle Finger

"The Demise Of The Dollar"

The Independent has a good article on the world moving away from the use of the US Dollar as the reserve currency and its use to price oil:

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

Ron Paul On Foreign Policy From The Floor

Michael Moore = Idiot

CNSNews recently had a chance to ask Michael Moore a few questions. In response to one, Moore made this comment:

“You know, I had to pretty much beg, borrow and steal. The system is not set up to help somebody from the working class make a movie like this and get the truth out there.

In fact, in Fahrenheit 9/11 if you remember, capitalism, the Disney Corporation, tried to kill that film--tried to make it so that people couldn’t see it. My book Stupid White Men--Harper Collins tried to kill that book so that people couldn’t see it. It's only because I put the light of day on it and told people what was going on did people get the chance to see these things.”

Moore is saying that capitalism tried to beat down his message, but because he magically "put the light of day on it" he was able to do what no other would be able to do! He actually thinks that he was able to make millions of dollars IN SPITE of living in a capitalistic society. What an idiot. Because he lives in a pseudo-free and pseudo-capitalistic society, those in powerful positions could not stop him from making his documentary or publishing his book. Capitalism and free-markets allowed him to sell his material and earn his fortune.

Yep, Moore, you fought capitalism back with your magical weapon, the "light of day". You really showed him! Indeed. Idiot.

Quotes - Henry Hazlitt on Inflation

I just finished reading chapter XXIII: The Mirage of Inflation in Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson and I hit many statements, arguments, and logical deductions that I felt are significant and should be posted. These are two of my favorites.

"Even the clerk who used to get $75 a week and now gets $120 thinks that he must be in some way better off, though it costs him twice as much to live as it did when he was getting $75. He is of course not blind to the rise in the cost of living. But neither is he as fully aware of his real position as he would have been if his cost of living had not changed and if his money salary had been reduced to give him the same reduced purchasing power that he now has, in spite of his salary increase, because of higher prices. Inflation is the autosuggestion, the hypnotism, the anesthetic, that has dulled the pain of the operation for him. Inflation is the opium of the people."

The concluding paragraph of the chapter:

"Like every other tax, inflation acts to determine the individual and business policies we are all forced to follow. It discourages all prudence and thrift. It encourages squandering, gambling, reckless waste of all kinds. It often makes it more profitable to speculate than to produce. It tears apart the whole fabric of stable economic relationships. Its inexcusable injustices drive men toward desperate remedies. It plants the seeds of fascism and communism. It leads men to demand totalitarian controls. It ends invariably in bitter disillusion and collapse"

Its like he predicted the stock market bubble of the 90s, the recent housing boom, the collapse of the financial sector, the credit freeze, and the reaction by government to all of it in one paragraph, decades prior.

End The Fed

Flu Vaccine Protests in New York

My general position on this is that the government has no place forcing a vaccine of any kind on anyone, for any reason.

However, if the owners of the hospital wish to require employees to take a vaccine, this is perfectly legit. They are protecting the interests of their patients and have a right to do so. Workers who disagree can find employment with a different hospital if they disagree.

Ron Paul Visits The Federal Reserve Bank Of New York

Ron Paul on The Daily Show

I'm sure this won't stay up too long on YouTube.

Quote - Henry Hazlitt

"The belief that labor unions can substantially raise real wages over the long run and for the whole working population is one of the great delusions of the present age. This delusion is mainly the result of failure to recognize that wages are basically determined by labor productivity. It is for this reason, for example, that wages in the United States were incomparably higher than wages in England and Germany all during the decades when the "labor movement" in the latter two countries was far more advanced."

Henry Hazlitt, the first paragraph Chapter XX: Do Unions Really Raise Wages, in Economics In One Lesson

Quote - Glenn Greenwald on U.S. v. Iran

"And, oh yeah -- we're currently occupying two Muslim countries on either side of Iran, having invaded them many years ago. There's nothing Iran has done that we and our clients/allies haven't done ourselves to a far greater extent. But remember: it's Iran that is run by people with crazy, belligerent, fanatical, war-loving sentiments and is therefore a grave threat to world peace (imagine if Iran had invaded, bombed and then spent the last eight years militarily occupying Canada and Mexico, only for Iranian media elites to keep insisting that it was the U.S. that was the rogue state run by aggressive fanatics who threatened world peace)."

Read Mr. Greenwald's column here.

Glenn Greenwald was recently on the left-wing war-mongering US cable network MSNBC arguing against war-mongering left-winger Arianna Huffington:

Dr. Paul on Iran's Nuclear Program

Quote - Henry Hazlitt

Yet among the arguments put forward in favor of huge foreign lending one fallacy is always sure to occupy a prominent place. It runs like this. Even if half (or all) the loans we make to foreign countries turn sour and are not repaid, this nation will still be better off for having made them, because they will give an enormous impetus to our exports.
It should be immediately obvious that if the loans we make to foreign countries to enable them to buy our goods are not repaid, then we are giving the goods away. A nation cannot grow rich by giving goods away. It can only make itself poorer.

90 pages into Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson and I'm finding gems all over the place I wish our politicians would read. This would be a good one for China to consider as it ponders whether or not to lend the United States any more cash.

Not Every Kid In The US Supports Obama

The "Jesus" line a little creepy; they could have discussed a little more the dangers of idolizing a simple man, as all men are inherently imperfect; and their accusation that children are being organized by Obama to serve Obama is a hard sell at best; but god-damn, gotta love the big poster of the Declaration of Independence in the background.

Highlights from HR1207 Hearing

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Quote - Henry Hazlitt, 1946

Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad loans than otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to "buy" houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared with other things. They temporarily overstimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages), and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly over expansion. In brief, in the long run they do not increase overall national production but encourage malinvestment.

Henry Hazlitt, 1946, Economics In One Lesson

I'm only 50 pages into this book. I usually post stuff on here showing predictions from Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, and Peter Schiff in regard to the economy as they come true. How about this prediction from 60 years ago? Those crazy, wacky, backwards Austrians.

Ron Paul: Imagine

"Iran is on notice that they are going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice"

Its all over the news. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. No more time for diplomacy. Ultimatums have been made. The media is lining up behind the president. The world must be kept safe.

What is not being broadcast? Iraq has started demanding euros for oil.

Wait. This isn't 2003, its 2009. Its not Iraq. Its Iran.

Its all over the news. Iran has a secret under-ground nuclear-fuel plant. No more time for diplomacy. Ultimatums have been made. The media is lining up behind the president. The world must be kept safe.

What is not being broadcast? Iran has started demanding euros for oil and has moved to using euros as their reserve currency within the past month.

This is very troubling. The US is still fighting one war in Iraq and we're with them in another in Afghanistan. These wars are taking longer than either World War I or World War II and our countries, our men and women, the civilians in the respective countries we have invaded, and our treasuries are paying dearly for it.

Now, suddenly, you can feel our government lining up for a new initiative, a new war, there's a new boogey-man and we must destroy him.

Obama, the president of peace, change and hope, released this BUSHIAN statement,"Iran is on notice that they are going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice".

There is no hope, no peace, no change. Its all the same.

Unfortunately for us, Chretien is no longer the Prime Minister. We have Harper. He released a statement that is even more fearful to me than Obama's. He said Canada would back “whatever actions are necessary to deal with what is a tremendous threat to international peace and security.”

Right now they're talking about sanctions, but sanctions are acts of war. They always hurt the people, the civilians, more and they are designed to weaken the country to make war easier. They say they want to stop all transport of gasoline into Iran.

We're scared of a country that is flush with oil but cannot produce its own gasoline.

If our governments choose to march down this road, we have a responsibility to each other, and the people around the world, to do what we can to stop them.

Pittsburgh G20 Protest Montage

As lame as I think the protesters are, this is a decent video depicting how the oppressing nature of the governments around the world is beginning to show itself closer to home.

Alan Grayson Grills Federal Reserve Top Lawyer Scott Alvarez @ HR 1207 Hearing

On the G20 Protestors...

...they're idiots.

Now, that doesn't mean the police should be shooting beanbag, firing pepper spray, and blasting piercing sound waves toward them. This is a clear violation of their natural right of free assembly which is protected by the 1st Amendment.

In fact, protesting this use of force by police would be a far superior use of time than the supposed purpose of this loosely organized group of 1000 protestors that don't even understand what they're protesting.

They're protesting "profits", "capitalism", and all misery experienced by every individual in the entire world. I'm feeling sad today, and its the G20's fault!

If it smells like socialism, if it looks like socialism, and if it acts like socialism, well..this crowd calls it free-markets. If it smells like fascism, if it looks like fascism, and if it acts like fascism, well...this crowd calls it capitalism.

Obviously they have not read anything written by any free-marketeer, ever.

The leaders of the richest 20 governments in the world getting together to plan world policy is a glaring example of central planning which is accustomed with political philosophies that has historically brought more suffering and pain to the world than free-markets have ever done.

From one protester in an article on RawStory.com:

Our message here is about climate change, poverty, capitalism: they're all very intertwined and it's time that we all understand that if we are going to do anything, we have to work together.

Well la-dee-da. Could this individual ooze anymore main-stream left-wing talking points? Climate-change BAD, Poverty BAD, Capitalism BAD! We need to work together and live in cotton-candy land! How ironic is it that these talking point are propagandized by organizations like the UN and G20 and then these idiots use the talking point to protest the people who originated them! Which organization talks most about the evils of climate-change? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN backed organization that calls for economic policies that would kill capitalism. Where does the UN get funding for organizations like the IPCC? ALL OF THE COUNTRIES GATHERED AT THE G20.

Let us take a look at the list of countries being represented at the G20:

* Argentina
* Australia
* Brazil
* Canada
* China
* France
* Germany
* India
* Indonesia
* Italy
* Japan
* Mexico
* Russia
* Saudi Arabia
* South Africa
* South Korea
* Turkey
* United Kingdom
* United States

Which one of these countries is pushing strongly for free market principles? They are almost all ruled by a political philosophy which is the anti-thesis of free markets and capitalism. They pretty much all espouse support of welfare policies supposedly "for the poor". These governments are responsible for subverting capitalism at every turn.

These protesters are protesting governments which are doing exactly what they want! They should be outside cheering.

Idiots.

Updated: Marines Kidnap Protestor: Fake or Real?

Update: Apparently they were state patrol officers dressed in military garb.

"We Should Never Be Afraid Of The Truth"

Who Dares Compare Obama To King George?

From RawStory.com (derived from The New York Times):

President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.
...
Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions -- including the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

Iran Replaces the US Dollar With The Euro

From this article:

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered the replacement of the US dollar by the euro in the country’s foreign exchange accounts.

University of Wisconsin's The Badger Herald on Young Americans for Liberty

Here's a link to the full article.

Here's an excerpt:

A little research reveals Young Americans for Liberty is an offshoot of Students for Ron Paul, the Texas congressman whose anti-war Republican presidential candidacy annoyed mainstream Republicans while enrapturing — in equal numbers — far-right Pat Buchanan-style conservatives and far-left anti-war activists looking for an original voice. YAL’s creed, according to its blog, reads: “As Americans we recognize the God-given natural rights of life, liberty and property set forth by our Founding Fathers. Our country was created to protect the freedoms of the individual and directed by we the people.” A YouTube video for YAL explains democracy was never the intention of the Constitutional Convention, which recognized the injustice of pure majority rule.

Ron Paul on House Floor Re: Healthcare

Judge Napolitano on Massachusetts Mandatory H1N1 Vaccinations

"I Own Me"

Warning: Explicit Language

Quote - H. L. Mencken

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else…. Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.

H.L. Mencken

Ron Paul on NPR

China's Position on Precious Metals

The general perspective by most western governments is that precious metals now serve no role as money and are not needed to back any currency. Government fiat currencies, floating against each other in an international market, are supposed to have given the western world a prosperity no other generation has experienced. The ability a central bank has to manipulate the currency supply "as needed" has been hailed as a miracle worker for ensuring there is enough new money (credit) in the economy to allow sufficient growth. Apparently economies did not grow when gold was money (sarcasm).

What is the perspective of the Chinese on this topic? Well, they have their own fiat currency, the yuan, so at least some within the Chinese government like having a central bank and do not see much use for precious metals as currency. Though, this appears to be changing. There have been many recent events in regard to Chinese policy that would indicate that they do understand precious metals serve a major role in a sound economy.

The government of the fastest growing economy in the world has been reported to have done the following:

1. China has recently constructed a new precious metals storage facility in Hong Kong.

2. China has recently requested that Britain return to Hong Kong all of China's gold bullion that is stored in the L.B.M.A in London.

3. China has recently told its citizens to invest in precious metals; they have opened up bullion shops in its cities so that citizens can easily purchase bullion.

4. China has been buying large amounts of gold bullion over the last 12 months. It has more than doubled its gold reserves to over 1054 tons.

5. It is now Chinese Government policy to buy gold bullion when it becomes available in the marketplace.

6. China is limiting the exportation of all precious metals.

Recently, as I have previously quoted, Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China's green energy drive, had some interesting things to say in regard to the current economic situation. Taken from this Telegraph.co.uk article, Mr. Cheng has made the following quotes which seem to agree with most observations made by Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and other Austrian economists:

"If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies"

Mr. Cheng has identified asset bubbles in his own country; he identifies this with being linked to interest rates being kept too low to keep the yuan in line with the US dollar:

"Credit in China is too loose. We have a bubble in the housing market and in stocks so we have to be very careful, because this could fall down."
...

Mr Cheng said the Fed's loose monetary policy was stoking an unstable asset boom in China. "If we raise interest rates, we will be flooded with hot money. We have to wait for them. If they raise, we raise.

In regard to the West's obsession with the CPI as a measure of inflation:

This is where Greenspan went wrong from 2000 to 2004. He thought everything was alright because inflation was low, but assets absorbed the liquidity.

And finally, finishing it off hitting the nail on the head and then a quote from Benjamin Franklin:

The US spends tomorrow's money today. We Chinese spend today's money tomorrow. That's why we have this financial crisis. He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing.

The size of China's economy is still a fraction of America's, but I wonder, given the differing actions and the obvious trends of the West and China, what will the world look like 10, 20, or 30 years from now? Currently the Chinese middle class earns a fraction of the purchasing power the middle class of the West earns every year. But what will happen if our governments continue to destroy our currencies as they keep interest rates near 0% and continue to inflate asset bubbles doomed to pop? Wealth will continue to be destroyed and the purchasing power of the middle class will shrink as inflation starts bare its ugly head. Meanwhile, the middle class in China is steadily increasing its purchasing power and are being encouraged by its leaders to invest in precious metals to protect their wealth.

The Chinese government is encouraging its middle class to purchase silver, our leaders tell us to go to the mall and shop; doesn't that say it all?



Can anyone name one empire that rose on the back of fiat currency and fell with a switch to a currency backed by precious metals? Nope.

Can anyone name one empire that rose on the back of a precious metal currency and then fell after a switch to fiat currency? All of them.

The problem we face today, the looming crisis which will impoverish us all, is not peak oil, global warming, or terrorists. Its the destruction of our currency.