An Evening with James Hansen

by James Oliver Deckard

The famous climate “scientist,” James Hansen, spoke at the London School of Economics on the 16th May 2013. Here is an account of his talk and its attendant circumstances.

A Case for Plebiscitory Democracy

by Eddie Johnson

For too long our political system has been under the control of a group of people who have never represented the people that elected them. A person who is elected by a constituency should no longer have the right of personal opinion. Their only concern should be voicing the concerns of the majority of their constituents.

When there is a vote in Parliament the elected representative should simply vote on what the majority of his constituents want.

We’re Losing Revenue! Quick, Let’s Tax E-Cigs!

by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/K7wVLaAENEU/were-losing-revenue-quick-lets-tax-e.html

We’re Losing Revenue! Quick, Let’s Tax E-Cigs! Could this be what it’s really all about?

Italian MEP Giancarlo Scottà tabled this extraordinary written question a couple of weeks ago.

Save Your Freedom – Please Retweet!

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/EumMDBkP-kM/
Save Your Freedom – Please Retweet!

We need to ‘gird our loins’ and go to battle folks, I need your assistance on this one! Please retweet this post to anyone you think might pay attention, and kick into action those who you think will continue dozing. I know its easier to continue playing solitaire – but you could put your computer to better use this morning, trust me.

I shall explain.

A year ago, I wrote of a worrying case where Social Workers went to the High Court for permission to enter the home of a person of sound mind because ‘it was thought’ that possibly they were making decisions as a result of ‘undue influence’ by their son who lived with them. No one actually knew whether they were or not, but on the basis that they might be – such permission was granted. Fair enough, a judge had listened to the arguments from ‘a’ social worker – we are not allowed to know who – and a document was drawn up delineating what subjects the son was allowed to speak of to his parents in their own home…in particular, he should not discuss with his parents any arrangements for securing the family home. What happened to the home in which he and his parents lived was to be entirely a matter for the local authority to decide if and when they thought it should be sold…..presumably if and when the parents became vulnerable through mental incapacity.

Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision

This is the transcript of a speech given at the December 1987 Future of Freedom Conference held at the Pacifica Hotel in Culver City, California.
http://www.lneilsmith.org/utopian.html

Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision
or
I Dreamed I Was a Signatory In My Maidenform Bra
by L. Neil Smith

The relative invisibility of Libertarianism after 40 years of backbreaking, heartbreaking labor, has little to do with any lack of money, ideas, personnel, or anything else Libertarians may occasionally whine about. It isn’t the fault of an evil northeastern Liberal conspiracy. Nor, as the more timid among us often recommend, is it reason to tone down Libertarian rhetoric, to soften principle or its expression, to make it more conservative or “practical” in approach. All of that has been tried, again & again.

Police State

The Creatures Outside Looked From Pig To Man, And From Man To Pig …

by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/cjaWWIbnjcg/the-creatures-outside-looked-from-pig.html

The Creatures Outside Looked From Pig To Man, And From Man To Pig … Busy in Puddlecoteville again, and likely will be for the next few days.

However, after yesterday’s revelation that Labour despise the working man (and woman) so much that they will lie to deprive them of their meagre pleasures, I couldn’t help but notice this exchange in the commons yesterday.

Fall Right, Swing Left

http://c4ss.org/content/18887
Fall Right, Swing Left

The following article was written by Roderick T. Long and published on Austro-Athenian Empire, May 15th, 2010.

“I don’t try to make you believe something you don’t believe, but to make you do something you won’t do.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Over and over, you’re falling, and then catching yourself from falling. And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time.”
— Laurie Anderson

I’ve written before about the importance of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions for left-libertarians. Here’s another example.

Left-libertarians and right-libertarians – or mainstream libertarians, or “normal” libertarians, or whatever one wants to call them (I’m tempted by the irony of “modal libertarians” myself) – often get frustrated with each other. Left-libertarians pull their hair out when right-libertarians at one moment acknowledge the existence of pervasive government favouritism to big business, and then at the next moment lapse back into treating criticisms of big business as criticisms of the free market. (Here, for example, is Kevin Carson wondering why John Stossel, who in the past has “tipped his hat to the ideas of corporatism and crony capitalism,” suddenly “smile[s] and nod[s]” when Michael Medved “responds to allegations that big business is corrupt and exploitative, in the corporatist economy we live in, by arguing that ‘it can’t happen, because in a free market ….’”) Right-libertarians, for their part, can’t see why left-libertarians keep harping about corporatist intervention when the right-libertarians have already acknowledged its existence and badness.

Desperate Plain Packs Agitprop In The Guardian

by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/ZN8syq61JTU/desperate-plain-packs-agitprop-in.html

Desperate Plain Packs Agitprop In The Guardian I haven’t fisked an article for a while, but this desperate guff from Tanya Gold in the Guardian is just so inept that it begs for it.

She seems to have no clue about the year long public consultation on plain packaging, or even the shabby evidence that prompted it. Here’s a perfect example.

Ian B on Paedomania

by Ian B

My heart sank when I saw the Hall guilty plea. Yewtree needed a first scalp, and now they have it. The concept of justice has been entirely trampled now by a stampeding mob frenzied by moral panic.

I can understand why an elderly man in his position would accept a plea bargain, for the reasons described by Ecks above. But it is sad.

Ecks quotes me, some time ago, saying they want a Steven Lawrence Moment. I still stand by that. The thing they are after though is a complete repudiation of the 1970s. It represents the period between the two Feminist waves, when First Wave Political Correctness all but collapsed, and before Second Wave PC had been installed, under which we now live.

The Probability Broach

Proof that Evil Traitor Heath Infected with Evil Paedo Virus by Evil Shape-shifting Lizard Jimothy Saveloy

Oh, but I’m getting so bored by the paedo witchhunt that I can barely feel alarmed by the latest turns in its lunacy. A Coronation Street actor is now being done for an alleged assault 46 years ago – the complainant is now 61! I suggest that anyone who waits this long before making a complaint should be ignored without further investigation. There should be a limitation on child sex prosecutions of three years from the date of the alleged offence, or one year from the complainant’s reaching the age of 18, whichever is longer.

This isn’t because I think well of people who have sex with persons under the age of consent – I don’t – but because the present law is almost self-evidently unjust, and will eventually bring the criminal justice system into ridicule and contempt.

Ghosts of Athens: Another Nice Review

by S.J.A Turney
http://sjat.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/ghosts-of-athens/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

I may be at a disadvantage with this dark, complex and involved epic historical thriller from Richard Blake in that it is the fifth in a series and I have leapt in at the end. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I fear I have missed a number of nuances of character relationships that have built up in previous books (relationships between characters and also between characters and the reader.)

That being said, I reiterate how much I enjoyed it. I have four points I noted as I read through it which are the bones of my review:

Will The Coalition Be More Bossy Than Labour?

by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/1UioYb_5ybg/will-coalition-be-more-bossy-than-labour.html

Will The Coalition Be More Bossy Than Labour?We’re still no nearer finding out if the incredibly inept campaign in favour of plain packaging will be successful.

If you’re not already aware, it’s been a farce from start to finish, so much so that I can only direct you to the Plain Packaging tag here for info as the instances of corruption, lies, gaffes, gerrymandering and idiocy are far too numerous to mention. Snowdon had a go at listing them in March but it’s akin to attempting to trap running tap water in a sieve.

C4SS: Welcome to Our New Site

by William Gillis
http://c4ss.org/content/18769
Welcome to Our New Site

The Center for a Stateless Society launched in October of 2006, since then we’ve blown through many milestones and growing pains. We’ve always had big plans and even bigger dreams, and today we move to a new phase. The site redesign is just the surface of what we’ve got brewing. Browse around, check out our resources page. Tell us what you think and when you’re done having fun throwing rotten fruit, tell us what you’d like to see and how you’d like to help with our various projects.

May Day “Un-American?” It’s as American as Apple Pie!

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/content/18578

May Day “Un-American?” It’s as American as Apple Pie!

Most Americans think of May Day, if they think of it at all, as some sort of communist holiday. Their awareness of it is based mainly on a vague memory of parades of military hardware on Red Square and Soviet leaders’ “fraternal greetings” to leaders of the state communist regimes of their Warsaw Pact satellites. If you’re unfamiliar with the history of May Day, you might be surprised to learn not only that it originated in the United States, but that it was strongly supported by American free market anarchists. May Day — the international holiday of the workers’ and socialist movements — was created by American workers, right here in the good old U.S. of A.

How To Rig An EU Tobacco Products Directive

by Dick Puddlecote

How To Rig An EU Tobacco Products Directive

Take a good look at this woman. She is – according to tobacco control’s own claims – possibly the most dangerous European alive today.

It is Linda McAvan, the Labour MEP chosen as ‘rapporteur’ for the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) which seeks to permanently ban snus and effectively render e-cigs useless. As rapporteur, it is her role to shepherd the TPD through its various stages of implementation. She is, as you might expect, a virulent smoker-hater and – I’m ashamed to say – British.

Short animated documentary about police accountability and civil liberties

Dear Libertarians,

I got your email address from your excellent blog and I thought I’d write to you to draw attention to a short documentary we’ve just released online.

My partner Gemma Atkinson was assaulted by the police for filming them on the London Underground. The case was written about at the time by Paul Lewis and Henry Porter in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2009/jul/09/police-detain-mobile-phone-camera

Capitalism Comes in Many Flavours?

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/content/18549
Capitalism Comes in Many Flavors?

The following article was written by Kevin Carson and published by The Freeman, August 29th, 2012.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed (“Identity Crisis for American Capitalism,” May 26), Steven Pearlstein presents a taxonomy of the various species of capitalism, arguing that it, “like ice cream, comes in many flavors. These different capitalisms can be combined, in the same way chocolate and coffee produce mocha.”

In so doing, though, he greatly exaggerates the difference between these flavors. Pearlstein’s first major variant of modern capitalism—robber-baron capitalism—was characterized by the large-scale economic power of big business. It was succeeded by the managerial capitalism of the New Deal and post-WWII era: “Competition tended to be gentlemanly and the power of big business was held in check by the federal government (big government) and unions (big labor).”

The “State capitalism” of the European social democracies and Japan is just a more extreme variant of American managerial capitalism.

Scottish Anti-Smoking Groups Pay In Kind

by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/d25N0BUu4co/scottish-anti-smoking-groups-pay-in-kind.html

Scottish Anti-Smoking Groups Pay In Kind Staggering stuff from ASH Scotland’s Sheila Duffy.

Ms Duffy said: “Quitting tobacco is the single best thing a smoker can do to improve their health. We do not support banning e-cigarettes as they could help many smokers to move to a less risky product. However e-cigarettes are produced by commercial companies, with a profit motive.”

Err, unlike those philanthropic non-profit producers of NRT her bunch promote relentlessly, and which regularly sponsor events attended by Duffy, eh?