The rest of us see the beginning…

The recession is over, the crises has abated; nothing see here folks. Or at least that’s what the government and our blessed central bank would like you to think. The problem with these kinds of forecasts is that they are usually, no wait, always wrong. The Bank of Canada is trying to say that we have gone from the largest market crises since the Great Depression to the shortest recession on record; all thanks to the perverse program of government spending of money we do not have. That statement alone should sound the alarm bells. Not to mention that most of the supposedly positive market movements upward are being fueled by freshly printed money, not true individual savings - so in short it is a fiat recovery driven by fiat money.This false sense of security masks the big swindle taking place right under our noses. Those who are buying the federal line on the economy and getting the new money are the biggest losers in the end, in fact, we all lose. This new money drives up prices and in effect lowers all of our real wages, all because we have inflation addicts littering the halls of government and our communities, begging for just one more hit.

What would you do if you had a button that printed all the money you wanted?…would you refrain from using it? Or would you use it even though you knew it would destroy our civilization?

Our government and central bank have this button. They spend most of their time trying to convince us that they know what they are doing… If this economic crises teaches us anything it should be this: they know not what they do.

- Awake

Sounds like a pretty good deal huh? Better check who you are making a deal with… The U.S. Government is running a special program to help rid the roads of old gas wasting cars, but as a citizen you might be getting the brown end of the stick…

Pay close attention and do not try this at home… even Canadians.

- Awake

Walter Block, who had previously discussed private roads in Saskatchewan, has set his eye on Canada once again.
This time, he’s writing in response to misinformation published by Rafe Mair about private rivers, and private natural resources in general.

Professor Block’s logical discourse of private rivers is excellent, his third and fourth points are particularly wonderful for their clarity and their pointed lack of hyperbole (which tend to permeate these kind of discussions):

3. Mike Walker is likely incorrect in thinking that under private enterprise, no bodies of water would be used as dumpsites. Rafe Mair is equally in error in maintaining that under a regime of economic freedom, all bodies of water would be used for storing garbage. With regard to land, some of it is used for such purposes; most of it is not. There does not seem to be any good reason to suppose that private water would not be used much the same way; just as in the case of land, water would likely serve a myriad of purposes. In any case, with free markets, all land, and water too, would tend to be used in the manner that maximized profits; that is, produced the most value for all members of society. If it were not, if land or water was not utilized to obtain the most value, this failure would set up profit opportunities for other entrepreneurs. They would tend to purchase the facilities in question, and shift them to a use that would create even more wealth. Does this system work perfectly? Are we always and ever in equilibrium? Of course, not. But, there is a continual grinding market force that works in this direction. It is not for nothing that we seldom have crises in industries (rubber bands, tooth picks) that are relatively free.

4. Mr. Mair exhibits an astonishing degree of economic illiteracy. He is attacking one of the most fundamental principles in all of economics: that if you own it, you tend to take care of it better than if you just rent it, or if no one owns it. People are concerned about an oil change for their own automobile, but, when is the last time anyone worried about this in a rental car? The cow never came within a million miles of extinction, the buffalo did. Why? It cannot be because the two species are that different. It must be due to the fact that the former was owned privately, and, at least for many decades, the latter was not. No farmer goes into his lower forty and shoots all his cows; if he does, he bears a great cost: he doesn’t have these bovines tomorrow. Things are different when the buffalo ran free. Then, the economically rational thing to do was to shoot them all. If you didn’t, you didn’t have them tomorrow anyway. It was virtually costless to shoot a buffalo; thus more of them were killed, and indiscriminately so. It is the same for elephants, rhinos, whales, fish. There is over-fishing in the unowned ocean; fish farms do not at all face that problem. Why should it be any different for rivers or lakes? We are talking basic economic principles here; they apply to all and any resources. If Mair opposes private water, why not land, too? Don’t get me started on Soviet collectivized farming.

Private land, private businesses, private schooling, private rivers … private goods are better managed and make the whole of society better off.

by David Deming

As the years pass and data accumulate, it is becoming evident that global warming is a fraud. Climate change is natural and ongoing, but the Earth has not warmed significantly over the last thirty years. Nor has there been a single negative effect of any type that can be unambiguously attributed to global warming.

As I write, satellite data show that the mean global temperature is the same that it was in 1979. The extent of global sea ice is also unchanged from 1979. Since the end of the last Ice Age, sea level has risen more than a hundred meters. But for the last three years, there has been no rise in sea level. If the polar ice sheets are melting, why isn’t sea level rising? Global warming is supposed to increase the severity and frequency of tropical storms. But hurricane and typhoon activity is at a record low.

Every year in the US, more than forty thousand people are killed in traffic accidents. But not one single person has ever been killed by global warming. The number of species that have gone extinct from global warming is exactly zero. Both the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets are stable. The polar bear population is increasing. There has been no increase in infectious disease that can be attributed to climate change. We are not currently experiencing more floods, droughts, or forest fires.

In short, there is no evidence of any type to support the idea that we are entering an era when significant climate change is occurring and will cause the deterioration of either the natural environment or the human standard of living.

Why do people think the planet is warming? One reason is that the temperature data from weather stations appear to be hopelessly contaminated by urban heat effects. A survey of the 1221 temperature stations in the US by meteorologist Anthony Watts and his colleagues is now more than 80 percent complete. The magnitude of putative global warming over the last 150 years is about 0.7 °C. But only 9 percent of meteorological stations in the US are likely to have temperature errors lower than 1 °C. More than two-thirds of temperature sensors used to estimate global warming are located near artificial heating sources such as air conditioning vents, asphalt paving, or buildings. These sources are likely to introduce artifacts greater than 2 °C into the temperature record.

Another cause of global warming hysteria is the infiltration of science by ideological zealots who place politics above truth. Earlier this month, the Obama administration issued a report that concluded global warming would have a number of deleterious effects on the US. In 1995, one of the lead authors of this report told me that we had to alter the historical temperature record by “getting rid” of the Medieval Warm Period.

The Obama report refers to – six times – the work of a climate scientist named Stephen H. Schneider. In 1989, Schneider told Discover magazine that “we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.” Schneider concluded “each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” Schneider’s position is not unusual. In 2007, Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in Britain, told the Guardian newspaper that “scientists and politicians must trade truth for influence.”

While releasing a politicized report that prostitutes science to politics, the Obama administration simultaneously suppressed an internal EPA report that concluded there were “glaring inconsistencies” between the scientific data and the hypothesis that carbon dioxide emissions were changing the climate.

If we had an appreciation for history, we would not be fooled so easily. It has all happened before, albeit on a smaller scale in an age where people had more common sense. On May 19, 1912, the Washington Post posed these questions: “Is the climate of the world changing? Is it becoming warmer in the polar regions?” On November 2, 1922, the Associated Press reported that “the Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the waters too hot.” On February 25, 1923, the New York Times concluded that “the Arctic appears to be warming up.” On December 21, 1930, the Times noted that “Alpine glaciers are in full retreat.” A few months later the New York Times concluded that there was “a radical change in climatic conditions and hitherto unheard of warmth” in Greenland. About the only thing that has changed at the Times since 1930 is that no one working there today is literate enough to use the word “hitherto.”

After the warm weather of the 1930s gave way to a cooling trend beginning in 1940, the media began speculating on the imminent arrival of a new Ice Age. We have now come full circle, mired in a hopeless cycle of reincarnated ignorance. H. L. Mencken understood this process when he explained “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

Since we are going to follow the U.S. like well behaved surfs when it comes to the new climate taxes this video directly applies to Canada…

It is time to begin the peaceful and concerted process of deconstructing the size and scope of government. The following video is proof of it.

by William Buppert

Recently by William Buppert: The Empire Strikes Back: Preparing for the Worst

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
~ H.L. Mencken

For some time, I have been trying to figure out why the nation and we as individuals are in the fix we are in now. Many reasons manifest themselves. We labor under a government of such monstrous reach and epic incompetence that it makes the Soviets now look like a paragon of efficiency and probity. We suffer under a ruling class that has not simply been a gangster government under Obamunism but has been this way since the defeat of the original Constitution in 1865. With each illegitimate war since 1898, the power of the Federal government has increased exponentially. With each manufactured crisis, liberties and freedoms have withered and died. This is simply the latest and greatest improvement in the ongoing process of our overseers to find emerging ways to increase the output of our slavery.

I have alluded before that we live in the country and have occasion to run across orphaned animals. We have horses and chickens and other assorted animals on the Circle A Ranch. My wife happens to be a fantastic gardener and the reincarnation of Dr. Doolittle. We discovered by following the horrid cacophony of rabbit screams three orphaned cottontails, two of which promptly died. My wife is now nursing the survivor and hoping to brighten his life expectancy in this mortal coil. As is her wont, she is an inveterate researcher and proceeded to go on the ’net and search out advice on care and feeding of a rabbit which is not one of our areas of husbandry expertise. What struck her were the countless admonitions to seek government assistance and report it to wildlife “authorities” or the zoo. I look around and converse with colleagues and associates to find my fellow Americans increasingly frightened or unfamiliar with doing anything without someone’s permission. Whether at work or play, we:
obey speed limits that have nothing do with safety and simply provide revenue to our rulers pay property taxes which inevitably increase the yoke around our necks locally and pay for the intellectual suicide pact call government schooling pay extraordinary sales taxes on local and state purchases to subsidize the countless layers of bureaucracy that choke citizen and business productivity everyday stop locally at a US Border Patrol checkpoint nearly twenty miles north of the Mexican border to be asked if we are American citizens and a visual check of the interior of our vehicles sit idly by while the various levels of government erect observation devices at traffic intersections to increase revenue streams receive property tax bills on our real estate which increase in assessment while market prices decrease are required to have permission from the US Forest Circus or National Park Service to hunt, play or work on lands expropriated by our betters in government

I have discovered the silver bullet and it is from the University of the Intuitively Obvious: question authority and maintain a skeptical attitude about all facets of government and governance. That’s it…simple. Even those of us who have invested considerable intellectual heavy-lifting in discerning why the government in all its consistent brutality and blood-raged destruction commands such a loyal and slavish quality in men are baffled by the absence of this simple epistemological tool to ask why on a consistent basis from stem to stern. If enough vigilance is maintained at the outset and embryonic stages of so much government mischief, much of the madness could be strangled in its statist cradle through peaceful discourse, non-compliance, shunning and development of innovative strategies to sabotage the government’s machinations. Most government programs start out with promises of nirvana and positive outcomes but the history of man shows that this is essentially iatrogenic and hubristic. The state is a violent actor by necessity to preserve its power and expand it, so inevitably the promises dissolve into a nightmarish brew of incompetence, lethality and baleful societal consequences and we are stuck with the myriad Frankenstein monsters shambling about with the vague promises of eternal goodness and heaven on earth.

One may say that the horse is out of the barn and we are truly stuck with the state of affairs and no amount of reform will fix DC and its loyal minions at this stage of their maturation and dominance and you would be correct. The rub is this: the FEDGOD will fall and it will be in the next 12–24 months and much like the USSR, it will perish of its own internal Marxoid contradictions. Foreign wars, self-induced economic calamity and sheer naked arrogance will force it to fold and dissolve as a ruling elite. This is a window that rarely opens and the opportunities will be tremendous – for both sides. The furloughed politicos will spread their contagion when they flee the ruins of the DC power structure and seek to encourage the usual suspects among government workers and gullible subjects to help resurrect this monstrosity that has been astride our necks like a decomposing albatross. Truth serum will be necessary and that all starts with the kind of skepticism and incredulity that seems to characterize most everything we do except our attitude toward our rulers. Cross-examination is the engine of truth. Question every bit of alleged government authority which emerges from the ashes. This is one reason Thomas Jefferson was agitating for constant revolt for the tree of liberty. Government is a fungal growth that cannot be checked without constantly striking the root and taking whatever measures are necessary to curb its growth.

You won’t find this kind of critical thinking taught in the universities or any facet of the school systems because skepticism and clear thinking will be the end of them and the whole rotting mold growth choking American civilization called government. When was the last time you saw a government sponsored university study which called for the reduction and/or elimination of a statist rule or department? You don’t have to be a philosophy major or graduate to realize that Socratic drilling works. This is simply the process where you repeatedly ask why to a set of explanations until either you are satisfied the meritorious answer has been given or the shoddy intellectual construction is bared for all to see. It bears repeating: the entire artifice of the state is based on the threat or employment of violence to meet its ends, so it is morally illegitimate and reprehensible from the starting blocks. You have the moral high ground because all government for the most part is an elaborate shell game to develop proxy relationships with servant classes who obey at the urging of a lash or worse for the material and power benefit of the ruling class. Wake up, helots!

This is the chance we have. A dozen, fifty or hundreds of resistance and secessionist entities are going to move into the vacuum left by the great sucking abyss of the FEDGOD collapse. Hundreds of laboratories will emerge to test every variant of political collective and ordered enterprise imaginable. I have little hope for the subjects and somnambulant mental zombies that stumble around the cities of the Left Coast and the Northeast (Vermont and New Hampshire excepted) will do anymore other than instantly resurrect facsimiles of DC patterns of rule and other processes of national socialism but between the Marxist coastlines; the life and times of ordinary Americans will take extraordinary turns to develop from scratch freedom-oriented communities and spasms of spontaneous order. People may finally awaken and look at their neighbors and try to do the right thing. They may seek a system that asks, persuades and cooperates instead of bullies, collectivizes and forces through violent means the shape and texture of human relationships. They will be the vanguard of the men and women who finally awaken from the five millennia fever-dream of enabling various strangers the power of life and death over thousands and millions simply because they have surrendered the most basic right of all; leave us the hell alone.

Turn off the television, grab a book(s) and have conversations with family and like-minded friends. Go out and do things. Start a garden, fix your fencing, move to the country and reach out to the community you live in. Open your mind to the possibilities before us. Most of all, question every aspect of your relationship with authority. Does it derive from fear or respect? Does it emanate from first-hand experience or second-hand knowledge? How many times have you truly asked why a certain bureaucratic edict must be followed? More importantly, what is your line in the sand where your servitude stops and your resistance begins? Just say no to big government. Once a man establishes his limitations for tolerance of interference in his life and adopts a resolute stand against the forces buffeting him against his will, the world will change.

If you are still reading this, you are the Resistance.

Reaction to Bill 47 has been pretty apathetic.  Most commentary has focused on how the current bill “lacks balance”, and how tricky it is to “strike the right chord” when “public safety” and individual rights are “at odds”.

If it weren’t, as J.L. Bryan points out in his excellent essay, if it weren’t for public schools, adults would not fall for this false dichotomy (among many other falsehoods our government thrives on) between “public safety” and individual rights:
If a private actor took away some of my rights, he would be reducing my “safety”, my “freedom from loss”, which includes loss of freedom.  If the government does so, I lose safety too, as does everyone in society.  The result of the government taking away individual rights is a reduction of public safety.  Clearly, it is not public safety that is at odds with individual rights, indeed, they are the same thing!

So what is the government driving at with its new legislation?  The same thing as always: Power.  If only people weren’t conditioned, as Bryan puts it, by “all the weird ritualism and pressure to conform” in public schools …

Of course, as Jana Ball wrote in response to Bryan’s essay, changing away from the status quo, even just for yourself, is a big hill to climb:

[T]he group-think, Prussian model is so entrenched in our culture, that merely mentioning the idea of dismantling public education will get you horrified looks of astonishment, if not ostracism from your social circle.

Still, if you enjoy reading this blog you may already be used to that …

Take every opportunity to remind parents that they are the Primary Educators of their children.  That schools function best when they are responsive to parents, rather than some faceless bureaucracy and its formulae.  That, in practice, this only happens when there are no bureaucrats, but when the schools are directly funded by parents and charity.

If you have children, do your best to get them out of the public system.  If you don’t, do your best to make sure that private schools are available to parents in your community.  (Most private schools are happy to accept donations of time, money, matterials, etc. …)

Whatever your situation, speak out!  For most of us, that (free speech) is the only weapon we have, and if we don’t use it, and learn to use it well, once a few more “Bill 47’s” get passed, we may find ourselves without it.

A letter of action…

Dear lovers of freedom,

I am contacting you today with great concern for the direction of our country. I believe that every individual has a right to be free from government intrusion into their lives and the right to their private affairs. I believe that we each have a stake in our own preservation of liberty and the time has come to exercise it.

There is now a pair of Bills before parliament that will open a Pandora’s Box of repercussions for all Canadians. Bill C46 and C47 will allow warrantless surveillance, by request of police and CSIS (Central Intelligence), to gather “any information in the service provider’s possession or control”, In particular, electronic communications including Email and internet activity.

The argument that is being presented by the government is that these powers will greater assist the police services and CSIS to pursue criminal activity and that currently they are being prevented in doing so. This remains to be seen, however what it will do is open the door for wide spread abuse, as recent examples in the United States have come to show. Also, it unmistakably displays a troubling trend; growing government power into our lives, which is not required or needed. What becomes the slippery slope is this: If certain criminal activity warrants this intrusion than why not all criminal activity or even political views that are suspect or disagree with the government’s stance in these particular issues and on others. I implore you to set aside any apathy you may have and to see the great danger to individual liberty. These powers threaten to diminish our ability to remain secure in our person and our effects.

“… Pursuing information without a warrant is exactly what the latest proposed legislation allows. The new act will require service providers to install capabilities that would allow police to intercept information being transmitted, as well as giving them access to personal data.” The Montreal Gazette.

Make your voice heard immediately, contact your Member of Parliament and tell them you do not wish to have this power granted on your behalf to any police agency or Central Intelligence Service…

And always remember: When you trade your liberties for security, you will lose both. It isn’t a question of if these kinds of powers will be abused, only a matter of when.

Your liberty is at stake, the time is now…contact your Parliamentary Representative.

Read the bills here…

Bill 46
Bill 47

And a pretty good break down here…

Yours truly,

Awake

… every problem looks like a reason to regulate.

During last year’s election I commented on the Socialist credentials of all the parties.  Indeed the only substantive difference seemed to be that one wanted to break up the country, on purpose.

Of course, in order to save our economy from problems caused by the distortions of fiat money and fractional reserve banking (the favourite twins of big government), our “leaders” are blaming capitalism, pushing more regulation, and proping up failed businesses (GM and Chrysler and now the forestry industry).  (Oh, lets not forget the “accommodations” made to the banksters themselves!)

While not intentional, I am glad that I used the broad brush “Socialist” when describing our leaders.  At the time, I believe I was thinking of a Socialist as a “softer” Communist … silly me!  There is a reason the “Socialist” title is such a broad brush: the other kind of Socialist, what some once called “National Socialist”.

OK.  Calm down.  Yes, I did just associate our leaders with Fascism, but probably not the fascism you’re thinking about.  21st century Fascism has been “improved”, and we can easily miss it if we use the horrors of Third Reich as the tell-tale signs of a fascist regime.  But, consider that:

Fascism is much defined by what it opposes, what scholars call the fascist negations - its opposition to individualism, rationalism, liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, and communism.^[11][12]

And look at how our leaders oppose everything a fascist should:

• Just review this blog, and others (LRC, C4L, LvMI) to see the strong opposition to individualism and capitalism (which are very much related) by our modern States.
• Soviet-style communism, what fascism grew to oppose, now exists only in North Korea, and has clearly been pushed to the fringe in our society.
• For a long time leaders in our democracy have sacrificed rationalism on the alter of political expediency.
• Liberalism and conservatism are what we pretend marks a difference between our leaders.  With those “differences” fixed firmly in our minds, we can be proud of our democracy and our freedoms, while whichever leaders we chose expand our government and “regulate” our freedoms.

Based on the fascist negations, we are very much living in a fascist country, under fascist leaders.

But back to the point about the false blame being put on capitalism, the new regulations, threatened and promised, and government control of businesses.  This is Mussolini’s dream of “the corporate state”, alive and well, in Canada.