US military unilaterally overturns Posse Comitatus.

“In essence, this policy change seeks to supersede Posse Comitatus,
the 1878 law which forbids the military from being involved in domestic
law enforcement “except in cases and under circumstances expressly
authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” Under the Insurrection Act of 1807,
the President may deploy armed forces domestically under extreme
circumstances but Congress has to review the action every 14 days.


Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973,
the President cannot commit troops to an armed conflict for a period
longer than 60 days without an authorization from Congress of the use of
military force or a declaration of war.


Under no circumstances in current US law is it legal for
the military to deploy itself domestically without authorization from
either the President, Congress or both.”
 It looks as if the U.S. military are actively expecting some sort of trouble in which authorization for the military’s use by the command-in-chief isn’t possible.  I wonder why they are anticipating that?  Especially when the organization most capable of arranging a situation where that authorization isn’t possible is the U.S. military.
The Ciceronian historical cycle anticipates the development of an aristocracy at this point.  It’s interesting to consider from what that aristocracy might develop, as the areas of corporate and military power appear to be the two aspects of society that are increasingly immune to government regulation.  If the Ciceronian model is still relevant, the aristocracy would likely develop out of that corporate-military intersection.

A whistle, blown

A certain corporation has been actively avoiding British taxes:

A FORMER Google executive has blown the whistle on a massive and “immoral” tax avoidance scheme that has “cheated” British taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of pounds over the past decade.

Barney Jones, 34, who worked for the internet search giant between 2002 and 2006, has lifted the lid on an elaborate structure which diverts British profits through Ireland to the Bermuda tax haven.

Although Google’s London sales staff would negotiate and sign contracts with British customers, and cash was paid into a UK bank account, deals were technically booked through its Dublin office to minimise its liabilities here. Jones, a devout Christian and father of four, is ready to hand over a cache of more than 100,000 emails and documents to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), detailing the “concocted scheme”. 

My father was sentenced for twelve years of prison for a similar
avoidance scheme that amounted to $2 million.  Granted, that was in the USA and not the UK, but I tend to doubt that Google only used this sort of scheme to divert British profits. I wonder how much prison
time the influential and politically connected Google executives will
see?  About as much as John Corzine saw for failing to return hundreds of millions of dollars on deposit with MF Global to its depositors, I expect. 

Some versions of this sort of structure are perfectly legal, of course.  If the sales staff had been in Dublin and the cash paid into Ireland, there wouldn’t be an issue; the business would be legitimately Irish.  But the more influential corporations become, the more they expect to be permitted to not have to bother with petty matters such as sovereign nations and national law when it doesn’t suit them to do so.

This should suffice to demonstrate that corporatism is manifestly not capitalism, and moreover, that it is intrinsically hostile to national interests.  Never forget that corporations are artificial creations of the State.

My favorite conspiracy ever

I can’t even begin to describe how much I love this conspiracy theory:

You know what they say about the early Middle Ages, don’t you? If you can remember them, you weren’t really there. However, if you could recall those times, was this simply because you had been making up the entire era as a state-enrolled forger? If so, this would be explicable by the Phantom Time Hypothesis (PTH), a chronological theory almost unheard of in its radicalism, and which has been propagating steadily through German academic circles since 1998.

Picture a mediæval-style ‘Man­hattan Project’ with scriptoria instead of hangars, and Gothic minuscule instead of maths. Holy Roman Emperor Otto III (980–1002) has engaged his theo­logians under the leadership of Gerbert d’Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) in a project that is among the most zealous and secretive of its kind since the facsimile houses of Alexandria were at their busiest. The gilding of narratives has many precedents in the writing of hist­ories, especially self-aggrandising ones. But the one described by the PTH takes this art of embellishment up a few more notches: more than two centuries worked up from scratch, then infiltrated into as many chronologies as possible. Only a Middle Gothic or a Byzantine fanatic could have taken it to such lengths. But it worked. And as the traces were destroyed, the histories reconfigured and rebound, no one was any the wiser. At least until Heribert Illig and his adherents apparently figured it out.

Illig’s theory is rooted in the introduct­ion of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. It had long been known that the old Julian calendar had a defect – the Julian year being roughly 11 minutes too long – and the new calendar was designed to correct this discrepancy, to the tune of making up for 10 days that gradually slipped during the years between AD 1 and AD 1582. But Illig alleged that the Julian calendar should have produced a discrepancy of not 10 but 13 days over the period in question, and concluded that roughly three centuries had been added to the calendar that had never existed. His response was to run with the notion of calendar “slack” and look for corroborat­ive evidence.

It’s even got a cool name: Phantom Time.

The scam collapses

It is becoming gradually clear, even to the True Believers in the Scientific Consensus, that the Global Warming Fairy isn’t arriving after all:

The Economist, which (despite a recent decline) remains probably the
best news magazine in the English language, now admits that (a) global
average temperature has been flat for 15 years even as CO2 levels have
been rising rapidly, (b) surface temperatures are at the lowest edge of
the range predicted by IPCC climate models, (c) on current trends, they
will soon fall clean outside and below the model predictions, (c)
estimates of climate sensitivity need revising downwards, and (d)
something, probably multiple things, is badly wrong with AGW climate
models.

Something is badly wrong with AGW climate models?  You don’t say.  It won’t be long before they’ll be similarly admitting that there is something badly wrong with the TENS models… or at least, they would if such models even existed.

Talk of “global warming” and even “climate change” has become so sparse these days that I actually had to dust off the post label.

Why “your” bank account isn’t yours

The difference between “depositor” and “unsecured creditor”, and the legal implications therein, is explained at Zerohedge:

The law has been in existence for hundreds of years and was established in England by the House of Lords in the case Foley v Hill in 1848.

When a customer deposits money with his banker, the relationship that arises is one of creditor and debtor, with the banker liable to repay the money deposited when demanded by the customer. Once money has been paid to the banker, it belongs to the banker and he is free to use the money for his own purpose.

I will now quote the relevant portion of the judgment of #3b4d81;”>the House of Lords handed down by Lord Cottenham, the Lord Chancellor. He stated thus:

“Money when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal… it is then the money of the banker, who is bound to return an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him when he is asked for it.

The money paid into the banker’s, is money known by the principal to be placed there for the purpose of being under the control of the banker; it is then the banker’s money; he is known to deal with it as his own; he makes what profit of it he can, which profit he retains himself,…

The money placed in the custody of the banker is, to all intent and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases; he is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it; he is not answerable TO THE PRINCIPAL IF HE PUTS IT INTO JEOPARDY, IF HE ENGAGES IN A HAZARDOUS SPECULATION; he is not bound to keep it or deal with it as the property of the principal, but he is of course answerable for the amount, because he has contracted, having received that money, to repay to the principal, when demanded, a sum equivalent to that paid into his hands.” (quoted in UK Law Essays,  #3b4d81;”>Relationship Between A Banker And Customer,That Of A Creditor/Debtor, emphasis added,)”

Holding that the relationship between a banker and his customer was one of debtor and creditor and not one of trusteeship, #3b4d81;”>Lord Brougham said:

“This trade of a banker is to receive money, and use it as if it were his own, he becoming debtor to the person who has lent or deposited with him the money to use as his own, and for which money he is accountable as a debtor. I cannot at all confound the situation of a banker with that of a trustee, and conclude that the banker is a debtor with a fiduciary character.”

In plain simple English – bankers cannot be prosecuted for breach of trust, because it owes no fiduciary duty to the depositor / customer, as he is deemed to be using his own money to speculate etc. There is absolutely no criminal liability.

Now, English law is not U.S. law, but being that this decision derives from the Common Law, it should be understood, given recent US court decisions, the same is true in the USA.

One step closer

The Treasury knew:

At the first Congressional hearing into the I.R.S. scandal, J. Russell
George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told
members of the House Ways and Means Committee that he informed the
Treasury’s general counsel of his investigation on June 4, and Deputy
Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly thereafter.”

Obama apologists have been quick to point out that there is no evidence that Obama knew anything about the politically driven IRS attacks on conservative groups and the media.

To which the veteran scandal observer can only reply: there is no evidence… yet.

Thus leading to the obvious next question: who did the Treasury officials tell?

Wish list

I don’t bother with tip jars or Amazon wish lists, but if you’re looking for ideas about what to buy me for Christmas, this will do nicely:

The PGF isn’t just a fancy scope on top of a rifle. All together, the PGF is made up of a firearm, a modified trigger mechanism with variable weighting, the computerized digital tracking scope, and hand-loaded match grade rounds (which you need to purchase from TrackingPoint). This is a little like selling both the razor and the razor blades, but the rounds must be manufactured to tight tolerances since precise guidance of a round to a target by the rifle’s computer requires that the round perform within known boundaries.

The image displayed on the scope isn’t a direct visual, but rather a video image taken through the scope’s objective lens. The Linux-powered scope produces a display that looks something like the heads-up display you’d see sitting in the cockpit of a fighter jet, showing the weapon’s compass orientation, cant, and incline. To shoot at something, you first “mark” it using a button near the trigger. Marking a target illuminates it with the tracking scope’s built-in laser, and the target gains a pip in the scope’s display. When a target is marked, the tracking scope takes into account the range of the target, the ambient temperature and humidity, the age of the barrel, and a whole boatload of other parameters. It quickly reorients the display so the crosshairs in the center accurately show where the round will go.

Image recognition routines keep the pip stuck to the marked target in the scope’s field of view, and at that point, you squeeze the trigger. This doesn’t fire the weapon; rather, the reticle goes from blue to red, and while keeping the trigger held down, you position the reticle over the marked target’s pip. As soon as they coincide, the rifle fires.

People occasionally accuse me of being envious of this or that.  But if I’m envious of something, I’ll admit it.  And yes, to be honest, I am totally envious of the guy who thought of software-corrected personal firearms.  Because it essentially defines awesome.  I mean, an 18-button mouse with a joystick, that’s cool.  But a Linux-powered rifle?  How do you top that, with a freaking Death Star?

Of course, being Linux-based, there will probably be annoying package update requests popping up right when you’re busy trying to shoot something.  Or someone.  On the plus side, you can probably play Battle for Wesnoth on it while you’re waiting for the target to present itself.

Post-Christian Ukistan

British post-Christianity is increasingly Muslim:

A new analysis of the 2011 census shows that a decade of mass immigration helped mask the scale of decline in Christian affiliation among the British-born population – while driving a dramatic increase in Islam, particularly among the young.

It suggests that only a minority of people will describe themselves as Christians within the next decade, for first time.

Meanwhile almost one in 10 under 25s in Britain is now a Muslim. The proportion of young people who describe themselves as even nominal Christians has dropped below half for the first time.

This is a bad thing, but for the UK, not for Christianity.  It is the cultural Christians who are on the decline. No religion that grew from eleven frightened men to over a billion adherents has anything to fear from the vicissitudes of history.  The idea that there would be a great apostasy is hardly a surprise to any premillennial Christian.

What is a surprise, however, is the speed with which the secular humanists are being pushed aside by the pagans.

Mailvox: on the importance of doll faces

GV notes that IGN cares an awful lot more about Disney princesses than pretty much anyone who reads it:

I wasn’t going to send this until I saw this story up at IGN three times.  First they reported the new redesign of Merida then they reported two stories on how Disney would not cave in to pressure to go back to Merida’s orignal design.  Here is a link to the third article. 

Basically, Disney decided to change Merida’s goofy appearance into a prettier and more royal looking doll for her coronation as a Disney Princess doll.  It appears that IGN has posted this story a third time to try to bring attention to this issue.  Of course IGN is a video game website where most of their audience is male and it appears to have backfired since most of the comments are making fun of this or saying this is a non-issue.  Now in my opinion there is an obvious reason Disney won’t back down despite a petition of about 205,000, and it’s not because they are against feminism, but instead because most little girls would rather buy the prettier and royal-looking doll as oppose to her original goofy appearance in the movie despite the admittedly great but absurd feminist propaganda that is Brave.

Honestly they would most likely lose a lot of money since most little girls and their mothers would prefer to buy a prettier doll despite all the feminist complaint.  If they were to release a goofy-looking doll of Merida, most little girls and there mothers would most likely just buy a pretty doll from a competitor. 

I wonder if the feminist will get so angry at their failure at altering little girls preconceived notions and desires that they will demand that they play with cars just so they can get them to stop thinking of appearance despite the fact that most women’s natural and honest inclination is to try to look good and put on make-up to look pretty.  I guess in the end Merida’s mother has a happy ending since in the real world most little girls, (because of what they want to buy and play with), are forcing her to be pretty and royal as an actual princess.

Who knows maybe next they will come out with a doll that is her husband which will really make feminist head explode.  What to you bet that he won’t look goofy.

I think the feminists at IGN are in the process of discovering that they’re not going to find a lot of concern over what women think about the appearance of a doll on the part of either a) male gamers, or, b) a lavender corporation.  While Disney cheerfully pays lip service to the Female Imperative, all it really cares about is money and pushing whatever happens to be the lavender agenda at the moment.

And since both little girls and gays like pretty dolls, not goofy ones, we can expect that the pretty doll will prevail.  The primary thing to take away from this: IGN is officially irrelevant.

I’m trying to picture CGW publishing three articles about this issue of vital importance to hard core gamers….

Rubio fails to follow the logic train

The Republican Senator doesn’t think through the logical implications of the accusations he is directing against the Obama administration:

“So in the span of four days, [there were] three major revelations about the use of government power to intimidate those who are doing things that the government doesn’t like. These are the tactics of the third world. These are the tactics of places that don’t have the freedoms and the independence that we have here in this country.”

They are the tactics of the third world.  They are, unsurprisingly enough, the tactics of a president who is himself an immigrant and a third worlder.  They are the tactics of a place that no longer has the freedom and independence and population that it once had. And yet, even as he laments this, Rubio is actively campaigning to legalize millions of third worlders who illegally settled in the country and add tens of millions more to their ranks.

Welcome to Third World America.  This is merely the smallest taste of what it is going to look like.