Pat Condell on Geert Wilders

If You Have the Stomach...

...Watch this 10 minute video apparently shot by a muslim participant in a riot/demonstration in London. It would appear to be an indication of the European will to resist the overrunning of Western culture by islamic thugs now that their police force as well as the citizenry has been disarmed. Similar "demonstrations" now occur in Malmö, Sweden . This is the enemy whose name we dare not speak. Something to think about when the Marxist Messiah has "assault" weapons banned/collected.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

BOHICA (bend over, here it comes again)

No, gentle reader the above graphic (courtesy of Reuters and the Daily Mail) is neither a clip from a Hollywood set of an historical production or a time traveler's view of Roman legionaries arrayed to defend a provincial prefecture headquarters. In spite of their appearance, the gentlemen positioned behind that array of scuta wearing a variation of the imperial Roman helmet these are Icelandic police officers defending government offices from irate Icelanders protesting the disappearance of their savings from banks as a result of the ongoing financial/economic crisis. The Icelandic government is thus far the first political casualty of the currently unraveling fiat money debacle although arguably the US Republican party could lay claim to the distinction.

Although the evaporation of global wealth since the beginning of the meltdown in 2008 is triggering political upheaval, it pales with the economic contraction advocated by the new and emerging warmista religion (note that the EIA projections are a best case i.e. rosy scenario presented BEFORE the onset of the current recession/depression).

As is invariably the case, the collectivists in the media and the government hasten to construct the myth that this, like the depression of 1930 1941 is attributable to a failure of the free market system when in fact no such thing as a "free market" has obtained in the US since at least 1895. As a corollary to the acceptance of this myth, the collectivists insist that an increased application of the causes of the difficulties such as loose monetary and credit policies, regulation and confiscatory taxes are sure to cure the ailment. This is political and economic quackery foisted on the ignorant masses for the purpose of the politicians' retaining and accreting power in the short term.

Through the relentless propagandization of the population as well as the enactment of legal tender legislation, conventional "wisdom" has it that bank notes and their electronic variations are "wealth". That we have come to acquiesce in the concept that government manipulation of digits on scraps of paper is "wealth" surely qualifies as an example of a scam that rivals that of the great religions. In this respect we are poised to proceed down the path which the people of Zimbabwe have been led by that Pied Piper Robert Mugabe.

If any of you gentle folk doubt the possibility of such a pass, I would advise that you carefully examine the wording printed on any bank note which you may be fortunate enough to have in your purse/wallet. A bank note is nothing but a "promise" made by a government controlled bank. This also applies to the metal tokens struck and circulated by the government mints which are debased far beyond that which would have resulted in the execution of a coinsmith under even the most corrupt Roman emperor.

"Fair and Balanced" Reporting?

As is usual during any instance of Israel responding to the acts of war against its citizens, the world's media present us with edited, scripted and often faked scenes of carnage and suffering by children and "innocent" Arab civilians. One would conclude from viewing the daily "outrages" committed in Gaza since 27 December that the Arab population of the terrorist enclave is on the verge of annihilation such is the one sided presentation of propaganda news served up by Arab stringers hired by AP and Reuters.

Apparently the Israelis have become fed up with the suppression of their side of the conflict and put up a web site in an attempt to air their version. The site contains at the time of this posting over 70 videos produced by the Israel Defense Force but is unlikely to influence a world public opinion predisposed by years of pro Arab propaganda to perceive any such action as unjustified.

The question remains as to how long YouTube will keep the videos available over the shrill protests of Arab and Islamic groups.



ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Quackery Is alive and well in 2009!

Many physicians summoned to treat a serious illness in 1796 would prescribe "bleeding" the patient to "remove the evil toxins" causing the patient's symptoms. If the first physician failed to affect a cure he would be dismissed and another practitioner would be summoned who would generally initiate another round of "bleeding". If miraculously, a patient survived these treatments and recovered in spite of the induced anaemia it was generally agreed that the "treatment" was a success. George Washington would appear to be a less than successful example of the efficacy of the practice of bloodletting. Indeed, in light of the knowledge gained in medical treatment since the close of the 18th century, the practice of bloodletting, if prescribed today would rightfully be categorized as "quackery".

Let us fast forward to 21st century quackery which passes for conventional wisdom concerning recent financial developments as they presently obtain with regard to the present less than ideal economic climate. Most credible explanations of the current pass attribute it to a recurring business cycle which periodically purges the system of inefficient and non competitive enterprises and reassigns resources to more efficient uses. The rub of course comes in when the political class sees this process as a threat to their rice bowl and moves to "remedy" it. To be brief, a routine economic adjustment arguably triggered by a political policy of "easy money" as pursued by the central bank for a generation is to be "rectified" by massive injections of more of same.

The Inevitable Consequences!:


Based strictly on the official estimates of the 2009 deficit, any economist not on drugs must conclude that, in the coming months and years …

* The federal government will have to borrow more money than at any time in history …

* To raise that money, it will have to shove aside individuals, businesses, local governments and virtually all other borrowers, scooping up most of the funds available in the already-tight credit markets …

* By crowding out other borrowers, it will sabotage its own efforts now underway to restore private credit markets …

* It will put great upward pressure on interest rates — and ironically …

* It could bring on a new, more virulent debt crisis that deepens and prolongs the economic decline.

Take a Look At the Assumptions of the governments own Congressional Budget Office!

Beyond the traditional budgetary smoke and mirrors, here are just some of the holes in their estimates:

1. The CBO implicitly assumes that the debt crisis is largely behind us — no more big bank failures, no more GMs or Chryslers, no more international debt defaults and no Wall Street meltdown. But the very size of its own deficit projection — reaching 10% of GDP — makes that assumption highly questionable.

2. The CBO assumes that federal revenues will remain relatively stable at 17.6% of GDP, only slightly below the 18.3% historical average. That means there can be no depression, no unemployment disaster, no tsunami of corporate red ink and no plunge in federal tax revenues.

“Just make believe those events can never happen!” goes the rationale.

What about the government data showing that the unemployment disaster is already here? “Largely ignore that, too,” seems to be the underlying theme.

3. The CBO assumes that the economy will recover after 2009, and the government will get most of its bailout money back. For the TARP program, for example, the assumption is that the cost will be only 25% of the total amount loaned or invested. The remaining 75%, it figures, will be paid or earned back.

Any sentient and sane observer would determine that more injections of easy money (bailouts) to rescue failed and inefficient business and financial enterprises under such conditions is counterproductive bordering on the suicidal. Not so our political class who sees the inevitable adjustment as a short term threat to its continued ability to enjoy the perquisites of power. Couple this situation with the collectivist activists who see the situation as ripe to advance their green, regulatory and redistributionist agenda and we have what amounts to the "perfect storm" for an attack on our liberties and wallets. We are indeed in store for "interesting times". Move over Zimbabwe!

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

Blitzkreig?

The cacophony we have been subjected to by the leftist media since the opening of Israel's operation Cast Lead which began local time 11:30 a.m., 27 December 2008 is nothing if not predictable.

Between 1 January 2008 and 27 December 2008 over 3000 rockets were launched at Israel by HAMAS from Gaza. During the same period more than 1300 mortar rounds were also launched. These attacks resulted in 8 Israeli deaths as well as considerable damage to property and infrastructure. The "minimal" damage to Israel caused by these attacks is only due to the lack of HAMAS' capability of inflicting greater harm to citizens of the "Zionist Entity". Lest we forget, the chief objective of HAMAS is the extinguishing of the Israeli state and the murder of all jews and other infidels.

It is interesting to note the propensity of the leftist media and punditry to condemn Israel for actions to defend and protect its citizens from extermination by an avowed enemy while at the same time never countenancing such an attack on their own secure environment by an equally determined enemy.

In view of Mr. Scheer's statement:

While the Hamas rocket attacks are reprehensible, they are also an ineffectual challenge to Israel’s enormous security apparatus, and the severity of Israel’s response to them is counterproductive.

How long does Mr. Scheer believe any government can survive without taking action to protect its citizens from external aggression?

In addition to noting that "Israel's enormous security apparatus..." is meaningless unless engaged in defense of that nation, let us engage in an intellectual experiment: Suppose that a Mexican irredentist movement dedicated to the elimination of US sovereignty in California and the murder of all "gringos" were to come to power in the Mexican state of Baja California Norte. Suppose also that members of this movement began launching rockets and mortars from Tijuana into the populated areas of San Ysidro and San Diego in southern California causing casualties and property damage. Suppose further that over a period of more than 3 years the Mexican Federal government failed to control or eliminate these irredentist "militants". How long does one suppose that these leftist "journalists" and "pundits" such as Robert Scheer (a contributing editor to Nation Magazine and a "Nation Fellow") and "conservative" Patrick Buchanan would be clamoring for forceful "action" to end the terrorism? In the case of Mr. Scheer, I suspect, never: but as for Mr. Buchanan who characterizes Israeli actions as a "blitzkrieg" it would probably be measured in hours.

Please remember dear reader that HAMAS, since its inception in 1987 has been dedicated to not only the elimination of the Israeli state, but the murder of ALL "infidels". This includes YOU, Joe sixpack as well as the chablis and brie set.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

Moral Equivalence

With the predictability of a daily sunrise the bulk if the world's media outlets continue to trumpet the immorality of Israeli military operations in the Gaza strip citing the horrific suffering of an "innocent" civilian population. These assertions bear closer scrutiny.

RESIDENTS at certain addresses in the Gaza Strip have been receiving unusual phone calls since the Israeli air assault began on Saturday -- a request that they and their families leave their homes as soon as possible for their own safety.

More unusual than the recorded message is the Arabic-speaking caller, who identifies himself as being from the Israeli defence forces.

Dipping into their bag of tricks for the updated Gaza telephone numbers, Israel's intelligence services are warning Palestinian civilians in Gaza living close to Hamas facilities that they may be hurt unless they distance themselves from those targets.

In some cases, the warning comes not by telephone but from leaflets dropped from aircraft on selected districts [or via text messages to cell phones].

Such warnings clearly eliminate the element of surprise, but for Israel it is of cardinal importance to minimise civilian casualties, and not just for humanitarian reasons.

Contrast these data with the scene observed in the above video. Clearly, these are not isolated events. They are however, unlikely to dissuade many who are predisposed to condemn Israel for disregarding the plight of the "innocent Arab population" a majority of which incidentally voted for candidates affiliated with HAMAS, a terrorist organization whose charter explicitly commits it to the murder of all Jews:

Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant states the following: "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

So long as the myth prevails that a foe who is committed to your death can be negotiated with, the bloodletting will recur with boring predictability.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

Snake Oil Salesmen

A few decades ago Ponzi schemes were all the rage. Chain letters and multi level marketing "business models" were common, every day scams victimizing unwary members of the population. The chain letter and pyramid cons for the most part involved only minimal sums of cash and one or two times being suckered usually sufficed to dissuade those with IQs above room temperature from further cash hemorrhages. Leave it to the government however to get in on the action big time and use its monopoly on the use of force to ramp up the boodle. Any of you gentle readers residing in the US not participating in the present "Social Security" Ponzi scheme program are doubtless either living the jungle rain forest life described by Thomas Hobbes: "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" or more likely, in hiding.

Gary North posits an interesting concept relative to the parallels between the equity markets as they have operated during the last few decades and traditional Ponzi schemes:

Every system of investing that does not rely on the actual increase in productivity of the businesses being invested in to pay off all debts, whether bonds, certificates of deposit, or retirement dreams of long-term holders of the company's stock, is a Ponzi scheme. It can be a government Ponzi scheme, such as Social Security or Medicare. It can be a Ponzi scheme by a state or local government, which promises enormous retirement benefits to state employees. It can also be a no-load mutual stock index fund. Ponzi schemes all have the same thing in common: future productivity will not repay the investors with sufficient money of constant or increasing purchasing power for the investors to achieve their goals. The investors have retirement goals which will be impossible to achieve by means of the investment strategies recommended by the experts. Investors believe the nonsense, and apparently their advisers believe it, too. Politicians get elected in terms of this nonsense. But it is nonetheless nonsense.

North cites the myth swallowed hook line and sinker by the progressive Keynesian economists and consequently most of our current political rulers leaders succinctly thus:

To tell American consumers that they can improve the productivity of the economy merely by going out and spending money is... [Keynesian] nonsense. The only way to increase the productivity of the economy is through thrift. The money generated by this thrift must then be invested wisely, in terms of future conditions, so that the company or fund making the investment can reap a profit. If [the] economy cannot do this through increased productivity, it will eventually find itself incapable of raising additional capital. Without additional capital, there can be no increase in productivity

If society simply spends and neglects to save, there are no savings to be invested in increasing productivity; and borrowing to engage in the spending (which is the current economic policy of governments) can only compound the problem.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was initially a recession exacerbated and lengthened by the very governmental actions that today are touted as the cure. Recessions are the cure for the conditions caused by the inefficient, misallocation of capital. We are about to suffer the consequences of government's attempts to avoid the political short term consequences of a normal correction. It will be interesting to hear the future recriminations offered up by the political class to escape the consequences of these follies.

Mission Creep

A reasonable definition of insanity is the process of repeating an action multiple times and expecting (hoping for?) different outcomes. History reveals that mankind has over the last several millennia improved on his capabilities to wreak havoc on his enemies through improved technologies in warfare. This linear and exponential advance in technology has historically resulted in various attempts to arrest the horrors associated with warfare by various means.

In one of the first such efforts, the crossbow was banned by Pope Innocent II in 1139 for use against "christian" enemies as being a weapon "...hated by God". It was apparently acceptable to use the device against adversaries of the non-christian persuasion.
For the most part such bans on arms have gone ignored or un-enforced except against ordinary subjects and serfs by their feudal or political "leaders".

Enter the 20th century and the unpleasantness of 1914 1918 "to make the world safe for democracy". By 1914, technology had outpaced military tactics to the extent that waves of infantrymen were ordered by slow to learn tacticians into frontal assaults on entrenched defenders equipped with Hiram Maxim's machine guns, not to mention poison gas and long range artillery. These horrors were sufficient to inspire the formation of the League of Nations by the "well meaning" victors for the purpose of avoiding the future need of such efforts to make the world safe for democracy.

A glance at recent history reveals how well the League worked out in such localities as Manchuria, Ethiopia, Spain, the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia and which resulted in a resumption of the hostilities placed on temporary hold in November of 1918. Since the League of Nations was such a success in promoting "peace through collective security" (irony alert) the new and improved version was launched in August of 1945 and designated the United Nations. Of course the victors of the second act of the world conflict were not about to allow pipsqueak former colonial nations to wield real power, thus the division of the new body into the General Assembly and the Security Council. It was thought that merely allowing third world powers the opportunity to engage in what amounted to a debating club would suffice to forestall any pent up urges they might have regarding the wielding of real power. WRONG! The "great powers" failed to perceive the second law of bureaucracies known as "mission creep" which is "the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes". Examples of this phenomenon include the March of Dimes and the "humanitarian" intervention in Somalia 1992. The most egregious example of "mission creep" however is the juggernaut known as the United Nations .

It is doubtful that the founders of the UN in 1945 foresaw the multiplicity of agencies that would be emerging under the aegis of their creation such as:

Food and Agriculture Organization
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network
United Nations International Computing Centre
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
United Nations International Children's Fund
Water and Sanitation Division of UNICEF
United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)
United Nations Development Programme
United Nations Environment Program
United Nations International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology
United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs
United Nations Volunteers
World Health Organization (WWW)

The notorious Goebbelesque pronouncements (“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the ... consequences of the lie..." ) of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which have been issuing forth for 20+ years under the auspices of the UN Environment Program have gained substantial traction in the service of unlimited governmental power. It is understandable that a substantial portion of politicians have subscribed to this nonsense as it increases their power and insures their perquisites. There is a possiblity however, that a turning point has been reached. Data collected over the past decade fails to validate the predictions of the computer models that the warmistas have utilized. This has caused them to not only spin the reasons for their error but in other instances to actually fabricate misleading data.

Why is it that the term "strangle in the cradle" only comes to mind in retrospect? In any event, there may be an up side to the present economic downturn; the politicians may shrink from burdening us with "Son of Kyoto". At least one can "hope".

Let's Call it What it IS...

...an establishment of religion.



The soon to be emperor resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in New Rome Washington DC has just appointed as Pontiff Science Advisor John Holdren, a member of the College of Cardinals of the Warmista sect of the Green Religion Harvard faculty of environmental policy. By making this appointment according to the New York Times, the Marxist Messiah "...Pledges Allegiance to Science". This humble writer begs to differ.

The warmista sect bases its dogmas exclusively on the projections generated by computer models and asserts that this is "science". Computer modeling is by no means science. The generation of projections by computer modeling while useful for limited applications does not qualify as science:

A simple single word definition of science is the ability to predict. It is not used by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), yet they present their work as scientific predictions. Media and the public generally believe the IPCC is making predictions and that is clearly the assumption for government policies. Sadly, members of the IPCC do nothing to dissuade the public from that view. All previous “projections” were wrong. The most recent example is the period from 2000 to 2008. IPCC predicted warming but temperatures went down while CO2 increased. Finally, the IPCC AR4 itself explains why IPCC model projections fail.

“Models continue to have significant limitations, such as in their representation of clouds, which lead to uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change.” (AR4, Chapter 8. p.600)

It is hard to imagine a better example of Beadle’s axiom paraphrased as follows, “Half the work done by the IPCC is to make things appear what they are not.”

The warmistas dismiss the global cooling that has been objectively measured during the last decade as a "mere interruption due to la niña of the long term warming trend caused by human CO2 emissions". If this is the case, why have not the computer models predicted it since they are "reliable enough" to provide the basis for extreme government regulatory actions? Another glaring flaw common to virtually all of the computer models relied upon by the warmistas is the total absence of any factoring in of solar output variations as they have impacted previous changes in climate.

For these reasons as well as others I would assert that congressional confirmation of Professor Holdren's appointment as "Science Advisor" is a violation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment to Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...". Religion is defined as: "3. A set of [unprovable] beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader [i.e. Al Gore]" who was consulted prior to the Holdren appointment.

Musings From Beyond the Crab Nebula...

...Or; how we spent our Saturday morning.

We were up bright and early (07:45 will pass for such on a December weekend at Lacedaemon) and out for a chilly drive to the "Largest gun show in the South" which should more precisely be characterized as an 80,000 square foot candy store for us "good ol' boys". This would include a native California political refugee and Mrs. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ who is a Swedish national. The facility did not officially open until 09:00 hrs. and when we arrived at 09:10 hrs. the 50 acre parking lot was about 20% full (lots of pickups and SUVs) and the queue to enter the building which included an ethnic representation of the local population including a few wearing Obama for president regalia extended about 200 feet but was moving steadily.


Early in the show

Once inside the building, a tentative survey of some of the 2000 display tables whose exhibitors were already doing a somewhat brisk business revealed that mere possession of approximately 75% of the items being openly exchanged here could get the ordinary otherwise law abiding California citizen arrested and convicted of a felony in most cases and at the very least a plea bargain down to a serious misdemeanor.

Lots of Kalifornia Kontraband

The paradox here is puzzling indeed. A comparison of the firearm related crime rate between California and Georgia would indicate that on a per capita basis there is considerably less blood flowing in the streets of Georgia than in California . This is in spite of the legal presence of "assault weapons", high capacity ammunition magazines, flash hiders, bayonet lugs and pistol grips on semi automatic rifles and shotguns as well as private owners of firearms enjoying the right to give, sell or trade their property to relatives, neighbors or, allah forfend, willing strangers, without the permission and payment of fees to the state.

By 11:00 hrs. the crowd was shoulder to shoulder

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

The REAL Threat to Western Society: Attack of the Field Mouse

In an interview dated 1 December 2008 in the German publication Frankfurter Allgemeine, the erstwhile Swedish "Weapons inspector" for the UN, Hans Blix stated the following as translated by TransAtlantic Intelligencer:

Q. Many Arab countries want to obtain atomic energy. Are you worried about this?

A. Everything involves risks, including atomic energy. But in the long run I'm more worried about global warming than about weapons of mass destruction.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine interviewer appeared to mistakenly include Iran in the category of "Arab" country.

As many Arab and Muslim majority countries are committed to the violent (if necessary) destruction of Israel as well as the US, this response by Mr. Blix is an interesting (but not surprising) position to be extolled by a European UN bureaucrat. The EU, having committed itself to the exponential accretion of power to its unelected bureaucracy by signing on to the warmista agenda (which thankfully is being increasingly questioned by the scientific community) this comes as no surprise.

This writer would posit that there is developing an even greater threat to our culture than "global warming" and that is the "Attack of the Field Mouse". We could probably get the politicians and politicised scientists to accept this threat if they can be convinced a governmental program to address it will increase their emoluments and perquisites.

In a previous posting I misquoted (since corrected) Mr. George Monbiot attributing to him a statement in his book "Heat" a remark which was in fact written by a blogger. For that reason I link to a posting on Mr. Monbiot's blog concerning the total "decarbonization" of the global economy. I will leave it to you dear reader to evaluate the charicterization of Mr Monbiot as "moonbat".

Another One Bites the Dust?

There are several emerging factors that lead this blogger to conclude that the long visible light at the end of the global warming cum climate change hoax tunnel is growing larger and it is obviously not the oncoming train of catastrophic sea level rise.

1. Your humble scribbler was required to fire up the wood stove 10 full days earlier than last year. Unscientific you say? No more so than the female journalist in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution reporting on recent heavy rains along the Gulf coast using the statement: "These flood producing heavy rains from Texas to Tallahassee simply scream of global warming".

2. The shrillness of the warmista religionists in hurling invective at any and all of the increasing number of climate and geological scientists who posit that no global cataclysm is immanent as a result of climate change. The following is a partial list of the epithets used to describe the growing number of so called "deniers": extremist denier, moron, rank amateur, stupid, pimp, liar, pseudo scientists, malpractitioners, right wing, bastards etc.

3. The calls to hush and censor scientists and others who have, on the basis of emperical data recanted their belief that human activity has had any significant negative impact on global climate change as evidenced by Joseph Romm in Climate Progress who states the following: "Modern journalists from traditional media have for years made the mistake of balancing stories on the reality [?] of accelerating human-caused global warming with a quote or two from deniers, though some are starting to do that less."
On his blog "Gristmill", David Roberts makes the following statement: "...we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg."

4. And NOW, this just in (ht/¡No Pasarán!):

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced calls from fellow conservatives Sunday to fight to water down a European Union climate pact until the recession-wracked economy is moving again.

Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he had written to Merkel calling on her to back away from EU climate protection goals to be approved next month for a time.

Added bonus:

German Economy Minister Michael Glos, also of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, agreed that Germany could ill-afford to make a priority of climate protection with the economy hobbled by the global financial crisis.

"It is not the time to burden the economy with excessive environmental targets," he said.

Perhaps we can add the warmista religion to the list of doctrines that have vanished by being "overtaken by events"?

Desde Cuba (From Cuba in the Winter)

The following is translated from a the posting 19 November 2008 of a Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez. She posts from Havana and must surreptitiously view her blog from a tourist hotel which excludes Cuban citizens who are not Communist Party apparatchiks. It seems not much has changed since ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ visited that hapless communist nation some years ago. See here, here and here.

The sky is not always that precious blue of the tourist postcards. Thank goodness, because I can not imagine a year with scorching sun without the pause of these weeks that bring cold fronts. Since Monday a cloud has come, bringing London to Havana and severe flooding in the east of the country. The streets are remarkably empty at night because the cold scares away the usual denizens of the parks and sidewalks. Boarding a crowded bus is no longer the fastest way to acquire odor in one’s armpits, rather the entrance to a warm and friendly space. With the low temperatures, humor and tolerance improve; for the old, their bones ache and hot chocolate becomes a recurring hallucination. December is so close that it’s not worth starting anything, say those who have postponed projects throughout the year. The time to spend more is coming, presaging that pockets will be especially empty this Christmas. However, the most sensitive topic is that of coats and blankets, the little protection from the damp cold that enters through the gaps in the windows.

I see people on the street with sweaters and thick, padded synthetic coats, but none of these garments could be purchased with the wages they earn from their work. One has a leather coat sent to him by a sister who lives in New York and the striped one was given to the girl as a gift from a tourist passing through the city. A young boy has a waterproof raincoat inherited from his brother, who in turn got it from an uncle who confiscates luggage at customs. The old woman crossing the street is careful of her wool socks, which she got from a neighbor in exchange for a blender. Only the guard at the hotel boasts a denim jacket, with shiny new buttons.

I like the winter and the affability it awakens in people, but I know that for many it’s the season of certain worries and shame. Of not being able to sleep on the park bench, where the rest of the year one gentleman with raggedy clothes has his only home. Of children mocked in school for wearing a coat purchased during the rationing of the 1980s. The cold emphasizes the differences between those who can close the door and those who don’t have a house with windows that shut. It highlights the contrast between those with a long-sleeved garment and those who wear two sweaters because they don’t have a coat. Everything depends on the thermometer and its not dropping another ten degrees, because the housing and clothes of the poor will not withstand a single snowflake.

To experience Cuba under the Communist regime is to view any society which is unfortunate enough to fall under the sway of the collectivists. Yoani is from time to time arrested and harassed by the Cuban police.

cross posted at: Eternity Road

They're Going to do it Again...

But this time it is likely to be worse!

I suspect that most readers of these postings are not old enough to have first hand recollections of the Great Depression and fewer still have a grasp of its causes and effects. In any event, it will be worth while for those with Mp3 and podcast capabilities to spend the required 15 minutes to listen to THIS.

I will guarantee that the above podcast will generate one of 3 responses:
1. Anger
2. Fear
3. Disbelief

For those whose reaction is #3: I sincerely hope you are correct and enjoy your delusion. Meanwhile, please steal, copy or plagiarize this posting.

Cost Effective Defense vs Government

During the 23 years this humble scribbler lived aboard and cruised his 34' sailboat LEONIDAS from San Francisco to Trinidad, he lost count of the instances various "authorities" boarded and searched his vessel for "contraband". Generally the contraband sought was drugs but often the authorities were searching for firearms. As a US flagged vessel, firearms are allowed on board but they must be surrendered for "safekeeping" when entering most foreign ports. This can become a hassle as occasionally the Port Captain will "misplace" the weapons and thus several hundreds of dollars worth are "lost" (no compensation was ever offered that we are aware of). We know of several cruising families that simply cleverly concealed their defensive armament on board in discrete hiding places and falsely declared that no weapons were in their possession. That is usually all well and good as third world corrupt officials are often less than competent in the art of searching.

That scenario had an unfortunate outcome in one instance we know of in the far out islands of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. It seems that some of the marine police were moonlighting as pirates and upon accosting a couple aboard their 36' sailboat anchored in a remote cove near Great Inagua island they demanded the ship's valuables at gunpoint. The skipper asked his wife to retrieve the cash (wink wink) from below decks. Instead, she shortly emerged and handed the skipper his .45 caliber pistol. The ensuing gunfight left 2 off duty marine police/pirates dead. The couple who knew what "justice" they would be accorded by the local gendarmery simply weighed anchor and departed for The Virgin Islands leaving the two pirates with emptied service revolvers adrift in their fishing skiff.

In many third world countries tourists and cruising sailors are routinely mugged and robbed while their means of self defense are securely in the custody of the local port captain. Such are the risks of world travel aboard one's own vessel.

These days we learn of other instances of piracy where the stakes are considerably higher. For example:

Writes Felix Moreno:

The piracy case in Somalia is a perfect example of victim disarmament at sea. Most merchant ships are forbidden by their countries' laws from having weapons on board (a ban which is enforced by rigorous inspections), which leaves a 20.000tn ship worth hundreds of million of dollars vulnerable to a pirate dinghy with a crew of five armed with AKs and RPGs worth a few hundred bucks. So do we allow owners to spend a few thousand dollars on weapons and private security on board? God forbid! No, much better to send a carrier group, or just nuke the high seas.

At present the war navies of India, Russia, Britain, the US, Malasya [sic] and a NATO taskforce are in the Gulf of Aden playing cat-and-mouse with a few Somali pirates. An EU fleet is on its way.

This seems to be the way our world is moving. Meanwhile, the US will continue to fund the United Nations efforts to disarm the victims.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Imagine That II

Now that the election is over there seems to be more than a few people doing postmortems on the reasons behind the outcome. One such effort is by John Ziegler and another is the Zogby polling firm. The results are rather interesting and appear to confirm several theories. Two of the theories are widespread media bias and voter ignorance.

Take a few minutes from your busy schedule and view this video.


This is pretty scary stuff.

h/t: Neal Boortz

Holding Back the Tide

The current government panic at the cascading disintegration of the global markets and the accompanying pressures forcing price deflation recalls the legend of King Canute who after unsuccessfully commanding the tides of the sea to recede stated: "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings. For there is none worthy of the name but God, whom heaven, earth and sea obey."

One wonders at the reasons for the desperate efforts of the US treasury and Federal Reserve Bank injecting mind numbing quantities of fiat "money" into the system in order to avoid price deflation. It is the same policy that was followed beginning in 1930 by the Hoover administration and continued by FDR's "New Deal". Those policies of protectionism (Smoot Hawley Tariff) and destroying agricultural products to prop up prices as well as raising taxes resulted in an ordinary and recurring recessionary event being prolonged into a decade long depression.

Apropos the present situation one need only ask: qui bono? Who benefits from price deflation (a decline in the market prices of goods and services)? Answer: consumers and savers whose savings will purchase more products. Conversely, who is damaged by deflation? Answer: Borrowers who must repay debts formerly contracted at elevated rates.

The greatest beneficiaries of inflation are borrowers who repay bonds and debts with devalued currency. Who are the greatest debtors in the history of civilization? If you answered "governments", go to the head of the class. That is the reason for the panic expansion of fiat currency by governments who have been financing their wars and Marxist social engineering with money borrowed or created out of thin air rather than raising the tax burden on the productive elements of society beyond the already confiscatory levels. I fear that in view of the falling prices of many commodities the Fed and Treasury will presently discover the futility of its policy; but the wreckage will not be a pleasant sight to behold.

Viva deflation!

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Is The "Fix" In?

The national debt of the US as of this date is over 10.5 Trillion dollars and has been increasing at the rate of just under 4 billion dollars per day. That is all about to change very soon as Washington issues bales of new treasury notes to fund the massive bailouts of the various banks, insurance companies, and industrial enterprises lining up at the door of "Bailout" Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson. Various estimates of the ultimate cost of filling the trough from which these failing parasites are about to sup range from a low of $3.6 Trillion to upwards of $5 trillion when the interest is computed.

This weekend, the worlds G-20 industrialized nations will be meeting in Washington to discuss addressing the planet's monetary/economic crisis (arguably caused by the insane creation of fiat money and junk credit by those same nations). The "fix" (yes gentle readers those are scare quotes) will likely be the devaluation of the world's currencies by "monetizing" most outstanding debt. In other words:

They cease all gold sales and instead [of confiscating it], raise the current official central bank price of gold from its booked value of $42.22 an ounce — to a price that monetizes a large enough portion of the world's outstanding debts.

That way, just like in 1933, the debts become a fraction of re-inflated asset prices (led higher by the gold price).

And this time, instead of staying with the dollar as a reserve currency, the G-20 issues three new monetary units of exchange, each with equal reserve status.

The three currencies will essentially be a new dollar, new euro, and a new pan-Asian currency. (The Chinese yuan may survive as a fourth currency, but it will be linked to a basket of the three new currencies.)

Under this nightmare(?) the new price of gold would range between $53,000 and $10,000 per ounce depending on the percentage of the debt to be monetized. One's first reaction to the possibility of such a scenario playing itself out is incredulity; but consider this: 1. The Constitution of the United States in Article I section 8 assigns the power to coin money to the Congress. The US currency has had NO connection to metal coinage since August of 1971. 2. Twenty years ago would we have foreseen that in 2008 a more or less admitted Marxist would be elected to the US presidency?

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Your Government at Work

In yesterday's posting I referenced the truism that "government can never do just one thing" citing the federal income tax legislation impact on social engineering. Now we learn that the governmental love affair with recycling is having some unforeseen consequences resulting from the current and projected economic downturn. Due to said downturn the demand for discarded material which many municipalities mandate that their citizens recycle is at a record low bordering on the non existent. Consequently, these materials are accumulating at collection depots and in some cases constituting a health hazard. Unless this condition (the market) experiences an early turnaround, the material will need to be disposed of in various landfills, a scenario that among others the governmental action was intended to terminate.

As regards so many governmental programs, recycling mandates are based on often faulty or at least debatable premises, to wit:
1.Natural resources are finite and mankind will inevitably exhaust them.
This premise ignores the development and discovery of substitutes and new technologies. For example, the "crisis" experienced in the 1850s over the depletion of whale oil for lighting purposes miraculously disappeared with the new technology associated with petroleum. The free market with its supply and demand cost adjustments is invariably a better mechanism than a government bureaucrat or a pointy headed academic with a political agenda for the determining the use of resources.
2. The continued use of paper and other wood products will result in the complete deforestation of the planet'
In fact, not only are trees a renewable resource, but tree farming has resulted in the existence of more trees now than existed in 1820.
3. The areas available for landfills are finite and we will eventually be buried by our garbage.

A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side. This doesn't seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America. The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists. The millennial landfill would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the range land now available for grazing in the continental United States. And if it still pains you to think of depriving posterity of that 35-mile square, remember that the loss will be only temporary. Eventually, like previous landfills, the mounds of trash will be covered with grass and become a minuscule addition to the nation's 150,000 square miles of parkland."

In any event, the various government entities will discover the truth in what Michael Munger, the Chair of Political Science at Duke University, wrote ,

"... if recycling is more expensive than using new materials, it can't possibly be efficient... There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource... or just garbage... If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource [absent a government subsidy]... But if you have to pay someone to take the item away... then the item is garbage."

We shall await with bated breath the actions taken by our rulers upon making this discovery. All the evidence points to substantial increases on the fees for garbage collection.

h/t: Fred Mangels
cross posted at: Eternity Road