Ray Bradbury said, ""

Thuckling hilarious

Iowahawk propagandizes for a taste of federally funded Eden. In Iowa.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 30, 2005 12:18 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, satire

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In Which I Ineptly Steal Jeff Goldstein's Thunder in a Mock Conversation with the Ghost of Jim Varney

Jim:  "I was big, man. Women wanted me. Men wanted to be me. Do you know how many groupies I had? Do you know how many illegitimate children I've sown?"

Me:  "I don't want to picture-"

Jim: " -Let's just say I've eaten more beaver than most wolves. "

Me:

Jim:  "That was over the top, I know. But you get my point. Tom, I have tripped over the Great Sleeping Dog in the dark hallway that is Death, to embark upon that journey from which no man returns to tell of cheap weed and donkey shows, and people won't even buy my dvds for coasters. Fucking van Gogh and Chaplin keep mocking me."

Me:  "Cheer up. People in Europe still love you. You're bigger than Jerry Lewis and David Hasselhoff combined in some of those countries. "

Jim: "Really?"

Me:  "Yes. Now go bother a German. And put on some pants."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 30, 2005 00:11 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor, boredomblogging, best posts

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A half-assed roundup of interest

Check out Laurence Simon's Second Avignon edition of the Carnival of the Vanities, after Expatriat fucked it up with sheer ineptitude. And I mean, absolute pot-smoking-teenager incompetence. This was worse than Dr. Zen AKA "Socialist Eurofag."

David Masten of Catallarchy equates the price signals in managment consulting with prostitution.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 29, 2005 15:11 EST | Permalink | comments |
blogging, discoveries

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78-22

John Roberts now has the rest of his natural life to piss off liberals and restore meaning to the Constitution. May he do well at both.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 29, 2005 13:39 EST | Permalink | comments |
politics, news, constitutionalism

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Hyperbolic online reactions

My friend Travis Benning has discovered what may be the perfect hyperbolic online response. To anything.

"I threw up a little in my mouth."

This one sentence can express disgust, overwhelming joy, outrage, swelling pride, fierce national pride, bitter francomisia, and even boredom. It got me thinking: has anyone ever attempted to translate their hyperbolic online reactions into real life?

Next time some one tells you a joke, douse him in the face with your cup of scalding coffee. Grab a keyboard and break it over your knee. Let coffee froth out of your mouth onto his shirt. I know I will.

Let's show the lay public the joys of blogging.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 29, 2005 08:51 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
humor, blogging

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A good way to start the day

If fnord you fnord notice the fnord in this sentence fnord, then fnord not only are evil aliens not fnord among us, but you are a fnord sane conservative. And those are some fnord things to be fnord thankful for.

(go here if you don't understand. Hat tip: Harvey)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 28, 2005 08:51 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, moonbats

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Learn 19th century British argot

here. Don't be a cagging rantipole, you bough-bouncing mother-swiving dilberry twit! Don't make me knicker your bowsprit!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 28, 2005 04:28 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, discoveries

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The Political test meme

I took it. So ha.

You are a Classical Liberal Hippy-Bashing Whig (100% Austrian) and an... Economic Lone Wolf (93% Hippy Free ) You are best described as a: Warmongering Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 28, 2005 02:29 EST | Permalink | comments (5) |
politics, humor, memery

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Defend your nuts: a parable on property rights and hippies

Suppose you were a squirrel. You would work hard to find the biggest nuts, and then stash those large nuts in secret places. You'd only do so if you had a high degree of assurance that those nuts would be there, unrotted and ready to eat, when your life depended on them. You'd have to depend on other squirrels to not steal your nuts, and assure them that you would do likewise.

Now suppose that a pack of liberal chinchillas, calling themselves the Friends of the Forest, came along preaching the evils of despoiling the forest by the secretion of nuts. They would climb onto tree stumps and proclaim,  "You have destroyed our natural panoply and ruined the aesthetic balance of nature, man. Your lives are a blight on the harmony of our forest. For the greater good of our nurturing forest, you must change your ways. Or else."

Then they would harass every squirrel out trying to find nuts, calling them fascists incomparably more evil than the infamous squirrel known as "Muffins." They would raid all the nut caches they could find, throwing the hard-sought nuts into the river. They would carry around chunks of sandalwood and tufts of unknown leaves that had been struck by lightning, claiming they "enhanced the psychic atmosphere." Worse yet, they would subject every young squirrel to merciless indoctrination, turning them into anemic grass-eating advocates of Chinchillism ready to denounce their thrifty parents to the nearest Friend of the Forest. Squirrels would wake up uncertain of whether they would be able to collect any nuts at all that day, or whether any nuts they did find would be safe from the chinchillas or their squirrel abettors. Each squirrel would look out only for himself, eager to strike a deal with the Friends of the Forest.

You would be righteously indignant and would express your rage in a barely audible "scrick," by which you mean, "you malodorous chinchilla marauders have destroyed our right to the rightfully acquired fruits of our labor, and in doing so secured our certain death by starvation. We, the squirrels, depend upon the continued existence of immutable property rights for the maintainance of any survival above the savage existence of our early squirrel ancestors.

"You have destroyed our means of providing for our children, whose lives are now destined to be brutish, savage, and short. You have reduced our standard of living to that of a lame ferret. You have destroyed the virtues of justice, foresight, prudence, and thrift. You have turned the less fortunate among us against us, breeding contempt and violence. You have turned those with the strongest squirrel-hands against the weakest. You have turned the present generation of squirrels against their posterity with a confused philosophy. You have lauded the forest above the creatures of the forest.

"In the name of the good, you have sown evil. In the name of the new, you have destroyed the future. In the name of natural behavior, you have destroyed the security that has taken us generations and pints of squirrel blood to accomplish. You speak of natural balances, and destroy our own balance carefully hewn by the laws of nature. And you have the gall to call us the evil and unnatural ones, you damn dirty desert-dwelling rodents!"

You would then be clubbed over the head with a pine-cone. After all, squirrels don't have guns or Constitutions to defend themselves against hippies.

Don't be a squirrel. Defend your nuts.

Our Constitution and your gun can only protect you if you are willing to use them. With hope, you won't have to use the latter while the war may still be fought with words. There is a new pack of hippies trying to undermine our property rights and our laws. In the name of peace and prosperity, they wish to erect a system of civil war where once there was social cooperation. If you value your nuts, join us (Travis Benning, Sean Rife, Isiah Schwartz, and I)in the fight to preserve our Constitution.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 28, 2005 00:11 EST | Permalink | comments (9) |
humor, constitutionalism, disguised tyranny, libertarianism, best posts

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Rage or kittens

I could blog about Florida Attorney General Cline justifying anti-"gouging" laws on Hannity and Colmes last night. Or I could blog about Hannity attempting to defend capitalism by making an X with his hands and then agreeing with Cline.

But I will blog about my kitten instead. Do any of my readers know why even kittens are attracted to the open pages of books being read?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 27, 2005 15:08 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
humor, cats

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A Glimpse into Utopia

This monday's Glimpse into Utopia begins with the most famous perfect society, that of Thomas More's 1516 "Utopia." Everyone knows about it, and most believe it to describe an ideal society. After all, who would expect a society called "Utopia" to be a totalitarian nightmare? Yves Guyot briefly summarizes More's vision of a perfect society:

More sets out in his comfortable fashion the geography of the Isle of Utopia. He places therein fifty-four cities, all built upon the same plan and with identical institutions; a territory of not less than twenty miles square in extent, the duty of cultivating which is apportioned between a certain number of families, is attached to each town: each family consists of no fewer than forty men and women and of two bondmen. Every year twenty citizens who have spent two years in cultivating the land return to the town and are replaced by twenty others. All the inhabitants of Utopia, both men and women, labour, but only for six hours a day. They have few wants, their clothing is made of leather and skins which will last for seven years. Their meals are taken in common, the women being seated opposite to the men. Travelling is rendered almost impossible. Every town is to contain six thousand families: when a particular family is too rich in children, it bestows some of them upon those which have not enough. Marriage is surrounded with formalities; the community of women is unknown, and adultery involves slavery.

The form of government consists of a prince elected for life and of a body of magistrates and officers elected for one year. The Utopians are men of peace, but they make war at need and employ mercenaries to carry it on. Religious liberty is established, but whosoever does not believe in the existence of Providence and in the immortality of the soul is incapable of receiving employment.

You can read More's Utopia here to see his complete vision of static technology, eugenics, and totalitarian organization of social life. But as I promised, I'm only going to show a "glimpse." Too much of any Utopia can be bad for a man's sanity.

So I'll move right on to North Korea following Kim Jong Il's rise to power. Now, many of my readers would not class the Hermit Kingdom among the visions of perfect societies such as the noble and mighty Incas (I'll get to their noble and mighty civilization later), the Anabaptist movement, or the labor workshops of Babeuf. But then again, many of my readers are not celebrities and college professors. Those of us who do not have film crews or captive audiences cannot be expected to understand that if it were not for Kim Jong Il's taste for booze and kidnapped women, North Korean Juche socialism would have become a unique-heritage-affirming paradise.  Our irrational and racist skepticism does not change the fact that Kim Jong Il and every other dictator sought peace and prosperity in a Utopia, even if it required that no more dissident eggs be left to make omelettes.

Here are some brief glimpses into the everyday life of those in the paradise on earth that is North Korea, courtesy of Courtois et. al's "The Black Book of Communism":

Once a week each and every North Korean attends an obligatory indoctrination meeting and a criticism and self-criticism meeting. The latter is known in North Korea as a "balance sheet of life." Everyone must accuse himself of at least one political fault and must reproach his neighbor for at least two faults.

*
*
*

North Korean cadres receive a number of privileges and material benefits, but they are also under extremely tight control. They are forced to live in a special area, all their telephone conversations are closely monitored, and any audo or video cassettes in their possession are regularly examined. Because of systematic jamming of foreign broadcasts, all radios and televisions in North Korea can only pick up state channels. To make any journey, special permission is required from the relevant local authority and the necessary work unit. In Pyongyang, the capital and hence the showplace for the country, all housing is tightly controlled by the government.

*
*
*

In a state claiming to base itself on socialism, the population is not only carefully monitored and controlled; it is also subject to disparate treatment depending on social origin, geographic origin (that is, whether the family originates in North or South Korea), political affiliation, and recent signs of loyalty toward the regime. In the 1950's the whole society was carefully subordinated into fifty-one social categories that powerfully determined the people's social, political, and material future. This extremely cumbersome system was streamlined in the 1980's; now there are only three social categories. Even so, the system of classification remains very complex. In addition to these three basic classes, the secret services are particularly vigilant in regard to certain categories within the classes, particularly people who have come from abroad, who have traveled overseas, or who have received visitors.

The country is divided into a "central" class, which forms the core of society, an "undecided" class, and a "hostile" class, which includes approximately one-quarter of the North Korean population. The North Korean Communist system uses these divisions to create what is in effect a sort of apartheid: a young man of "good origin," who might have relatives who fought against the Japanese, cannot marry a girl of "bad origin," such as a family that originated in the South.

Although this system in its early days may have had some basis in Marxist-Leninist theory, biological discrimination is much harder to justify [Note: some of the authors of the Black Book are still communist, and in sentences like this betray their greed for power]. Yet the facts are there: anyone who is handicapped in North Korea suffers terrible social exclusion. The handicapped are not allowed to live in Pyongyang. Until recently they were all kept in special locations in the suburbs so that family members could visit them. Today they are exiled to remote mountainous regions or to islands in the Yellow Sea. Two such locations have been identified with certainty: Boujon and Euijo, in the north of the country, close to the Chinese border. This policy of discrimination has recently been spread beyond Pyongyang to Nampo, Kaesong, and Chongjin.

Similar treatment applies to anyone out of the ordinary. Dwarves, for instance, are now arrested and sent to camps; they are not only forced to live in isolation but also prevented from having children. Kim Jong Il himself has said that "the race of dwarves must disappear."

And here is their description of the not-so-normal life of those living in this paradise:

    There is no way of knowing exactly how many executions have taken place in North Korea, but an indication can be gained from the penal code. At least forty-seven crimes are punishable by the death penalty. These can be broken down into crimes against the sovereignty o the state, crimes against the state administration or against state property, crimes against individuals, crimes against property, and military crimes.

Kang Koo Chin, on of the great specialists on the North Korean legal system, has estimated that in 1958-1960, a period of particularly brutal repression, at least 9,000 people were rejected from the Party, tried, and sentenced to death. Extrapolating from this estimate to include the other nine purges of similar scale, one arrives at a figure of 90,000 executions. For now, this figure must be merely an estimate of the size of the problem; perhaps one day the Pyongyang archives will reveal the full story.

People who have escaped from the country have attested to the routine execution of civilians for crimes such as prostitution, treason, murder, rape, and sedition. The crowd is invited to participate, and sentencing is accompanied by cries of hatred, insults, and stone-throwing. Sometimes the prisoner is kicked and beaten to death while the crowd chants slogans.

*
*
*

Classes of prisons:

• "help posts" which are essentially transit camps where people await trial for minor political crimes and non-political crimes
• "Work regeneration centers" which house between 100 and 200 people who have been labeled antisocial, ineffective, or simply lazy. Most major towns have one of these centers. People stay for between one month and a year, often without ever having been to trial or even haven been charged with a specific offense.
• Hard-labor camps. At least twelve of these exist in the country, each holding between 500 and 2,000 people. Most inmates there are common criminals accused of theft, attempted murder, rape, or similar crimes. Children of political prisoners, people who have been caught attempting to flee the country, and other minor political prisoners are also incarcerated in these camps.
• Deportation zones, where "untrustworthy elements" such as former landowners or people with family members who have escaped to the South are kept. Tens of thousands of such people are placed under house arrest in distant regions.
• Special dictatorship zones. These are full-fledged concentration camps for political prisoners. Approximately a dozen such camps exist, containing a total of 150,000-200,000 people. This figure is approximately 1 percent of the population of the country, a much lower share than that in the Soviet gulags in the 1940's/ This figure should not be interpreted as a sign that the Koreans are particularly lenient, but as a sign of how cowed the population has become.
  

The few eyewitness descriptions of these camps mention total isolation- high barbed-wire fences, German Shepherd dogs, armed guards, surrounding minefields- poor and insufficient food, and extremely hard work, involving the excavation of mines, quarries, and irrigation canals, as well as wood-cutting operations. Prisoners work twelve hours a say, followed by two days of "political training." Hunger is perhaps the worst torture; detainees try to eat anything from frogs and toads to rats and earthworms. Prisoners not only suffer progressive physical decay; they are also used for special tasks such as the digging of secret tunnels or work at dangerous nuclear projects. Some have been used as moving targets during shooting practice by guards and troops.

*
*
*

Other guards described experiments carried out in the camp, including deliberate efforts to starve prisoners to death so that their resistance could be studied. According to An Myung Chul,

The people who carry out these executions and these experiments all drink before they do it. But they are real experts now; sometimes they hit prisoners with a hammer, on the back of the head. The poor prisoners then lose their memory, and they use them as zombies for target practice. When the Third Bureau is running out of subjects, a black van known as "the crow" turns up and picks out a few more prisoners, sowing panic among the rest. The crow comes about once a month and takes forty or fifty people off to an unknown destination.

Next week, I think I'll detail the joy that was Campanella and Anabaptism.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 25, 2005 23:30 EST | Permalink | comments |
culture of death, libertarianism, a glimpse into utopia

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Frickin'

Genius.

~~~
Update 12:06 am:  If I were James Lipton, I would sexually molest V the K with hyperbolic flattery.

Update 1:16 am: On the other hand, this guy might do a better job after he finds his leopard.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 24, 2005 22:03 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
humor, moonbats

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Two good books

William Brough's "The Natural Law of Money" is a delightful explanation of Gresham's Law and the danger of credit expansion under central banks. I'll have to check Rothbard's "The Mystery of Banking"  the next time I read it to see if he cites Brough's Austrian-tinged analysis.

St. George Tucker's "View of the Constitution of the United States of America" was once THE text on a Jeffersonian construction of the Constitution. Here's an excerpt:

It is indispensably necessary to the very existence of this species of democracy, that there be a perfect equality of rights among the citizens, the unqualified use of the term equality has furnished the enemies of democracy with a pretext to charge it with the most destructive principles. By equality, in a democracy, is to be understood, equality of civil rights, and not of condition. Equality of rights necessarily produces inequality of possessions; because, by the laws of nature and of equality, every man has a right to use his faculties in an honest way, and the fruits of his labor, thus acquired, are his own. But some men have more strength than others; some more health; some more industry; and some more skill and ingenuity, than others; and according to these, and other circumstances the products of their labor must be various, and their property must become unequal. The rights of property must be sacred, and must be protected; otherwise there could be no exertion of either ingenuity or industry, and consequently nothing but extreme poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance.

Yep, still good.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 24, 2005 21:07 EST | Permalink | comments |
economics, constitutionalism, libertarianism

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AH!!

The polar icecaps are melting! Global warming! Chimpy McHalliburtenhitlerstein and those evil American corporations are causing global temperatures to increase!

on Mars. Heh.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 23, 2005 04:12 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor, moonbats

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Filthy Lie: Evil Glenn's Final Post

There it was. Evil Glenn's computer, stinking of cheap cologne and burning chimpanzee fur.  The screensaver displayed thousands of puppies funneling into a blender. I gloved my hands and pulled the keyboard from under a mound of small bones glistening in a film of what was hopefully only saliva. I scraped off this fetid mass and sprayed the keyboard with pure bleach.

I hesitated before pressing Enter.

I pushed it and the screensaver yielded to a desktop collage of nude women holding puppies.  I clicked a folder labelled "Future posts." A window opened, full of what must have been millions of posts arranged downwards in chronological order. I clicked on one dated for next month:

Justice Janice Rogers Brown eviscerated Senator Kennedy at her confirmation hearings.  She still got a supermajority vote. Heh.

I scrolled down awhile and clicked a post dated May 15th, 2009:

France obliterated in another nuclear holocaust. Roasted frog indeed.

What the hell? I kept scrolling down and clicked on another post dated January 1st, 2756, written in an incomprehensible language.

I scrolled all the way down to the last post, dated October 26th 31052. This one was written in English:

I shall end my long and lonely life today. I, who have lived through revolutions and innumerable wars, survived the deadly permafrost of countless nuclear winters huddled in caves, and long ago killed off the last dog, have grown weary. Indeed, I have grown weary of my solitary existence as warlord of the Hgechs. The women are extraordinarily ugly and the men look too much like me for comfort. All the people I love are dead, and their stuffed carcasses stare at me from the welcome abyss of death. There is nothing left for me to do but give my slave Bob some flints, a musket, and a moonshine still. My job here is done.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 23, 2005 03:45 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
humor, evil glenn

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Heh.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 23, 2005 02:09 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, blogging

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Damn.

My local paper, the Times Herald Record, ran this astounding head-in-ass letter to the editor yesterday:

Oil Prices Manipulated

For those of you who aren't aware, all prices for gas and oil are set by traders on the New York Mercantile Exchange- in large part by people who wouldn't know a barrel of oil if they fell on it. Actual supply and demand mean little. It's what these traders think will happen that matters. And then they make it happen!

If you don't believe that's possible, remember several years back when two men, the Hunt brothers, drove the price of silver up from about $2 an ounce to more than $40 an ounce? Pure market manipulation. And that is what is happening with oil products right now.

So I ask you, who are the real losers? If a man steals a TV, he can be shot down in the street. But these market manipulators can steal billions from every American, and the government says that's OK. It's not OK. It's obscene!

For years, I have been asking our congressmen, both past and present, why commodities as vital as energy products are traded on the NYMEX, where they are subject to price manipulation. Thus far, nothing has come of it. Now may be the time to get gas and oil off NYMEX. We need stability in energy prices. These huge price fluctuations are absurd.

Isn't it amazing that with idiots like this guy around, there aren't any stories about economists going on bloody cross-country rampages?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 21, 2005 10:14 EST | Permalink | comments (5) |
economics, hateblogging

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RIP

Simon Wiesenthal is dead. May his memory outlast that of the beasts he hunted.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 20, 2005 10:58 EST | Permalink | comments |
news

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"You're not permitted to save her life"

Listen to this example of bureaucratic management overtaking reason in the aftermath of Katrina (via Coyote Blog through Overlawyered.com):

In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "I begged him to let me continue," said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. "People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.

"I showed him (the U.S. Coast Guard official in charge) my medical credentials. I had tried to get through to FEMA for 12 hours the day before and finally gave up. I asked him to let me stay until I was replaced by another doctor, but he refused. He said he was afraid of being sued. I informed him about the Good Samaritan laws and asked him if he was willing to let people die so the government wouldn't be sued, but he would not back down. I had to leave."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 20, 2005 02:26 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
news, libertarianism

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Getcha pork right here!

The Truth Laid Bear (pbuh) is compiling a blogger-submitted list of pork projects.  So far, $8,558,319,390 in pork has been identified. Check it out and let your rage be aroused when you read about Feingold's $1.76 million bike trail in Wisconsin or the Oldsmobloat's $3.2 million bike trail in Cape Cod. Then start hitting your head against a wall.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 19, 2005 05:10 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
politics

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A glimpse into Utopia: the Great Famine

Every now and then, it helps to remember what the ideal society of liberals and hippies looks like. That's why every Monday morning I'm going to post an excerpt first from an ancient description of a perfect society, then a modern description of what those little revolutionary Edens looked like.

Here is a description of Plato's ideal Republic, the basis of all Utopias, from Yves Guyot's 1910 examination of socialism:

In his "Laws," in which he attempts to work out his conception in detail, Plato fixes the number of citizens at 5,040, each with a share in the public lands, the equal produce of which is sufficient to support one family. These lands are indivisible and inalienable, and are transmitted by hereditary succession to the son who is appointed to receive them. The State is divided, in honour of the twelve months of the year, into twelve districts, in which numerous officials, as well as the councils, reside. The police enter into the minutest details of the life of every individual; until the age of forty travelling is forbidden. The police must see to it that the number of citizens shall neither increase nor diminish. The industrial occupations are followed by slaves controlled by a class of free labourers without political rights; commerce is left to strangers. A citizen of the Platonic city may not possess precious metals or lend out money at interest. Moreover, if Plato, in order to put his conceptions of the State into practice, reverts to individual property, he continues to proclaim that "the community of women and children and of property in which the private and the individual is altogether banished from life" is the highest form of the State and of virtue.

There you have it, the seeds of every single attempted Utopia: eugenics, abolition of property rights, autarchy, slaves, and static vision of technology.

My first glimpse into a modern heaven on earth is China in the fall of 1959, the beginning of a forced famine which within two years starved between 20 million (the PRC's official statistic) and 43 million people, as described in Courtois et  al's "The Black Book of Communism." Considering that Mao's regime murdered and starved about 65 million people, he still managed to murder more people in the rest of his regime than Hitler did.

Prepare for a glance into the logical consequence of what every modern liberal wishes for:

In the autumn of 1959 the class war was momentarily forgotten, and a military-style offensive was launched against the peasants, using methods similar to those used by anti-Japanese guerilla groups. At least 10,000 peasants were imprisoned, and many died of hunger behind bars.

The order was given to smash all privately own cutlery that had not yet been turned into steel to prevent people from being able to feed themselves by pilfering the food supply of the commune. Even fires were banned, despite the approach of winter.

The excesses of repression were terrifying. Thousands of detainees were systematically tortured, and children were killed and even boiled and used as fertilizer- at the very moment when a nation-wide campaign was telling people to "learn the Hunan way." In Anhui, where the stated intention was to keep the red flag flying even if 99 percent of the population died, cadres returned to the traditional practices of live burials and torture with red-hot irons. Funerals were prohibited lest their number frighten survivers even more and lest they turn into protest marches. Taking in the numerous abandoned children was also banned, on the ground that "the more we take in, the more will be abandoned."

Desperate villagers who tried to force their way into the towns were greeted with machine-gun fire. More than 800 people died in this manner in the Fenyang district, and 12 percent of the rural population, or 28,000 people, were punished in some manner. This campaign took on the proportions of a veritable war against the peasantry. In the words of Jean-Luc Domenach, "the intrusion of Utopia into politics coincided very closely with that of police terror in society."

Deaths from hunger reached over 50 percent in certain villages, and in some cases the only survivers were cadres who had abused their position. In Henan and elsewhere there were many cases of cannibalism (63 were recorded officially): children were sometimes eaten in accordance with a communal decision.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 19, 2005 01:10 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
economics, culture of death, libertarianism, a glimpse into utopia, best posts

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A barrelfull of econoblogs

I've added some more libertarian and economics blogs to my sidebar. The not-quite-libertarian economists I found through the blogroll of GMUbloggers Truck and Barter.  While I respect GMU and the swarm of econobloggers it's produced, I had to do a lot of weeding through their blogroll to filter out some unsavory elements.

Go check out these econoblogs:

Coyote Blog (Check out the 60-Second Refutation of Socialism, while sitting at the Beach, How to Spot a Dictatorship, Case Studies on the Minimum Wage, and Physics, Wealth Creation, and Zero-sum Economics)
Deinychus Antirrhopus (Check out an able fisking of those calling for anti-"gouging" laws)
The Skeptical Optimist
Econopundit
Marginal Revolution
New Economist
The Club for Growth (Check out Roth's Economic Hall of Shame, listing those legislators who in the wake of Katrina spouted idiocies worthy of any self-respecting Mercantalist)
The Buggy Professor
Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey
Prestopundit
Lost Legacy
EconLog
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid
Division of Labour
Catallaxis
Heavy Lifting
Capital Freedom
Asymmetrical Info.
Ask Edgeworth (A sample: "Fox's Bill O'Reilly has been particularly comical in this regard. In what looked like either a heart attack, a sexual climax, or a fit of righteous rage, he accused oil companies of making excess profits and challenged them to give 20% of their excess profits to the disaster relief effort.")

Here are some of the criteria I used to identify which blogs not to add to my sidebar:

• Any reference to Paul "Fuck the Broken Window Fallacy" Krugman as "funny but true"
• Any non-insulting reference to Paul "My papa's name is Sombart" Krugman
  
• Any reference to Chuck Schumer as a "hero"
• Gratuituous references to the size of Greenspan's penis

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 18, 2005 02:58 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
economics, blogging

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Blog pilgrimage alert

Fellow blog-pilgrim Scriptor has, after moving to two blomes within the space of two weeks, settled down at what may hopefully be a better blome until he can afford to rent a place.  Go check out his new squatter's hut.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 18, 2005 00:10 EST | Permalink | comments |
blogging

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Hayek for children

The Road to Serfdom in cartoons. Check it out.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 17, 2005 01:35 EST | Permalink | comments |

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Charity v. Welfare and Katrina

In the aftermath of Katrina, my posts (I, II, III, IV) on the contrast between voluntary charity and government welfare are poignant. The differences between voluntary charity and government welfare encompass not only the differing levels of knowledge expressed through each allocation of resources, but also the expression of the desire to aid others shown.

Consider how many millions of Americans have given voluntarily to charities. Consider how vast the sum of their knowledge is, that each gives to that charity which from his state of knowledge will most benefit the victims of Katrina.  Consider the vast webs of interpersonal relationships and decentralized sources of information available through prices which each donor relies on to determine where his money or supplies is most wanted. And consider that each donor gives because from his point of view his supplies are more valuable in the hands of a specific person or organization than any other alternative uses available, thus using the enormous amount of knowledge present in the pricing system. This is more knowledge than any one man or a few men could possibly absorb, let alone act on quickly. Do you think that a bureaucrat or a council of bureacrats in FEMA can base decisions on more knowledge than 100 million people? Do you think that one or a few bureaucrats can learn and adjust their decisions to as great a volume of new information faster than can the collected and continual decisions of 100 million people?

Consider that each donation is made because the donor believes he is helping both himself and another more than any other allocation of his property, otherwise he would not have made the donation to the specific charity. Do you think that one or a few bureaucrats allocating other people's tax-dollars will have as great an interest in distributing supplies efficiently as 100 million people using their own wealth to help others? Do you think that the desire to help others is exceeded by political considerations in the case of 100 million people, or in the case of one or a few bureaucrats?

Government coordination of charity fails for the same reason that government coordination of markets fail: the impossibility outside of the market and voluntary cooperation of determining the most efficient means in achieving chosen goals. To the degree the government-run "charity" is operating within a market and a free society, it can act on the prevailing knowledge and adjust its behavior rationally, although it will be hindered. In a society without a market and property rights, it is as little possible for government  to send supplies to people in times of  disasters as it is to send supplies to people in times of security. There is a reason why although the government operated inefficiently in Katrina, less than 900 people died, compared to the five-digit casualty rates of similar or lesser disasters in socialist nations ( e.g. the five-digit casualty rates of elderly people in France during a blackout of the nationalized electricity grid). There is a reason why those nations which cannot feed themselves in times of security, cannot feed themselves in times of disaster. The voluntary mechanisms of the market and charity which exist only in a society ordered the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production and voluntary cooperation are the only possible means of actually aiding people in times of peace and plague.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 16, 2005 23:31 EST | Permalink | comments |
economics, philosophy, libertarianism

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"Generations of racism"

I wonder if the "generations of racism" our President was speaking about meant the welfare and minimum-wage programs¹ of liberals and Black leaders which, beginning in the 1960's, stalled and reversed the decades-long trend² of growing incomes, increasing social mobility, decreasing unemployment, and increasing education, among Blacks.  Or maybe he meant the Democrat-led Jim Crow laws and their informal enforcement by largely Democratic thugs.  I just hope he didn't mean the same thing those liberals meant by a "legacy of racism."

¹ Walter Williams in "Youth and Minority Unemployment," describes how minimum wage laws were advocated in the 1920's by Democrats who supported them for precisely the reason that they would discourage Black workers, who typically had lower value productivity than whites, from entering thus-protected fields.

² As thoroughly described in Thomas Sowell's "Race and Culture," "Race and Economics," and "Inside American Education."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 16, 2005 22:10 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
politics, disguised tyranny

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Kittenblogging Friday

Meet Fattyfluff:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 15, 2005 22:59 EST | Permalink | comments (6) |
cats

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Lizardoid commune

Check out the Little Green Colloquium, a place for fellow lizardoids, without the bitterness of DL. This reminds me, I haven't had a chance to blog at LGF in a long while.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 15, 2005 19:51 EST | Permalink | comments (31) |
blogging, lizardoids

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Books!

Verizon mistakenly charged me for two phone connections it never installed, and a DSL service which didn't install and about which it vacillates between claiming it exists in my area and it doesn't exist.  Because of these mistakes, the phone bill was $350 this month, rather than the usual $45. And so, I went without a phone for the last week and a half.  But having good books can dull the pain of having no internet.  I'm now reading:

(via library):

• Wicksteed's "The Common Sense of Political Economy" both volumes
  
• Fisher's "The Theory of Interest"
  
• Sowell's "Basic Economics"
• Sowell's "Knowledge and Decisions"
• Yellin's biography of Maimonides
• Eli Wiesel's Memoirs
• Courtois et al's "The Black Book of Communism"

(My own books, some digital and some tangible):

• Pirke Avot, translated by the Jewish Virtual Library
• Mises' "Human Action"
• Mises' "Omnipotent Government"
• Mises' "Liberalism"
• Rothbard's "Man, Economy, and State"
• Bastiat's "Economic Harmonies"
• Mill's "Essays on Unsettled Questions of Political Economy"
• Frank Knight's "Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit" (in shoddy Microsoft Reader format)
• Thomas Paine's "Dissertations on Government, the Bank, and Paper Money"
• Cato's Letters
• Calhoun's "A Disquisition on Government"
• Herbert Spencer's "The Proper Sphere of Government"
• James Adams' "The Living Jefferson"
• Scott & Bautzly's "Readings in European History Since 1814"

Enough good books to almost make a man forget he's not able to go online.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 15, 2005 14:59 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
books, economics, hick life

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Aha! Bastiat! Books!

I found the motherload of good books of economics. Go to the Online Library of Liberty right now and load up on their other books (free in .pdf or .lit form)

I found a free PDF of Bastiat's Economic Harmonies, translated into English! It's one of the best economics books ever written, by one of only three Frenchmen worthy of respect.

Here's a small excerpt from his preface, "To the Youth of France":

It was fashionable, at one time, to laugh at what is called the social problem; and,it must be admitted, certain of the proposed solutions were only too deserving of derision. But there is surely nothing laughable about the problem itself; it haunts us like Banquo's ghost at Macbeth's banquet, except that, far from being silent, it cries aloud to terror-stricken society: Find a solution or die!

Now the nature of this solution, as you readily understand, will depend greatly upon whether men's interests are, in fact, harmonious or antagonistic to one another.

If they are harmonious, the answer to our problem is to be found in liberty; if they are antagonistic, in coercion. In the first case, it is enough not to interfere; in the second, we must, inevitably, interfere.

But liberty can assume only one form. When we are certain that each one of the molecules composing a liquid has within it everything that is needed to determine the general level, we conclude that the simplest and surest way to obtain this level is not to interfere with the molecules. All those who accept as their starting point the thesis that men's interests are harmonious will agree that the practical solution to the social problem is simply not to thwart these interests or to try to redirect them.

Coercion, on the other hand, can assume countless forms in response to countless points of view. Therefore, those schools of thought that start with the assumption that men's interests are antagonistic to one another have never yet done anything to solve the problem except to eliminate liberty. They are still trying to ascertain which, out of all the infinite forms that coercion can assume, is the right one, or indeed if there is any right one. And, if they ever do reach any agreement as to which form of coercion they prefer, there will still remain the final difficulty of getting all men everywhere to accept it freely.

Now tell me that doesn't tickle your pickle.

~~~

Update 4:11 pm: I also found the complete Cato's Letters, Bruce Smith's "LIBERTY AND LIBERALISM: Liberty and Liberalism: A Protest against the Growing Tendency toward undue Interference by the State, with Individual Liberty, Private Enterprise and the Rights of Property," W.S. Jevons' "The Theory of Political Economy," Yves Guyot's "Where and Why Public Ownership has Failed."

Update 4:30 pm:  I have made up my mind: I must download and read every single thing in that Online Library. I feel like a kid in a candy-store at the place.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 04, 2005 13:29 EST | Permalink | comments (6) |
books, economics

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Well you needn't

For the past four days, I've had Thelonius Monk's "Well You Needn't" stuck in my head.  Click here to listen to the full song on the background of a page. And not just Monk playing- bits of Carmen Mcrae's vocal rendition, Kenny Burrell and Larry Coryell's versions, etc. I find myself scatting it to my kitten.

For my four readers- do you also find Monk's music more able to stick in your head than other songs?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 04, 2005 11:58 EST | Permalink | comments |
music

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A progressive new plan for regressive price-fixing!

Too many plans for price fixing require that government immediately create a shortage in those goods viewed essential enough to make immediately scarce, by instituting a regressive policy designed to progressively destroy the progressive ability of prices to convey the information necessary to progressively equate supply and demand. Too many of these regressive policies are marred by the progressive necessity of regressively holding down the price with a gun in one hand, and begging people to "please buy less- or else" or companies to "please make more- or else." As if there were some means by which producers would voluntarily increase supplies, and consumers voluntarily decide not to buy as much!  As if some hare-brained scheme like that would work.

What is to be done about this horrible situation, the inability of price-fixes to actually get goods where they need to be? Is it possible that the threat of fines and imprisonment cannot accomplish what voluntary exchange can? Preposterous! Harumph! Clearly it is not because price-fixers are trying to do with a gun what prices do automatically. No, the solution hasn't been discovered because there has been a lack of progress on the front of progressive impossibilities regarding regressive possibilities!

Watch as with one fell (and simultaneously progressive) swoop I change this and progress to a new stage of regressive progress. Wait a second while I ram my head into the wall.

Ok, now I'm ready to expound a progressive new price-fixing plan. You see,  when the government issues a price-fixing decree, too often it simply holds the gun to the head of the consumer, and forces him to be unable to find any of that good which the government thought he'd like to have cheaply. Sure, it might beg him to buy less, or use what he has more sparingly, but clearly it impossible to get people to voluntarily be more economical. This is clearly regressive. More progressively, the government should hold, instead of just a gun, a tax-stamp in one hand along with the gun. It should set the price of the good at whatever level it used to be, then it should force the consumer to pay a "Progressive Tax for the Equation of Supply and Demand" for the good under threat of summary execution for tax-evasion. How much should the tax be, you ask? Well, that's the second part of the progressive program for progressive regression. The government should take that tax money, and give it to the businessman to bribe him to increase his supply.  But it should make both the businessman and the consumer fill out official forms in triplicate stating how much they would rather exchange. One copy of each form should go to the other party, and there be reevaluated if necessary. Then, the government should fix the cost of the tax at that finaly amount.  With only a few weeks of processing time, there could be a satisfactory and progressive state of regressive economy.

Let us now look at the regressive opportunities for progress this progressive program allows. Does it offer an incentive for producers to increase their supply to the amount demanded by consumers? You bet! Does it offer an incentive for consumers to decrease their consumption to the amount produced? You bet! Does it  equate supply and demand? You bet! Does it merely involve doing the same thing prices would do, without all the bureaucrats, bureaucratic forms, bureaucratic lag, threats, fines, taxes, infringements on property rights, and power-hungry politicians? I'm beginning to recover from my concusion now...

(This is a satire. Just wanted you to know. In case you thought it wasn't.  I know, I sounded convincingly progressive, but were you progressive enough to understand it was a joke? )

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 03, 2005 16:11 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
humor, economics, satire, libertarianism, best posts

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Rapex

Via Catallarchy:

So what is this device, for which design Ms Ehlers was inspired after meeting a traumatised rape victim who told her, “If only I had teeth down there", all about? A medieval device built on hatred of men? Or a cheap, easy-to-use invention that could free millions of South African women from fear of rape, in a country with the world’s worst sexual assault record?

“Rapex", the condom-like device bristling with internal hooks designed to snare rapists has re-ignited controversy over South Africa’s alarming rape rate, even before plans for its production were announced in Western Cape this week.

The device, concealed inside a woman’s body, hooks onto a rapist during penetration and must be surgically removed.

Ms Ehlers said the rape trap would be so painful for a rapist that it would disable him immediately, enabling his victim to escape; but would cause no long-term physical damage and could not injure the woman.

I wish I had thought of this. Imagine if one sold a package to women in muslim nations, containing one of these, a can of mace, a cigar-cutter, an Aretha Franklin cd, and a pamphlet on the rights of women in America. Instant revolution.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 03, 2005 13:16 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
news, discoveries

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European guinea pig perversions

Pastorius of Cuanas pointed out a shameful site which promotes the bestial schimmelaandoening of harmless guinea pigs.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 03, 2005 11:47 EST | Permalink | comments |

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Harumph!

With regard to the latest accusation lobbied against me by the degenerate followers of Shabatai Zevi, that

Tom believes in the Buisness [sic] cycle!!! I have proof, last night I snuck a glance into his window and saw him drawing a Philip's Curve while muttering to himself. i [sic] think he plans to create a new mathematically economical structure which will be the perfect fusion of: [sic]  Keynes, Marx, and the Paul Krugman! it [sic] will most likely involve prime numbers somehow. I would have gotten a better look but his antisemitic dog Jack started chasing me.

I can only say,  harumph (And, parenthetically, that the mathematical 'economists', by reifying statistical averages, both eliminate from their considerations the very phenonomena that is necessary to understand the cause and nature of the business cycle, and that by their Mercantalist methodological holism and pseudo-mathematics destroy any pretence at being economists)!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 03, 2005 11:39 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor

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Genius

 Go read this. Then buy him a cigar.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 01, 2005 03:04 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
humor

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Protect your child from hippy teachers

Some of the readers of my blog may be parents who are soon to release their kids into the grips of bitter hippies for five days a week. The constant wash of fallacies found in schools damages children in two ways: first, every minute the teacher spends ranting is one minute not spent teaching the subject material; second, eventually those beliefs will wear even into the mind of a child with the most careful parents. 

Here is a short list of books capable of protecting your child (even if college age) from the buffeting of postmodernism and modern liberalism. Each is guaranteed to allow your child to refute and humiliate his teachers if need be.

The Failure of the 'New Economics', by Henry Hazlitt. Hazlitt destroys Keynesianism line-by-line and word-by-word. This book is essential to preserving one's sanity in any economics or American History/sociology class. 

Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt. Each page will immunize your child from weeks worth of exposure to a teacher's rants.

FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and his New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, by Jim Powell. America's Great Depression, by Murray Rothbard. The Great Depression is one of the most highly slanted period in textbooks.

The Holocaust: a Jewish Tragedy, by Sir Martin Gilbert. Responsa from the Holocaust, by Rabbi Ephraim Oshry. Knowledge of the Shoah is the surest way to avoid moral relativism. If these books don't give your child ammunition against sociology professors, nothing will.

The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslems, edited by Robert Spencer. Picture this: after a teacher praises the treatment of the Jews under the Caliphate, your child raises his hand and recites the Hadithic laws regarding kufrs, the death toll of the Hindu Kush, or the status of rape-victims in modern day Saudi Arabia.

The Culture Trilogy, by Thomas Sowell. This is one of the most efficient safeguards against and refutations of  the "racism causes it" belief.

Affirmative Action Around the World, by Thomas Sowell. Ditto

Castro's Gulag: the Politics of Terror, by Frank Calzoin.  Perfect for rebutting the myth of Cuban utopia.

For you:

Inside American Education, by Thomas Sowell.

Insult to Intelligence: the Bureaucratic Invasion of our Classrooms,and Reading Without Nonsense, by Frank Smith. These are for you. Smith tells you how to make sure your child is being taught how to read, instead of being exposed to nonsense "expert-approved" learning programs.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 01, 2005 02:59 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
books, scruffy college student life

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