End the War on Freedom - Politics

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:28:23 +0000

James Delingpole at Telegraph Blogs - "hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet." If this stuff is for real, the whole human-induced global warming house of cards is about to collapse.

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The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.

Beyond Security Theater

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:06:19 +0000

Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram - excellent analysis of the difference between real security and the security theater at airports and office buildings. But he doesn't mention one of the best security mechanisms, armed and trained civilians.

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Security theater refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security. An example: the photo ID checks that have sprung up in office buildings. No-one has ever explained why verifying that someone has a photo ID provides any actual security, but it looks like security to have a uniformed guard-for-hire looking at ID cards. Airport-security examples include the National Guard troops stationed at US airports in the months after 9/11 -- their guns had no bullets. The US colour-coded system of threat levels, the pervasive harassment of photographers, and the metal detectors that are increasingly common in hotels and office buildings since the Mumbai terrorist attacks, are additional examples.

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Unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible. Such measures include enhancing the intelligence-gathering abilities of the secret services, hiring cultural experts and Arabic translators, building bridges with Islamic communities both nationally and internationally, funding police capabilities -- both investigative arms to prevent terrorist attacks, and emergency communications systems for after attacks occur -- and arresting terrorist plotters without media fanfare. They do not include expansive new police or spying laws. Our police don't need any new laws to deal with terrorism; rather, they need apolitical funding. These security measures don't make good television, and they don't help, come re-election time. But they work, addressing the reality of security instead of the feeling.

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Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we're doing the terrorists' job for them.

There is a scene...

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:00:20 +0000

GeekWithA.45 - good commentary on the productive use of anger.

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So, I repeat, what should we do with this energy?

First, we must become firm in ourselves, and clear about what is ours.

Our time, our minds, our bodies, our labor, the fruits of our labor, our freedoms, and our prerogatives are all inalienably OURS. The opposition will try to soften this belief and seduce us away, using well prepared, sophisticated means. They will lay many invalid claims against us, claims which we must reject. We must reject these claims, and we must do so without even seeking our opponents acceptance of this rejection, because it will never be acknowledged or granted. We must get used to the fact that our opponents will never agree with us, we will never be justified in their eyes. Our opponents will seek our passive and active sanction of their perpetrations, we must scrutinize our actions to detect the many ways we give them the greelight, and we must not give it to them. They would have us believe, through any means that they could arrange, that we have some duty of conscience to obey them. They are wrong, and it is up to us to recognize where that rubber meets the road, and to reject it when it happens. We must examine all the ways in which we grant them power over us, and withdraw that power, each and every time we find it. Asking our opponents for sanction, agreement, permission or justification grants them power they didn't earn or deserve.

“Why Don’t Students Like School?” Well, Duhhhh…

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:34:11 +0000

Peter Gray at Psychology Today - School is prison. Even worse than prison in many ways. [lew]

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But I think it is time that we say it out loud. School is prison.

If you think school is not prison, please explain the difference.

The only difference I can think of is that to get into prison you have to commit a crime, but they put you in school just because of your age. In other respects school and prison are the same. In both places you are stripped of your freedom and dignity. You are told exactly what you must do, and you are punished for failing to comply. Actually, in school you must spend more time doing exactly what you are told to do than is true in adult prisons, so in that sense school is worse than prison.

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As a society we could, perhaps, rationalize forcing children to go to school if we could prove that they need this particular kind of prison in order to gain the skills and knowledge necesary to become good citizens, to be happy in adulthood, and to get good jobs. Many people, perhaps most people, think this has been proven, because the educational establishment talks about it as if it has. But, in truth, it has not been proven at all.

In fact, for decades, families who have chosen to "unschool" their children, or to send them to the Sudbury Valley School (which is, essentially, an "unschool" school) have been proving the opposite (see, for example, my August 13, 2008, post). Children who are provided the tools for learning, including access to a wide range of other people from whom to learn, learn what they need to know--and much more--through their own self-directed play and exploration. There is no evidence at all that children who are sent to prison come out better than those who are provided the tools and allowed to use them freely. How, then, can we continue to rationalize sending children to prison?

"A.I.N.O.'s."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:01:53 +0000

Mike Vanderboegh - Brilliant! I'll use it.

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Sipsey Street reader Daniel J. Almond has created a new term in reaction to "Pelosi's Intolerable Act Passes the House.":

Americans In Name Only (AINO's) passed this unconstitutional, illegitimate, un-American, socialist bill.

Ideas In Action

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:52:50 +0000

Billy Beck - commentary on the Obamaoists socialism. The socialists have beaten down the serfs in Europe. It won't happen here. America is made of people who escaped that slavery long ago. We will not acquiesce. The streets will run with blood.

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It is important to understand that this can only and inevitably mean physical battle gear, right in front of your eyes, right here in America. The spirit of this place that was not born of the slave's obesience will require this government to bare its fangs. I still believe that. The ways in which and the singular souls from which Americans select their values are not yet so beaten to any alien molds so well that they will peaceably stand for the conformations that this government will eventually require and demand -- not "ask".

Always remember: at the bottom of every stack of government paperwork, there lies a loaded .45. Always remember that: government is force, and it is now moving on the original and last hope of freedom in all the time of all the world. It's doing that to scale and scope that would have seen the men who first set this concept (not "experiment") in action up in action again, for all the same reasons.

Air John Dillinger

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:45:01 +0000

Fred on Everything - Tears American Airlines, and US airlines in general, a new one.

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American Airlines is the only penitentiary I know that doesn’t just sit there stolidly on the ground. No. It has to fly around and inflict itself on the innocent everywhere. It’s every bit as dismal as Sing Sing, though, combining the elegance of a wrestler’s armpit with the curiosity of having the thieves on the outside, at corporate, and the prison matrons on the inside. I’d rather fly in a Dempster Dumpster piloted by a drunk, since dumpsters usually leave on time and are not owned by pickpockets.

It’s the world’s worst airline. And I’ve flown Aeroflot during the days of the Soviet Union. American has the morals of a Wall Street gangster.

September 11th as Architectural Reform

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:35:40 +0000

The Whited Sepulchre - a fisking of the email the Obama administration sent out shortly after the House passed Obamacare last night. I'm on their email list, too. I got this message.

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This evening, at 11:15 p.m., the House of Representatives voted to pass their health insurance reform bill. Despite countless attempts over nearly a century, no chamber of Congress has ever before passed comprehensive health reform. This is history.

Where to begin, where to begin..... Let's start with the way we use the word "reform". If you destroy something, are you reforming it? Were the 9-11 attacks "Architectural Reform"? In 1941, did the Japanese Air Force carry out a policy of "Naval Reform" at Pearl Harbor? Did Jack The Ripper carry out a policy of Prostitute Reform? Yes, this is history.

Pokerface: Peace or War

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:21:18 +0000

Six years after their previous album, "Made in America", Pokerface has released a new one. Peace or War contains 13 new tracks, 61 1/2 minutes of protest rock. Two of them are available for sampling, as MP3. You can order the CD here, for $20, shipped. Or order the MP3 version, for download, here, for $10. Listening to the MP3 version as I type this. CD on order. In case you forgot, I'm a big fan. And this is one fine album.

No More Twinkies for Obama

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:42:58 +0000

I have been running TwinkiesForObama.com since November 6, 2008. In that time, there have been 1891 presses on the "I Sent One" button, hopefully representing something close to that number of actual Twinkies sent to Obama, and over 20 thousand visits to the site. The domain expires tomorrow. I'm going to let it go. No longer worth the money or time it takes me to keep it running. I'll keep it up at twinkiesforobama.nfshost.com, in case I decide to repurpose it for another similar effort in the future.

The real climate change catastrophe

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:13:54 +0000

Christopher Booker at The Telegraph - Mr. Booker introduces his book, The Real Global Warming Disaster (Amazon), in which he tracks the history of the hoax of human-induced global warming. Not yet released in the US (that Amazon link), but you can order it from the UK via the "2 new from $19.77" link on the Amazon page, or directly form the publisher, Telegraph Books.

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Next Thursday marks the first anniversary of one of the most remarkable events ever to take place in the House of Commons. For six hours MPs debated what was far and away the most expensive piece of legislation ever put before Parliament.

The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition.

Even the Government had to concede that the expense of doing this – which it now admits will cost us £18 billion a year for the next 40 years – would be twice the value of its supposed benefits. Yet, astonishingly, although dozens of MPs queued up to speak in favour of the Bill, only two dared to question the need for it. It passed by 463 votes to just three.

One who voted against it was Peter Lilley who, just before the vote was taken, drew the Speaker’s attention to the fact that, outside the Palace of Westminster, snow was falling, the first October snow recorded in London for 74 years. As I observed at the time: “Who says that God hasn’t got a sense of humour?”

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Thanks to misreading the significance of a brief period of rising temperatures at the end of the 20th century, the Western world (but not India or China) is now contemplating measures that add up to the most expensive economic suicide note ever written.

Non-Aggression Principle and Vice: Where's The Crime?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:04:01 +0000

Russell D. Longcore at The Libertarian Enterprise - why vice is not crime. Some things governments do routinely that are crimes.

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Punishing crime is meant to guarantee to every person the fullest liberty he can realize that is also consistent with the full liberty of others. Government should exist only to protect the liberty of the individual, and protect his life and property from force and fraud. An individual must be free in the "pursuit of happiness," even to practice vices that others detest. An individual must be free to use his own judgment, his own body and his own property without restriction so far as the use does not interfere with another individual's quiet enjoyment of his own person and property.

Everyone wants to be protected against violations from other men. But no one wants to be "protected" from himself, since someone else is determining what "protection" is.

It's Just Not Fair!

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:53:53 +0000

L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - when simple new inventions make big, complicated, old technology obsolete, it's just not fair. "Good," says Neil.

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For long years afterward, Henry VIII, who used archers to good effect, himself, had to put up with exactly the same whining: the French and other aristocrats complained bitterly about this invention, the Welsh longbow, that nullified a lifetime of training with animals and equipment in which they had invested fortunes, and which could now be defeated by mere farmers using couple of sticks and a piece of string.

"It's just not fair!"

Do what they would, the age of armored knights was over, and that was a very, very good thing. It set up the psychology under which our ancestors, equipped with another revolutionary weapon, the flintlock Pennsylvania or Kentucky rifle, cast off the rule of kings altogether. Most Americans today don't appreciate what was really revolutionary about that rifle: compared with firearms that had preceded it, it was so simple in design and cheap to manufacture, every family could own one.

Politicians and bureaucrats still haven't gotten over it.

Physicist Howard Hayden's one-letter disproof of global warming claims

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:39:14 +0000

Stephan Kinsella at The Mises Economics Blog - short intro and reprint of a letter that a Professor Emeritus of Physics at UConn wrote to the EPA. Why the science is most assuredly NOT settled on CO2 and climate, and why there's no such thing as a "tipping point" to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

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It has been often said that the "science is settled" on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.

We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

Flawed climate data

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:07:36 +0000

Ross McKitrick at Financial Post - I had been convinced that the earth really was warming, just that we humans didn't have much, if anything, to do with it. This article challenges the former. More evidence that the whole global warming fairy tale was a huge lie from start to finish. Those hockey stick graphs? Fabrications.

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I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.

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Ross McKitrick is a professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph, and coauthor of Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming.