AD arrested

And suddenly, a certain NWA song starts going through my mind….

A source with knowledge of the situation tells PFT that the incident culminating in Peterson’s arrest was captured by one or more surveillance cameras. Multiple persons also witnessed the event.

According to the source, Peterson, his girlfriend, and some family members were at a nightclub in Houston. At closing time, a group of police officers entered the club, and they began instructing the remaining patrons to leave.

Peterson wanted to get some water before he left, but an officer told Peterson that he needed to leave. Some words apparently were exchanged, but Peterson eventually walked to the exit with one of the club’s bouncers.

It’s believed that one of the officers then jumped on Peterson’s back from behind and tried to take him down. (Key word: “tried.”) Other officers then joined the fray and completed the arrest.

Now, it’s remotely possible that AD was drunk or acting belligerent, but that’s entirely out of keeping with his personality and his reputation. And considering we know what cowardly bullies most policemen are, I won’t be surprised if AD isn’t ever charged.

Does this mean we can cancel the Olympics?

In which the fundamentally fraudulent nature of the Olympic Games is revealed:

In what some might consider a predictable incident, the Olympic flame was extinguished today as the torch relay took to the water on a raft through the canoe slalom venue in Essex. Day 50 was a difficult one for the torch relay, after a crash between two motorcycles earlier forced a delay and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s turn carrying the flame was marred by pouring rain. In the first setback for the day, the torch convoy was held up for 20 minutes after two motorbike riders collided near Chelmsford around 7.40am,and had to be rushed to hospital with suspected broken bones….

It isn’t the first time the Olympic flame has gone out as it makes its way through the UK. Back on May 21, just three days into the relay, the flame on a torch attached to para-badminton star David Follett’s wheelchair burned out while in Devon. In another early hitch to proceedings, the flame was blown out by a gust of wind as it was being lit for the first time in Greece. It had to be relit before being handed to a torchbearer.

Symbols and traditions are important and worthy of respect, but the Olympic symbolism is simply fake through and through. It’s a pity the torch isn’t genuinely some sort of augury, or we could hope that the games would be cancelled as a result of all these bad omens.

Girls are crazy, patriarchy blamed

This series of “school poisonings” would appear to be a cogent and ironic argument in favor of the Taliban’s position:

The World Health Organisation (WHO) working with the Afghan government has investigated attacks for more than three years but found “no conclusive evidence of deliberate poisoning”.

Thousands of girls have been taken ill at schools in that time, in incidents of mass fainting and vomiting. Pressure has mounted on Hamid Karzai’s government to stop the apparent attacks as their frequency has increased in recent months. Pictures of girls being carried to ambulances, or hooked up to drips in provincial hospitals, have become an increasingly common sight. The symptoms are always short-lived.

The incidents have been widely interpreted as a campaign by the Taliban or other insurgent hardliners to crackdown on girls’ education.

In other words, the Taliban had nothing to do with what is simply an example of mass female hysteria. I’m sure this incident has gone a long way towards hardening the position of the hardliners. They’re already highly skeptical of democracy and female education, can you imagine what this does to their opinion of female suffrage?

“Let’s see, they’re blaming us for stuff we said we didn’t do even though we quite happily take credit for beheading people and blowing them up, and these girls are all quite literally crazy, so yeah, let’s definitely give them a voice in government!”

The amazing thing about feminism is that it regularly makes 7th century cretins look sane by comparison.

FreeFascistThoughtBlogs

The funniest thing about all of this isn’t the irony that FreeThoughtBlogs doesn’t support actual free thought. For all that atheists have attempted, with some success, to steal the concept, joch sint iedoch gedanke frî was, in fact, not only a Christian concept but a Catholic one. But the atheist “freethinker” supports genuine freedom of thought about as sincerely as the American liberal supports genuine liberalism. What is actually funny is the idea that despite all of the copious evidence readily available on the Internet, there are still a few people who believe that PZ Myers has any integrity at all, academic or otherwise.

And what was his thoughtcrime? Pointing out that Skepchick is a lunatic and that hundreds of atheists are not, in fact, attempting to rape her every time she attends an atheist conference. Or something to that effect, I couldn’t care less. But I stand corrected. The funniest part of this kerfluffle, at least so far, is when Thunderfoot not only succinctly describes PZ’s customary method of argument, but actually expresses surprise at it.

1. The pointless use of invective.
2. The extensive use of strawmen.
3. The lack of any actual attempt to engage with the argument made.

Needless to say, longtime readers know that I’ve been pointing this sort of thing out ever since I was under the impression that PZ was a girl bitching about my WND columns. He’s always been a liar, he’s always been an inept polemicist, and it’s simply astonishing how long it has taken many atheists to realize this.

It’s also informative to read the shamelessly dishonest attempts of the Pharyngulans to defend PZ while completely missing the point. Of course FreeThoughtBlogs has the right to police the content being posted by its bloggers. That’s not the problem, the problem is that PZ promised that he would not do that. And then he did precisely what he promised he would not do. Which is what makes him a liar and is the reason this Thunderfoot is correctly accusing him of lacking integrity.

Mailvox: I couldn’t possibly say

JH makes a prediction:

Vox,

I know you love predictions, so I will predict that your views will more and more trend with Wilhelm Roepke over the coming years. While you got me started down the Austrian path years ago with the Mises AGD book study, the moralist and idealist (and perhaps wishful thinker) in me settled on Roepke. I have read a couple of his books, but I like the essay linked here, and it shares many of your recent themes:

Freedom, in other words, means being less dependent on the highly unstable modern economy as much as it does being less dependent on government. This is the point missed by many conservatives: they fail to see that decentralizing the economy is as vital as decentralizing the govern­ment. Dependency is indivisi­ble: dependency on an unstable market naturally leads to dependency on government when market difficulties arise (e.g., from the downside of the business cycle). Government is sought as a substitute, not simply for the market but more specifically for stability.

and

Roepke acknowledges that because the pursuit of self-interest does not always lead to harmony government intervention in the econo­my is sometimes needed. Here Roepke makes the important contribution of distinguishing between “compatible” and “incompatible” interventions. The former intervenes in the market in such a way as not to freeze the price mechanism and thus allows the forces of the market to adjust to the intervention. A protective tariff would be one example of such an intervention.

and

Roepke is not opposed to all forms of technical innovation. What he bemoans, however, is the indis­criminate application of these same tech­niques where they are inappropriate (as in agriculture) or where the social costs outweigh the immediate econom­ic benefits.

and finally

But Roepke is not a “dogmatic democratist,” recog­nizing not only that democracies have their weaknesses but can sometimes be the most despotic form of govern­ment. More important than the particu­lar form of government and narrow consideration of political rules is the (meta-governmental) spirit which informs and controls it. That spirit must be liberal in the properly understood sense. There is a distinction between a liberal order and its opposite, “collectivism.” The latter is the tendency to destroy those healthy forms of society and government identified above. It must recognize the proper spheres and limits of government, of the economy, and other institutions. It is entirely possible, and there are historical examples of this, for a government to be “democratic” but not “liberal.” … The opposite of collectivism is not democracy …

Me: Is it “pie in the sky” thinking to envision a hierarchical society where people have a sense of common purpose, have a physical connection to the land and production of their food, work in small to medium sized businesses producing high-quality or innovative items that fuel not just the spirit of consumption and competition but the (entrepreneurial) spirit of creativity and pride also? Sure, especially in our “multicultural wonderland,” as you (validly but too often) like to point out. But still, I like Roepke’s nuance, passion, conviction, and clarity. And as the cliche goes, you can’t hit a goal/target that you can’t see, Roepke’s vision of a “third way” would serve as a good goal.

Back to my prediction – I have seen you back off or fight the hard line libertarian dogma when you see its faults because you are great at reason and logic, and not wedded to ideology but right/wrong. As fragile as Roepke’s vision is, it seems to agree with you, albeit it may be too “nice” and “pretty” for you. 😉

I don’t know, since I’ve never actually read Roepke, although I remember Congressman McCotter speaking well of his ideas when I interviewed him the first time. But one thing that some people have a tough time grasping is that the libertarian goal of maximizing human liberty not only doesn’t necessarily mean embracing the principles of the American Libertarian Party, but also does not mean maximizing the permissible range of human behavior.

This concept should not be difficult if you understand that maximum tax revenues do not usually coincide with maximal tax rates. In the same way, maximal human liberty is unlikely to coincide with a complete absence of law… even though we acknowledge that the law, as it exists in the USA and most other states, is a transparent fiction to which the elite no longer even pretend to subscribe.

Impeccable and ironic timing

As per Robert Prechter’s socionomic principle of the habitually delayed reaction of government to events, it is often a counterintuitive indicator of coming war when the democracies cut their military forces to minimal levels, which is why these British force reductions are somewhat ominous:

n which case Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, is taking an enormous gamble when he claims that the 20 per cent reduction in the size of the standing Army will be made up for by a sizeable increase in the number of reservists to 30,000. Ever since the Coalition announced last summer that it was downsizing the Army from around 102,000 to 82,000 as part of its cuts to the MoD budget, senior officers have been struggling to find a way to maintain some semblance of its war-fighting capabilities while reducing this once proud institution to its smallest size since the Duke of Wellington took on Napoleon’s Grande Armée.

Their task has been made all the more difficult by the knowledge that the Government’s decision to shed 20,000 jobs was dictated entirely by budgetary requirements rather than any grand strategic vision for our Armed Forces. For the changes announced by Mr Hammond yesterday are simply designed to cut spending. As most officers know only too well, the demands made on the 100,000-plus Army during a decade of almost continuous combat operations have stretched its resources to breaking point.

Nor is there any reason to believe – despite the Army’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, due to be completed by the end of 2014 – that the next decade will not be as challenging.

It’s interesting to see that the British Army is now smaller than it was after the disarmament program that followed the Great War and preceded World War II. There are obvious parallels to “the Geddes Axe” and the 10-Year Rule.

“In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Britain faced serious economic woes and heavy defence cuts were consequently imposed by the British Government in the early 1920s as part of a reduction in public expenditure known as the “Geddes Axe” after Sir Eric Geddes. The Government introduced the Ten-Year Rule, stating its belief that Britain would not be involved in another major war for 10-years, and was abandoned in 1932.”

In the interwar period, the Regulars were reduced to 115,000, supported by a 150,000-strong reserve, the Territorial Army. That compares to today’s planned British Army of 82,000 plus 30,000 reservists. It’s interesting, is it not, to see how the force minimization tends to correspond to periods of economic weakness. The historical patterns are suggesting that large-scale war is on the horizon, the question is where and with whom?

However, it is the USA that matters most in this regard, and I don’t think its forces have been cut quite as drastically yet. So, I suspect we’ll need to see similar cuts in the USA, and more economic contraction, before this part of the pattern can be considered complete.

History speeds up

From Zerohedge:

I would also like to quickly note that mainstream economists back in 2011 were predicting the U.S. would reach 101% of GDP by 2021. It is now 2012, only one year later, and we have already crossed the 101% marker.

I may have to rethink that 2033 estimate….

Just because they are awesome

In general, my rock tastes tend to run more to the barely repressed violence that is Disturbed, but this nondescript little English guy in a red suit with no flashy guitar pyrotechnics or moves like Jagger is a capital-R ROCK STAR in a way that Axl Rose and other overly self-conscious performers could never be. The guitar line is so simple, and yet so awesome when it kicks in. You can see the crowd just waiting for it.

The futures of America

The argument that race and culture do not matter with regards to the construction and maintenance of civilization is not only historically dubious, but is deeply and profoundly anti-scientific:

The stench of sewage permeates the run-down streets, which have the second highest crime rates of anywhere across the country. Of its 70,390 residents, a staggering 40 per cent are out of work, with many having been ‘on the scrapheap’ from the ‘formal economy’ for generations.

The population has plummeted by more than 40 per cent from its 1950 level of 120,000, but there is little hope for those who remain. City budgets are being slashed, nearly half of the police force has been axed in recent years and the public library system is now almost non-existent.

Seventy thousand people and they not only can’t manage to build anything or prosper, they can’t even maintain the basic order and infrastructure they inherited from their grandfathers. What is the difference between a thriving metropolis of 124,000 thousand people and a dying one of little more than half that?

There are a number of factors, of course, but it would dishonest to fail to note that one of the significant ones appears to be the decline in the white percentage of the Camden population to only 17 percent. Stagnation and moderate decline are already apparent in the USA with whites now accounting for 72.4 percent of the population, down from 89.8 percent in 1940; if we hypothesize a link between between race and civilization, we can use that as a basis for predicting a significant decline in the standard of American civilization on the basis of “minority” births now outnumbering the number of births to the white majority.

Now, whites have no monopoly on civilization and there are obviously a number of great non-White civilizations. But they are almost uniformly Asian. So, it is also possible that the recent influx of Asian immigrants, who now outnumber Hispanic immigrants, could eventually permit the maintenance of a functioning civilization, albeit one that is likely to be a blend of Eastern and Western civilizations rather than a Western one. This would tend to indicate a reasonable amount of societal prosperity, but significantly reduced individual rights, an emphasis on bureaucracy, an end to the pretense of democracy, and technological stagnation.

There are worse fates. An Asio-America post-Aztlan secession may, in fact, represent the optimal non-violent outcome, presuming present trends prevail. Civilization is subject to entropy, which must be actively combated by each successive generation; any failure to do so assures that civilization will eventually return to Man’s natural state of barbarism. As Camden shows, a mere two 30-year generations is sufficient to reduce it to that natural state.

On rights

The conflict between the idea that Man has an intrinsic right to free trade and the observation that virtually no man has ever been able to engage in most of the activities that are necessarily aspects of that supposed right got me thinking about the concept of rights.

Now, there is obviously a significant difference between the “human rights” asserted by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the supposedly unalienable rights laid out in the US Declaration of Independence. The former are entirely conditional and are subordinate to both national law, (namely, such limitations as are determined by law meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society) as well as the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

The supposedly self-evident rights of the Declaration of Independence are clearly nothing of the sort, in that they are observably wrong. All men are not created equal in any way, genetically, legally, or spiritually, and furthermore, these rights are totally contingent upon the Creator by whom they are endowed. Atheism and a number of theisms necessarily preclude the existence of these rights.

But in either case, it seems obvious to me that neither is a reasonable basis for any rights upon which a case for free trade, or many other human actions can be made. Therefore, I think it is necessary to go back and look at what is the definition of the rights of Man. It’s not my purpose to consider all of the various 18th century theories about this, but rather to begin at the beginning, which is to say that in order to be coherent, consistent and materially relevant, a right must be something that a) applies to an individual, b) supersedes all other claims by all other parties, c) is consistent with observable human action in the real world.

So, for example, a claimed right to breath oxygen would potentially fit all of these categories, whereas the right to vote would not, since no one has ever observed a right to vote regardless of where they live or possess citizenship. A right to shelter cannot exist, since the competing right to property has historically taken precedent.

I propose, then, the following definitional metric. A right of Man is that for which the individual can justly, morally, (and in ideal terms, legally), kill another individual for attempting to deny him.

What are the proposed rights that can fit within this metric? The right to life, clearly. The right to self-defense is equally apparent. The right to think, the right to believe, the right to speak, the right to eat, the right to void, and the right to sensory input are not only self-evident, but inherent to the being of Man. But do any of the other rights that we habitually assume to exist on the mere basis of the fact that they were historically asserted actually hold up from this perspective?