Mack Burped

2007-02-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

Ontario's Progressive Conservatives Steal Parental Guidance Logo

2006-10-05T14:06:00.000-04:00

Last night, Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader John Tory unveiled his party's new logo. It's origin seems strikingly obvious:

Parental Guidance. Yep, that about says it.

Christianity and the Borg

2006-07-08T21:51:00.000-04:00

I was visiting a top-notch blog (http://thelondonfog.blogspot.com) which used the following painting of the "Virgin" Mary with the baby Jesus in a piece about a sex-toy shop for Christians. Now, you tell me: was the guy who came up with the Borg making a comment about Christianity?:

Borg Queen: "Resistance is futile"

Christianity's Mary: "Reason is futile"

Happy 230th, USA!!

2006-07-04T08:05:00.000-04:00

Happy birthday America! I could do no better, on this important day, than to quote Thomas Jefferson:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government...

...We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved...

Or, to hear and see the entire Declaration read aloud by some familiar actors (it's quite moving, despite the fact that some of the actors doing the reading are, in truth, collectivists who, as such, could not possibly believe in individual rights as described in the Declaration):

Declaration of Independence Performance

DOWNLOAD VIDEO (QUICKTIME): 56k 100k 250k

DOWNLOAD VIDEO (WINDOWS MEDIA):56k 100k 250k

DOWNLOAD VIDEO (REAL MEDIA): 56k 100k 250k

"Produced by Norman Lear and Rob Reiner, and hosted by Morgan Freeman, this dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence features actors Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas, Kevin Spacey, Whoopi Goldberg, Ed Norton, Benicio Del Toro, Renee Zellweger, and Winona Ryder."

...This is your Brain on the Sun

2006-06-28T07:03:00.000-04:00

I write, today, at the great risk of looking like a guy who teases the mentally challenged. Here it goes anyway...

Garbage in, garbage out. If you are looking to spout garbage, I've got just the raw input that you need. A confusing, unprincipled, idea jumble, which is disguised as an editorial in today's Toronto Sun Newspaper.

Today's Sun "editorial" is titled Don't ban radical imam, expose him. "Good headline", I thought to myself, knowing that it concerns calls, by some, to prevent an English Imam from visiting Toronto to give a speech on Islam. The usual suspects are all lined up like attendees to a witch-burning, cheering "burn him, burn him"...er, maybe that was "ban him, ban him".

Photo from the most recent
Witch-burning rally I attended

In any event, the experience of reading this editorial is perhaps similar to that of listening to a person who has just downed about 1/2 of a 40 ouncer....or who advocates continued public funding for education. Just try to make sense out of THIS train of thought:

"Haq, who denigrates moderate Muslims, Jews, Hindus, homosexuals and others, has been invited by the Islamic Foundation of Toronto to speak to a conference of Muslim youth.
It's not clear whether he'll show up (other planned appearances in Canada have been cancelled) but in any event, The Muslim Canadian Congress, Canadian Jewish Congress, Hindu Dharma Mission and Egale Canada want him banned.

...as far as we can tell, Haq has never been convicted of hate speech or inciting violence. On that basis, we do not believe he should be barred from Canada...

...banning Haq could create the false impression, particularly among young Muslims, that we fear his absurd ideas.

The way to deal with such fanatics is to refute them...

Finally, if the police have grounds to suspect anyone may engage in unlawful speech, we urge them to attend [Haq's speech in Canada] as well.

The lesson to be drawn from all of this?

This is your brain.

This is your brain on the Toronto Sun.

Just say "No, I would not like a free, complimentary copy" to mediocre newspapers...on second thought, one exception: "...unless it has a Sunshine Girl in it".

Now, back to work, where I can forget my shame for reading that editorial...but not for seeing Lisa Anne on the third from last page ;-)

Colonel Sanders to Sue Ontario Government?

2006-06-24T03:16:00.000-04:00

Word has it that the estate of the late Colonel Sanders is about to sue for trademark infringement by the government of Ontario (Canada). Ontario, which announced yesterday that it has spent $219,000.00 for a redesign of the provincial government's trillium flower label, is alleged to have simply cut and paste it from a special part of the the stylized artwork of the Colonel's face, found on the side of the Colonel's chicken packaging: his facial hair.

Exhibit 1, below. Remember, you heard it here first.

Above: The colonel next to his
trademark packaging artwork.

Ontario's new $219,000.00 provincial
government trillium flower logo (see
Colonel's facial hair in the photo above)

Wilde about Truth and Lies

2006-06-16T00:42:00.000-04:00

The person who voices truth is indeed a lonely person most of the time, because so many people have no motivation to question what is false. Tax returns were due today (in Canada, for self-employed persons) so, rightly feeling raped by a government the very power of which is founded on a lie, I share with you the words of one who described some of the most moving truths about truth and falsehood: Oscar Wilde...

"A thing is not necessarily true
because a man dies for it."

Religious Suicide Bomber

"Truth is what's left over
when you run out of lies."

The semen-stained dress of Monica Lewinsky(courtesy of arch-half-truth-teller Bill Clinton)

"The pure and simple truth is
rarely pure and never simple."
Charles Darwin.

"Beware the half truth: you
may have gotten the wrong half."

"I did not have sex with that woman...Monica Lewinsky"
("sex", Clinton explained, means sexual intercourse...
whereas clinton merely received a blow-job and
penetrated Lewinsky with a cigar)

"As long as the truth is naked,
men will continue to
take liberties with her."
Neurologist Wilder Penfield. His research provided evidencethat thought is the product of the brain, not of a mystical soul.
Yet, closer to the grave, he allowed for mystical interpretations ofhis research.

"Man is least himself when he
talks in his own person. Give him
a mask and he will tell the truth."

"Deep Throat", a.k.a. W. Mark Felt

"If one tells the truth, one is sure,
sooner or later, to be found out."

Galileo, who demonstrated that the Earthrotates about the Sun, rather than vice versa, and who suggested that the Catholic church was "Simplicio" about the subject.

"Lie and the world lies with you;
tell the truth and the world lies about you."

Philosopher Ayn Rand,
who discovered and explained the proprietyof rational egoism.

Oscar Wilde

Postcards from the Edge of Racism

2006-06-13T17:03:00.000-04:00

For over 100 days, self-identified members of the "Six Nations" group of people who consider themselves to be ancestors of people who lived in North America before the Europeans did - some of the descendants of which Europeans, in turn, think it is somehow important that they were here before Africans were here - have been occupying a stretch of land abutting a recognized "Indian Reserve" in Caledonia, Ontario CANADA. The usual arguments are in place: "Yes the document was signed, but those natives didn't have authority to sign...or more should have signed for that document to count...or we were tricked" etc..

So far as I can tell, the current gaggle of protestors are over a hundred years late in commencing their action, any witnesses are dead, and title to the land is in fact registered to a land developer. Nobody is suggesting that the registration of that land happened only recently. Moreover, there haven't been "squatters rights" (gaining title to land by occupying it absent the title-holder for the requisite number of years) since Ontario moved from a Registry system to a Land Titles system (back in the 1990s).

Nobody, so far as I can tell, has raised the issue of a Statute of Limitations. Among "white man" living in Ontario, you get two years to sue over title to land...after that, you cannot sue and the issue is dead no matter whether you are in the right or in the wrong.

Meanwhile, bars the world over are filled with half-stoned World-Cup watchers who are cheering and flag-waving their way through a dream, chanting "I hope WE win the cup". Most have never so much as touched a soccer ball, and most couldn't run from one end of the field to the other without suffering a myocardial blow-out. There's no "WE" about it.

What do the ATV-riding, flag-waving, Tim Horton's coffee-drinking "natives" in Caledonia have in common with the overweight, nacho-dipping, beer-swilling, flag-waving soccer fans who are currently shirking work the world over? Excerpts from two Ayn Rand essays - Global Balkanization and Racism, both of which appear in Rand's book Return of the Primitive - are definitely of assistance in this regard:

On July 3, 1976, in a column entitled "The Split Nationality Syndrome," [Mr. Sulzberger] writes: "The present era's most paradoxical feature is the conflict between movements seeking to unify great geographical blocs into federations or confederations, and movements seeking to disintegrate into still smaller pieces the component nations trying to get together."

He offers an impressive list of examples. In France there is a Corsican autonomy movement, and similar movements of French Basques, of French Bretons, and of French inhabitants of the Jura belt west of Switzerland. "Britain is now obsessed with what is awkwardly called 'devolution.' This means watered-down autonomy and is designed to satisfy Welsh, but above all Scottish, nationalists." Beligum remains split "by an apparently insoluable language dispute between French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemish." Spain is facing demands for local independence "in Catalonia and the northern Basque country...German-speaking inhabitants of Italy's Alto Adige yearn to leave Rome and submit to Vienna. There is a tiny British-Danish argument...over the status of the Faroe Islanders...In Yugoslavia there are continuing disputes between Serbs and Croats...There is also unresolved ferment among Macedonians...some of whom, on occasion, revive old dreams of their own state including Greek Salonika and part of Bulgaria."

Please remember that these tribes and subtribes, which most of the world has never heard of - since they have achieved no distinction to hear about - are struggling to secede from whatever country they are in and to form their own separate, sovereign, independent nations on their own two-by-four stretches of the earth's crust.

I must make one correction. These tribes did achieve a certain kind of distinction: a history of endless, bloody warfare.
[...]
Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. It is a logical consequence of modern philosophy. If men accept the notion that reason is not valid, what is to guide them and how are they to live? Obviously, they will seek to join some group - any group - which claims the ability to lead them and to provide some sort of knowledge acquired by some sort of unspecified means. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group - they will be pulled obediently to join a group. But which group? Well, if you believe that you have no mind and no moral value, you cannot have the confidence to make choices - so the only thing for you to do is to join an unchosen group, the group into which you were born, the group to which you were predestined to belong by the sovereign, omnipotent, omnisicient power of your body chemistry.

This, of course, is racism. But if your group is small enough, it will not be called "racism": it will be called "ethnicity".

[...]

We are dealing with a phenomenon that is rising out of prehistorical ages.

Atavistic remnants and echoes of those ages have always existed in the backwaters of civilized countries, particularly in Europe, among the old, the tired, the timid, and those who gave up before they started. Such people are the carriers of "ethnicity." The "ways of living" they transmit from generation to generation consist in: folk songs, folk dances, special ways of cooking food, traditional costumes, and folk festivals. Although the professional "ethnics" would (and did) fight wars over the differences between their songs and those of their neighbours, there are no significant differences between them; all folk art is essentially similar and excruciatingly boring: if you've seen one set of people clapping their hands while jumping up and down, you've seen them all.

Now, observe the nature of those traditional ethnic "achievements": all of them belong to the perceptual level of man's consciousness. All of them are ways of dealing with or manipulating the concrete, the immediately given, the directly perceivable. All of them are manifestations of the preconceptual stage of human development.
[...]
A symptom of the tribal mentality's self-arrested, perceptual level of development may be observed in the tribualists' position on language...to a tribalist, language is a mystic heritage, a string of sounds handed down from his ancestors and memorized, not understood. To him, the importance lies in the perceptual concrete, the sound of a word, not its meaning. He would kill and die for the privilege of rinting on every postage stamp the word "postage" for the English-speaking and the word "postes" for the French-speaking citizens of his bilingual Canada.
[...]
But of course, it is not for their language that the tribalists are fighting: they are fighting to protect their level of awareness, their mental passivity, their obedience to the tribe, and their desire to ignore the existence of outsiders.
[...]
The tribalists clamor that their language preserves their "ethnic identity." But there is no such thing. Conformity to a racist tradition does not constitute a human identity. Just as racism provides a pseudo-self-esteem for men who have not earned an authentic one, so their hysterical loyalty to their own dialect serves a similar function: it provides a pretence at "collective self-esteem," an illusion of safety for the confused, frightened, precarious state of a tribalist's stagnant consciousness.

The proclaimed desire to preserve one's language and/or its literary works, if any, is a cover-up. In a free or even semi-free country, no one is forbidden to speak any language he choose with those who wish to speak it. But he cannot force it on others. A country has to have only one official language if men are to understand one another - and it makes no difference which language it is, since men live by the meaning, not the sound, of words...

But to the tribalists, language is not a tool of thought and communication. Language to them is a symbol of tribal status and power - the power to force their dialect on all outsiders.

[NOTE from Mack the Plain Little Turtle: all of the preceding quoted material appears in Rand's "Global Balkanization", the quotes below are from her essay, "Racism"]

Historically, racism has always risen or fallen with the rise or fall of collectivism. Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to "society," to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force - and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.
[...]

Like every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest for the unearned...Modern racists attempt to prove the superiority or inferiority of a given race by the historical achievements of some of its members...

Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, so there is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. There are only individual minds and individual achievements - and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.

Even if it were proved - which it is not - that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one's judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.

It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice: the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an inferior because his race has "produced" some brutes- or the claim of a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has "produced" Goethe, Schiller and Brahms.
[...]
There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and its politico- economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism.
Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, co-operation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.
It is not a man's ancestors or relatives or genes or body chemistry that count in a free market, but only one human attribute: productive ability. It is by his own individual ability and ambition that capitalism judges a man and rewards him accordingly.

Parental Guidence: This Film Undermines a Child's Acceptance of Reality; Discourages Rationality

2006-06-10T13:56:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press published some good news today. The Motion Picture Association of America is using its film rating system to warn viewers and parents of the existence - in a movie - of religious content:

But after the Motion Picture Association of America rated the film, [Reverend Alex Kendrick, who directed and stars in "Facing the Giants"] says he was told that it got the 'Parental Guidance' rating for being so openly religious. Kendrick says he's never heard of that criteria before and suggests it shows how much times have changed.

Fearing that such warnings might discourage the consumption of addictive, mind-numbing, anti-rational, anti-reality intellectual poison, religion traffickers have issued a response. The Christian Newswire put out a press release saying that Reverend Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, is "available for comment" on this, his written response:

This is what we have feared and warned about for years. There are forces in our culture using the arts and entertainment to marginalize people of faith and even vilify them. Abusing the film rating system is just the newest weapon in the anti-religion arsenal.

Yes it is, and that's a good thing. He continues:

To say that children can't see a film because of its religious content is more serious in its symbolism than it is in reality.

Yes, and that's precisely why the Revenend is frothing at the mouth: he cares very little about reality.

No matter how they cut it, it says 'religion can be harmful to young children.' Nothing is farther from the truth.

Nothing could be further from the truth?:

Religious Children

The "good" Reverend continues:

Research shows that children engaged in regular religious activity, particularly church activities, do far better in every way than children who are not.

Well, just one look at a photo like the one I've posted above tells me that children engaged in religious activity "do far better" at things like blowing up themselves and others.

"This is an outrage, an insult to all people who take their faith seriously, and to religious leaders and institutions. This cannot be allowed to go unchallenged."

I'll take that as a warning. So should anyone else who values freedom.

Bible Should Have "Fiction" Warning Label: McKellen

2006-05-17T19:41:00.000-04:00

On the Today Show with Matt Lauer, Lauer was interviewing some of the personalities involved in the making of The Davini Code (the movie). Lauer said:

"There have been calls from some religious groups, they wanted a disclaimer at the beginning of this movie saying it is fiction because one of the themes in the book really knocks Christianity right on its ear, if Christ survived the crucifixion, he did not die for our sins and therefore was not resurrected. What I'm saying is, people wanted this to say 'fiction, fiction, fiction'. How would you all have felt if there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie? Would it have been okay with you?"

British actor Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf of Lord of the Rings, responded:

"Well, I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith. And I have faith in this movie. Not that it's true, not that it's factual, but that it's a jolly good story. And I think audiences are clever enough and bright enough to separate out fact and fiction, and discuss the thing after they've seen it."

Of course, at or below water's freezing point, walking on water requires nothing more than a warm pair of shoes (or ice-skates). However, there can be little doubt that the stories in the Bible - despite the probable existence of many natural, historical facts within the Bible - have led billions to adopt the idea that self-sacrifice, rather than ones own life is man's highest moral value; that misery and poverty, not ones own happiness and plenty, is ones highest purpose; and that faith, rather than rationality, is man's highest virtue. Nor can the rational mind seriously doubt that the Bible is laiden with fictional tales of the supernatural.

Sir Ian McKellen, British actor
famous the world over for playing
Gandalf the Grey, among numerous
other roles.

For that reason, I say three cheers for Ian McKellen, and his light-hearted but humourous comment. Irrationality needs to be poked...repeatedly...until attempts to defend it engage the rational faculty of the faithful sufficiently for them to discover that they hold myth as fact.

Conservativism, Christianity, and the Enemies of Capitalism

2006-05-14T11:57:00.000-04:00

Kudos to an enemy of humanity and capitalism, William F. Buckley Jr., for providing - so succinctly - evidence that conservatives are an even bigger threat to human life and capitalism than those who bill themselves as socialists. The following is from Buckley's National Review editorial, posted online on May 9, 2006:

"...Mr. Bush can hardly endorse unrestrained capitalism and pursue the grace of Christ. Those who worship capitalism to sacramental lengths are defiantly anti-Christian, like Ayn Rand and her utterly unholy Objectivists..."

William F. Buckley, Jr. shakes hands with
American President George W. Bush.

Oh, where to begin? How about starting (and ending) with Rand herself?:

"...altruism...is the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization, and men survived it only to the extent to which they neither believed nor practiced it. But it has caught up with them - and that is the killer which they now have to face and defeat. That is the basic choice they have to make. If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject...
"The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value...
"There is no earthly reason for [self-sacrifice] - and...in the whole history of philosophy no earthly reason has ever been given.
"It is only mysticism that can permit moralists to get away with it. It was mysticism, the unearthly, the supernatural, the irrational, that has always been called upon to...escape the necessity of justification [of altruism]...
"The real conflict, of course, is reason versus mysticism...
"Reason is the faculty which perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses. Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of ones senses and ones reason...Mysticism is the claim to a non-sensory means of knowledge..."
"There are, fundamentally, only two causes of the progress of the nineteenth century...The first is reason, the second is freedom...freedom from rule by physical force...
"[The] antagonists [of reason and freedom] are: faith and force...
"Why did capitalism, the truly magnificent benefactor of mankind, arouse nothing but resentment, denunciations and hatred, then and now? Why did the so-called defenders of capitalism keep apologizing for it, then and now? Because...capitalism and altruism are incompatible.
"Make no mistake about it - and tell it to your Republican friends: capitalism and altruism cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society.
"Tell it to anyone who attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of the "public good" or the "general welfare" or "service to society" or the benefit it brings to the poor. All these things are true, but they are the by-products, the secondary consequences of capitalism - not its goal, purpose or moral justification. The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man - every man - is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, not a sacrificial animal serving someone's need...
"The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced. If service and self-sacrifice are a moral ideal, and if the "selfishness" of human nature prevents men from leaping into sacrificial furnaces, there is no reason - no reason that a mystic moralist could name - why a dictator should not push them in at the point of bayonets - for their own good, or the good of humanity, or the good of posterity, or the good of the latest bureaucrat's latest five-year plan. There is no reason that they can name to oppose any atrocity. The value of a man's life? His right to exist? His right to pursue his own happiness? These are concepts that belong to individualism and capitalism - to the antithesis of the altruist morality.
"Twenty years ago, the conservatives were uncertain, evasive, morally disarmed before the aggressive moral self-righteousness of the liberals. Today, both are uncertain, evasive, morally disarmed before the aggressiveness of the communists. It is not a moral aggressiveness any longer, it is the plain aggressiveness of a thug - but what disarms the modern intellectuals is the secret realization that a thug is the inevitable, ultimate and only product of their cherished morality." - from "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World", in Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It.

Philosopher Ayn Rand
a.k.a. "utterly unholy"

Buckley ends with:

"Mr. Bush faces a lot of problems, and some of them are correctly informed by religious understandings. Why not infanticide? Well, let me explain . . . Jesus wouldn't approve."

Rand too would reject infanticide, but to the epistemological, ethical and political implications of statements similar to Buckley's, Rand has replied:

"Anyone who resorts to the formula: "It's so because I say so," will have to reach for a gun, sooner or later." - from "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World", in Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It.

A depiction of faith and force in action: an illustration
by Steve Ditko, the creator of the character Spiderman.

Now, there will certainly be readers who say 'Things aren't so black and white, and Buckley is actually in favour of a capitalism that is tempered by the teachings of Christianity.' Rand had numerous answers to such statements. Here are two. First, to the issue of whether a middle-of-the-road approach is feasible:

"...the only alternative to [Objectivism] is communist slavery. The "middle-of-the-road" is like an unstable, radioactive element that can last only so long - and its time is running out...
"The issue will be decided, not in the middle, but between the two consistent extremes. It's Objectivism or communism. It's a rational morality based on man's right to exist - or altruism..." - from "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World", in Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It.

Second, to the issue of whether Buckley and other Conservatives (whether or not they are altruists, like Buckley) help or hinder capitalism with their talk of a capitalism somehow tempered by Christianity, or justified by other altruistic ends (i.e., not capitalism):

"...the guiltiest men are not the collectivists; the guiltiest men are those who, lacking the courage to challenge mysticism or altruism, attempt to bypass the issues of reason and morality and to defend the only rational and moral system in mankind's history - capitalism - on any grounds other than rational and moral." - from "What is Capitalism", in Ayn Rand's Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal.

William F. Buckley, Jr.: The Unknown Ideal Communist.

Cinco de Mayo, the Munroe Doctrine, and the Birth of Canada

2006-05-05T17:34:00.000-04:00

The fifth of May is celebrated by many as "Cinco de Mayo". Why is the day important? And why might Americans, Canadians and Mexicans alike see the celebration as one of significance?

After the 1860 election of US President Abraham Lincoln, seven states seceded from the Union, and established an independent Southern government, the "Confederate States of America" on February 9, 1861. The American civil war began on April 12, 1861 with the opening of fire upon Fort Sumpter.

Three months later, on July 17, 1861, Mexico's President Benito Juárez suspended payments of interest on loans to foreign countries. Spain, France and Britain were among the creditors. On October 31, 1861, those three countries signed the Treaty of London, agreeing to unite their efforts to collect the debts owing from Mexico. This was in direct defiance of America's Monroe Doctrine, which warned Europe to stay out of the affairs in our hemisphere. America, however, was engaged in a civil war.

On December 8, 1861, the Spanish arrived in Mexico, followed by the British and French on January 6 and 8, 1862, respectively. However, for France, debt collection was but a cover story. France's plan was to depose the Mexican government and set up a monarchy favourable to France, following which it would expand its control into Central and South America. Realizing that the French had such ambitions in Mexico, the British and the Spanish withdrew their troops in April of 1862.

On May 5, 1862, French troops attacked in Puebla. However, Mexican indians, armed largely with machete's, led a cavalry that caused the French, who lost hundreds of men, to retreat. For at least a short period, the Mexicans and - thanks to the Mexicans - the Americans, could breath a sigh of relief.

But the battle of Cinco de Mayo was only the beginning of a chain of events that, arguably, led to the creation of Canada.

Impressed by the Mexican's performance on May 5, 1862, the French returned with 30,000 men and took Puebla on May 17, 1863. Mexico City fell to the French in June and the crown was offerred to Maximilian I, a member of Austria's Imperial Habsburg family, who accepted the crown on October 3, 1863. Emporer Maximilian arrived in Mexico in May of 1864. French forces continued winning battles in Mexico before and after his arrival, into 1865.

The US Congress had unanimously passed a resolution which opposed the establishment of the Mexican monarchy on April 4, 1964. In June of 1865, the American Civil War ended and viewing a powerful French presence in Mexico as a threat to the USA, the USA began supplying the Mexican republican forces with arms. US soldiers were discharged if they decided to support the Mexican army.

On February 12, 1866, the US demanded the French withdraw their forces from Mexico. Napoleon the III agreed to do so and urged Maximilian to abandon Mexico. Refusing to abandon his imperialist supporters, Maximilian instead decided to stay and fight...and, eventually, to lose to the Republican forces of Benito Juárez.

The Americans having sent men and guns to help the forces of republicanism in Mexico to fight off the European imperialists, one might forgive Britain for being a bit worried that America might engage in similar efforts to the north.

According to Bruce Ricketts:

Since 1850, William Seward, the American Secretary of State during the Civil War, had been an annexationist who felt that British North America (Canada) was destined to become part of the United States. As it became obvious that the North would emerge victorious from the War, there was a fear that American expansionism would rear its head and turn its eyes to the north. In the Canadas and the Maritimes many thought that invading BNA [British North America] would give the victorious Union army something to do. The possibility of annexation was even more real in the northwest of what is now Canada. In 1860 Seward praised the people of Rupert's Land for conquering the wilderness and creating a great state for the American Union. In the election of 1864 the Republican Party used annexation as a means to gain support from Irish Americans and the land-hungry.

An Annexation Bill introduced by General Banks was passed in the United States House of Representatives in July of 1866. It intended that the United States acquire all of what is now Canada. Whether based in reality or not, the fear of annexation played a definite role in the achievement of Canadian Confederation and in shaping its constitution...Sir É.-P. Taché, Premier of Lower Canada, said it best in 1866: "If the opportunity [for Confederation] which now presented itself were allowed to pass by unimproved, whether we would or would not, we would be forced into the American Union by violence, and if not by violence, would be placed upon an inclined plain which would carry us there insensibly."

Prior to March 29, 1867, British North America was comprised of 6 colonies - Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia. On March 29, 1867, Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the British North America Act, a statute passed by the Imperial Parliament in Great Britain. The BNA Act took away some legislative powers from the colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Canada, divided the Province of Canada into the provinces of Quebec and Ontario (Lower and Upper Canada had been combined into one "Province of Canada" in 1844, largely in a failed attempt to water-down French culture and influence in Canada), and gave those powers (over such matters as criminal law, railroads, banking and the military) to a newly-formed legislative body: the Parliament of the Dominion of Canada. Between the federal Parliament and the Provincial Legislatures, the new Dominion of Canada - with its elected members of parliament - arguably satisfied or attenuated many of the concerns of those with republican sympathies, who felt that too much legislative control rested in the Imperial Parliament of far-away Britain.

On May 11, 1867, Maximilian decided upon an attempted escape through enemy lines, but he was captured by Juárez's republicans. He was executed by firing squad on June 19, 1867. On July 1, 1867, the British North America Act came into force, forming what is now still formally called the Dominion of Canada, but what is more commonly called "Canada".

Okay, many of the links are a bit tenuous, but the whole story will certainly provide for some interesting tale-telling tonight, should you decide to sit down with some friends and, looking for something to which to toast, say "Happy Cinco de Mayo!"

P.S. Click here for Cinco de Mayo recipes and drink ideas

Growing Government the Conservative Way

2006-05-03T07:39:00.000-04:00

"The biggest trick the devil every pulled was convincing people he didn’t exist." - Kaiser Soze (character in the movie, The Usual Suspects).

"We're all socialists now" - George Bernard Shaw

It's bright in Canada's largest city today, but that can only mean that the country has descended closer to the magnesium-white fires of socialist hell.

Yesterday, Canada's new Conservative Party of Canada government released its first budget. I turned to the only part of the Finance Minister's budget speech that really matters these days (since almost all of the money is spent on things that no government should be involved in): the part that talks about total government spending.

There, like the plantars wart that no amount of Compound W can kill, was that combination of phrases that government-growing socialist governments have delivered with each budget, much like a one-two punch, for as long as I can remember:

"...government revenue as a share of GDP is projected to decline from 16.4 per cent in 2004–05 to 15.5 per cent in 2007–08.
"I am proud to say that because of this budget, growth in program spending is projected to fall below the rate of economic growth. As a result, program spending as a share of GDP is projected to decline from 13.7 per cent in 2004–05 to 13.0 per cent in 2007–08."

Let's cut through the bullshit, shall we?

Basically, GDP ("Gross Domestic Product") is a measure of the value of the goods and services produced in Canada in one calendar year. According to this year's budget figures, Canada's gross domestic product was at $1,290B in 2004-2005, and will be at $1,517B in 2007.

So, let's do the math.

TAXING:

16.4% x $1,290B = $211.56B
15.5% x $1,517B = $235.14B
Increase: $23.58B

SPENDING:

13.7% x $1,290B = $176.73B
13.0% x $1,517B = $197.21B
Increase: $20.48B

So, let's give the honest version of the Minister's message:

"I am proud to say that because of this budget, government revenues will increase $23.58B and government spending will grow by $20.48B, by 2007-2008."

In other words: he is proud that he is continuing the socialist tradition of making the government even bigger.

Now, ask yourself: why didn't the minister just come out and say that taxes and spending would increase? Was he unable to do the math? No, that cannot be it: one doesn't need to do the math because the actual taxing and spending figures (not as a percentage of GDP) are printed right in the budget.

The truth, of course, is that - being a Conservative - he has to do what Conservatives always do: pretend that they are not socialists (which, ladies and gentlemen, is what Shaw meant by "We're all socialists now").

The Conservative deception is done by wording everything in the form of a decrease. "Less" must always be qualified with "as a percentage of [something that is growing]".

Courtesy, Little Big Man

"Less is better", they hope lovers of freedom will think, without getting into the details...details that disclose the genesis of the term "Less is more", or "A is not A".

Kind of like "Conservative is not Conservative".

A Day Without Immigrants (i.e., May Day): Immigrants the Intended Pawns of Racist Leftists

2006-05-01T20:31:00.000-04:00

Well, it's May Day, a day the significance of which stems to a strike by union members in Chicago on May 1, 1886: they wanted an 8-hour work day. In the days that followed, local anarchists distributed pamplets that were a "call to arms" on May 4 in the city's Haymarket Square. Folks arrived but someone (who was never identified) threw a bomb that killed one police officer. Police opened fire on the crowd. They injured dozens. Eleven people were killed. The anarchist organizers of the event were convicted not for having thrown the bomb, but for having caused the situation that ended up in a bomb being thrown, etc..

In those days, the only anarchist to be found was an anti-capitalist one. Hence, since that time, leftists of various stripes have claimed "May Day" as their own "International Workers Day". Google the news for most countries around the world today, and you'll find a fine assortment of morally bankrupt, economically impoverished communists unwittingly praising the cause of their ills.

Is it different in North America? Well, the story goes that, in North America, governments discouraged participation in leftist events on May 1 both by changing when labour celebrates (in North America, "Labor Day" is celebrated in September), and by pushing the celebration of different things on May 1 (such things as "Law Day", and "Loyalty Day", in the USA). And, most certainly, we didn't see wide-scale "May Day" or anarchist "Smash the State" rallies today...at least, not in name.

It's no mere coincidence that today's working and shopping strike by immigrants in the USA today - which organizers named "A Day Without Immigrants" - was scheduled for May 1, or that it was focussed in Chicago.

Consider who organized it. According to my favourite whipping boy, wikipedia, the mischief-makers are:

1. The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition : which, taking credit for just about any large group of people that happened to form anywhere on the globe, claims:
"The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition formed on September 14, 2001."
"The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition organized the first national demonstration against war and racism following September 11 on September 29, 2001, which brought 25,000 people into the streets of Washington DC and 15,000 in San Francisco. "
"The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition organized mass mobilizations on April 20, 2002 for a free Palestine and against a threatened war in Iraq. 100,000 people rallied at the White House and marched in Washington DC in the largest march in U.S. history in support of justice for Palestine."
"May 2002 - In response to a renewed massive aggression from Israeli Occupation Forces against the Palestinian people, at a time when the world media, the U.N., and traditional human rights organizations fell silent, the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition dispatched an emergency fact-finding delegation to the West Bank and Gaza."
"In June 2002, A.N.S.W.E.R. organized a demonstration at the FBI and Justice Department buildings opposing the USA Patriot Act and attacks on civil rights and civil liberties"
"As the Congress illegally voted to give the Bush administration a blank check to wage a war of aggression against the people of Iraq, on October 26, 2002, A.N.S.W.E.R. organized the first major national demonstration in opposition to the war drive against Iraq."
"On January 18, 2003, A.N.S.W.E.R. initiated the first internationally coordinated day of action against the war in Iraq. On that day, 500,000 people demonstrated in Washington DC, 200,000 in San Francisco."
"February 15, 2003 - For the second global day of action, this time called by and anchored in the European movement, A.N.S.W.E.R. mobilized nationally for the demonstration that drew 500,000 to NYC, as well as for the simultaneous actions in Los Angeles, which drew 100,000, the largest protest in the history of the city, as well as in San Francisco, Chicago and in other cities across the country."
"March 15, 2003 - With the threat of war looming, ANSWER put out an emergency call and organized demonstrations of over 100,000 in Washington, DC, 100,000 in San Francisco, and 50,000 in Los Angeles, just 4 days before the beginning of the war."
"April 12, 2003 - A.N.S.W.E.R. began the campaign against U.S. occupation of Iraq in April 2003. Marching behind the banner: "Occupation is Not Liberation," ANSWER led a march of 30,000 in Washington, D.C. on April 12 -- just 3 days after the so-called "fall of Baghdad."
"Nearly six months after President Bush proclaimed an "end to major combat operations," a demonstration of 100,000 calling to "Bring the troops home now" and "End the occupation of Iraq" took place in Washington DC on October 25. The mobilization included significant participation from the Arab and Muslim community..."
"March 20, 2004 - On the first anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and others put out a call for March 20 to be a coordinated day of regional actions in the U.S. in conjunction with protests taking place around the world...The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, in addition to organizing an immediate response, modified the main slogan of the demonstration to be "End colonial occupations from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti and everywhere."
"June 5 [2005] - More than 20,000 people participated in June 5 Coast to Coast Speak Truth to Power rallies in Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The central focus of the demonstrations were to end the occupation of Iraq. It also demanded an end to the colonial occupations in Haiti and Palestine."
"A.N.S.W.E.R. put out a call and mobilized nationally to "Protest the Twin Parties of the War Machine" in July in Boston during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and in August in NYC during the Republican National Convention (RNC). "
"On Thursday, January 20, 2005 the day of Bush’s second inauguration - over 10,000 antiwar protested at A.N.S.W.E.R. Mass Convergence site on Inaugural Parade route between 3rd & 4th St. on Pennsylvania Ave. "
In a nutshell: anti-semitic, radical communist/anarchist leftists, obviously financed by...union donations pryed from unwitting, unconsenting members' pockets in the form of mandatory dues.

2. The Workers World Party: a communist fringe party formed in the USA in the 50s. More clearly than the delusional A.N.S.W.E.R. folks, the Workers World Party exposes the fact that getting immigrants to protest today was a strategy to make it look as though they (a) were all part of some sort of international workers of the world movement, (b) were all communist, (c) were all against the mission in Iraq, and (d) all share the modern left's anti-semitism.

Now, who the heck knows whether the wikipedia entry - claiming that A.N.S.W.E.R. and the Workers World Party organized this event - has a grain of truth about it? For example, the entry could have been made by A.N.S.W.E.R. or by the Workers World Party. Yet, in a way, that's really a side issue. The real issue is that they are claiming credit and, in the absense of evidence to the contrary (e.g., a claim by someone else), they will receive credit, especially because they are already committing that legend to paper/wikipedia: he who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future...and he who defaults in their duty to make it clear just what really did happen (I note that Reuters, for example, doesn't provide much information about who organized today's event), leave the control of the present to the nutbars in A.N.S.W.E.R. and the Workers World Party.

The Bottom Line

Immigrant workers of the USA were used today: used by people who share the philosophy that oppressed them in the countries from which they fled to come to a freer place. Used by their torturers.

And defamed by them. According to Reuters, immigrants showed up today "...in support of an overhaul of America's immigration laws". How many of the well-intended immigrants who demonstrated today - for that purpose - realized that communists and anarchists would be claiming that the immigrant demonstrators today came out to demonstrate for communism, for anarchism, for anti-semitism, or against the mission in Iraq?

Shame on both A.N.S.W.E.R. and the Workers World Party. Both, in my view, are anti-immigrant...they would have to be, to use immigrants in this way.

Final word: lock up criminals if they enter the country, but let everyone else roam freely across borders, working where they can find a buyer for their services. The rest is just 20th century protectionism, central planning, and racism.

Today, burn a candle in support of folks - whether citizen, "legal" immigrant, or "illegal" immigrant; of all genetic make-ups and countries of origin - who just want to work, get paid market rates, and peacefully pursue happiness in the freest country in the world.

Immigrant demonstrators in the USA...clearly not sharing the anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-semitic sentiments of A.N.S.W.E.R. and the Workers World Party

One anti-semitic, lefty anarchist, in a sea of freedom-loving, pro-USA immigrants

Dead, Finally: John Kenneth Galbraith

2006-05-01T10:59:00.000-04:00

The social-democratic Toronto Star newspaper today profiles the life of one of the 20th century's most influential (hence most guilty) Keynesian economists, John Kenneth Galbraith.

John Kenneth Galbraith,
pusher of economic and moral poison.

Galbraith died of pneumonia at the age of 97, this past Saturday, April 29, 2006. The Star presumably wrote this piece not simply because Galbraith was influential - many influential people die every day without being profiled in the Star - but because he was a socialist and was born in Canada. Although he lived in the USA for the last 75 years of his life, we can expect Canadian media and historians to categorize him as a "Canadian" economist, in the fine Canadian tradition of calling any influential person Canadian if they have the remotest of connections to the country (e.g., Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell, who emigrated to Canada at the age of 23, but moved the USA within about 3 years later, and eventually became a naturalized citizen of the USA...where he invented the telephone). From the Star's profile:

While he not infrequently spoke to Canadian audiences, Galbraith well and truly left Canada behind.

Oddly, the Star actually states:

In novelist Anthony Burgess's description, Galbraith was one of "the two greatest modern Canadians that the United States has produced," along with Marshall McLuhan.

Perhaps the Star's editors missed the implications of the quote (which also made its way into the Star's by-line)?

John Maynard Keynes gave government intervention in the economy the false appearance of legitimacy with his enormously influential book "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" (which you can read at Marxists.org ): the book, in effect, recommends that governments neutralize the business cycle by spending when the private sector is in a lull, and taxing when it is doing well. To the end, Galbraith promoted Keynesianism, and many favourite causes of pacifistic socialists, who continue to cling to Keynesianism and interpret it as an intellectual justification for socialism.

From the Star's profile:

"Despite decades of ferocious conservative criticism," wrote Galbraith biographer Richard Parker in John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics, (2005), "a great deal of the world that Galbraith and his fellow reform liberals created between 1900 and 1980 (endured) into the new century: the minimum wage, workers' rights, vastly expanded and publicly financed health care, prohibitions on discrimination based on race and gender, an influential environmental movement (and environmental laws), a major reduction in poverty, a large middle class, expanded educational opportunities, Social Security. Government as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is larger today than it was when Galbraith last served in it, and has shown no sign of growing smaller."

Galbraith's support for communism was perfectly consistent with his ethical philosophy that self-sacrifice is somehow good, and that the pursuit of ones own happiness is not:

As for conservatives, Galbraith to the end castigated them for spouting what he regarded as the transparent cant of self-interest.
"The modern conservative," Galbraith said, "is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

There is some truth in the profile:

Galbraith was a self-described victim of mediocre pedagogy at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph...

At least he attended before Ontario's universities became bastions for intellectually mediocre leftists...oh wait, he would have liked that.

Should America cry a tear over this fella's death? Consider that:

Galbraith did befriend Pierre Trudeau, and often cited Canada and Scandinavia as examples of a civility to which the United States might someday aspire.

Oy-yoy-yoy. The USA 'aspiring' to be like two morally-crippled socialist economic weakings. Yeah, what will the USA do without 'advice' like that.

All of which brings up for me a few lines from The Forgotten Rebels' now forgotten tune, Elvis is Dead:

Elvis is dead,
Elvis is dead
The big fat guy
is dead, dead, dead
Elvis is dead, Elvis is dead
The big fat goof is dead, dead, dead

Millions of assholes mourned his death
I'm gonna steal his body from the place of rest
Millions of assholes mourned his death
I'm gonna steal his body from the place of rest
Give him back in pieces when the ransom's paid
Leave his hypodermics where the moneys laid

Oh, Elvis is dead,
Elvis is dead
The big fat goof
is dead, dead, dead
Elvis is dead, Elvis is dead
Spend your money on our records instead

Pretty much sums it up for Galbraith too. Good riddance.

Wiki-prop: Wikipedia a political smear device

2006-04-29T12:03:00.000-04:00

For anyone with even a passing familiarity with political party/candidate entries on the wikipedia.org site, this story will come as no surprise.

For the uninitiated: wikipedia.org is a website that purports to be an online encyclopedia. In fact, it can provide some interesting information (links etc.) as a starting point for study. However, the content on each wikipedia page can be edited...by anyone...without authorization...anonymously.

Wikipedia logo.

Want folks to believe that Thomas Jefferson was a cross-dressing gay man who invented communism and founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? No problem, just go to the entry for Thomas Jefferson and type it in (really, try it: just type it in, save it, and that is exactly what the wikipedia.org entry for Thomas Jefferson will say...until someone else comes along and changes it so that he was, in fact, the original face of the Cream of Wheat chef). In short: it's a total joke.

Was the next Cream of Wheat guy actuallyJefferson's son? Why not just say so?...on wikipedia.org.

The next problem is: wikipedia's database is free. If you want to set up your own "encyclopedia" on your own website, but to use wikipedia's entries and pass them off as your own, that's perfectly allowed and encouraged.

The result? Well, wikipedia.org, and all of the various copies of it going by various names, have become among the most highly-ranked google.com entries on virtually every subject. The result of that?: hundreds or thousands of "encyclopedias" that agree that Thomas Jefferson was a cross-dressing gay man who invented communism and founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. More legitimate web sites, saying otherwise, get shoved way down the google.com ranks, where nobody will seem them. Ultimate result: a false consensus...which can lead to what Noam Chomsky would call "manufacturing consent"(if wikipedia.org were a capitalist, profitable enterprise). And: please, please, please: no, I'm not a Chomsky fan.

Leftist "libertarian" Noam Chomsky

The result of that?: thousands or millions of people who actually believe that Jefferson was a cross-dressing gay man who invented communism and founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Google.com apparently doesn't particularly care that multiple copies of the same nonsense are occupying its top-ranked entries and pushing non-wikipedia sites down the list (and on to the second, third...or tenth...google results page).

The opportunity?: smear your political opponents.

Those involved in politics have been aware of the problem for years. In particular, the left has used wikipedia to smear parties, candidates, or commentators who are proponents of capitalism. Usually, the approach is to insinuate that the person/organization has received money from someone who is suspected to have racist, sexist, etc. leanings: guilt by association (Note, for even-handedness: the right has been equally harmful to the cause of the left...by using these sneaky things called "truths"). And, as the victims of these smear campaigns can tell you, attempts to edit wikipedia entries - to remove the defamatory material - fail: those intent on smearing will typically save the defamatory version and re-insert defamatory material within hours.

As the following story shows, this smearing occurs despite the work of thousands of wikipedia staff. Apparently, however, wikipedia doesn't see itself as being legally responsible for allowing people to use its system to smear folks. I suspect, though, that if this problem continues, there will be some legislation introduced from some of the various politicians who have been smeared using wikipedia's database.

And rightly so. In effect, wikipedia is setting up a billboard and knowingly lending it to folks who it knows will use it to slander people and organizations to millions of readers. The billboard, however, remains under the control of wikipedia.org at all times: wikipedia at all times has the power to eliminate defamatory content, to prevent defamers from posting to wikipedia, and to prevent the editing of pages (editing that would insert defamatory material). It is aiding and abetting, in that sense. It's time for it to stop and, if wikipedia won't take responsibility for its facilitations - or if it lacks the resources to do so - it's gotta go.

Shannon McCaffrey, of the Associated Press, writes:

Atlanta — Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that can be altered by anyone with a computer, has proved remarkably useful for pulling political dirty tricks.
Political operatives are covertly rewriting or defacing candidates' biographical entries to make the boss look good or the opponent look ridiculous.
As a result, political campaigns are monitoring the website more closely than ever this election year.
Revisions made by Capitol Hill staffers became so frequent and disruptive earlier this year that Wikipedia temporarily blocked access to the site from some congressional Internet addresses. The pranks included bumping up the age of the Senate's oldest member, West Virginia's Robert Byrd, from 88 to 180, and giving crude names to other legislators.
The entry for Democratic Representative Jim Marshall of Georgia labelled him “too liberal” for his state, in part because of a contribution he received from a political action committee run by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. The man who doctored Mr. Marshall's biography now works for his Republican challenger.
In Georgia this week, the campaign manager for a candidate for governor resigned amid allegations he doctored the Wikipedia biography of an opponent in the Democratic primary.
Morton Brilliant was accused of revising the entry for Lt.-Gov. Mark Taylor to add his son's arrest last August in a drunken driving accident that left his best friend dead.
The information was accurate and had been in the news. But Mr. Brilliant's boss, Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox, declared the son's legal troubles out of bounds.
The link to Mr. Brilliant was discovered by Mr. Taylor's campaign, which immediately accused the Cox camp of engaging in “gutter politics” and demanded Mr. Brilliant's resignation.
Some 1,000 volunteer monitors scan changes to Wikipedia's entries to keep them free of obvious partisan editing, factual errors and profanity, said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. “The beauty of a forum like this is free speech,” Wales said. “But we also promote a neutral point of view.”
Mr. Wales said entries have to meet a standard of newsworthiness and, as a general rule, should not be written by an interested party, whether a supporter or an opponent.
But finding out who is writing what on the site is not always easy. Internet addresses can be traced to a computer, but not necessarily to the person at the keyboard. And experts say someone with computer savvy could easily cover his or her tracks.
With more and more Americans getting news and information from the Internet, the stakes are high. Wikipedia had 25.6 million unique visitors in March, making it the 18th most popular site on the Internet.
Not surprisingly, the Wikipedia entry that has been altered the most is U.S. President George W. Bush's. “Take a deep breath,” the site urges readers about to plunge into the passionate political debate.
Other changes are more subtle rewrites of history. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's name has mysteriously started to disappear from the entries of some officials with ties to the embattled Texas politician who is facing a money-laundering trial. The staff of Representative Martin Meehan (D-Mass.) rewrote his biography to delete a reference to a promise, since broken, that he would serve only four terms.
Wikipedia leapt into the news last year after the journalist and former Kennedy administration aide John Seigenthaler Sr. complained that someone had edited his Wikipedia entry to say that he had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. The man who posted the false information said it had been a joke.
The flap prompted Wikipedia to adopt stricter controls, Mr. Wales said.
However, such oversight is probably minor, said Steven Jones, who teaches communications and technology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“Given the sheer size of Wikipedia and the sheer number of entries, it seems impossible that they could police it in an effective way,” Mr. Jones said.

Final note: wikipedia.org is the inspiration for Uncyclopedia: which encourages humourous, false entries for everything. Most of the stuff there isn't that funny (at least not to me), but it at least serves to make a point about what can be (and often is) done at wikipedia (although, usually with much more subtlety and effectiveness, if one is measuring the effectiveness of propaganda).

I'll Believe It When I See It: Atlas Shrugged Movie in Works?

2006-04-28T18:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I cannot count the number of times I have heard that someone is in the process of turning Ayn Rand's master integration of fiction and philosophy - Atlas Shrugged (Mack Burped...hmmm) - into a movie.

However, the latest report comes from movie industry magazine Variety:

Ayn Rand's most ambitious novel may finally be brought to the bigscreen after years of false starts.

Lionsgate has picked up worldwide distribution rights to "Atlas Shrugged" from Howard and Karen Baldwin ("Ray"), who will produce with John Aglialoro.
As for stars, book provides an ideal role for an actress in lead character Dagny Taggart, so it's not a stretch to assume Rand enthusiast Angelina Jolie's name has been brought up. Brad Pitt, also a fan, is rumored to be among the names suggested for lead male character John Galt.

"Atlas Shrugged," which runs more than 1,100 pages, has faced a lengthy and circuitous journey to a film adaptation.

The Russian-born author's seminal tome, published in 1957, revolves around the economic collapse of the U.S. sometime in the future and espouses her individualistic philosophy of objectivism. The violent, apocalyptic ending has always posed a challenge but could prove especially so in the post-9/11 climate.

Howard Baldwin said some people have pigeonholed "Atlas" as better suited for a miniseries. That's why he sometimes pondered turning "Atlas" into two movies. In fact, a two-part script penned by James V. Hart "Contact") for the Baldwins envisions "Atlas" as two pics, although it's likely to be reworked.
For years, producer Al Ruddy tried to make Rand's definitive book into a movie, attracting the interest of Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway at one point.

But while Rand was still alive, she had script approval, complicating the process. After the author's death in 1982, Ruddy continued his efforts and, in 1999, he inked a pact to produce "Atlas" as a miniseries for TNT. Ultimately, the deal faltered.

In 2003, the Baldwins acquired the film rights to the novel from Aglialoro, a New York businessman, after launching Crusader Entertainment with Philip Anschutz. Hart was hired at that time to adapt.
Anschutz, however, ultimately decided not to make the movie.
The Baldwins then took the project with them when they left Crusader and formed the Baldwin Entertainment Group.

"What we've always needed was a studio that had the same passion for this project that we and John have," said Baldwin.
Generally speaking, Lionsgate keeps production budgets below $25 million. "Atlas" is likely to cost north of $30 million, but the studio will reduce its exposure through
international pre-sales and co-financing partners. Actors would likely take less money upfront -- a common practice for the indie.

Rand's individualistic and character-driven stories have captured the imagination of Hollywood before. Warner Bros. made "The Fountainhead," starring Gary Cooper as the maverick architect Howard Roark, in 1949.
Oliver Stone was attached to direct a remake of "Fountainhead" for Warner Bros. and Paramount, but the project has languished in development. Along the way, Pitt
expressed interest in playing Roark.

Anniversary of Mussolini's Hanging: He dies, fascism thrives in North America

2006-04-28T09:03:00.000-04:00

On this day (April 28) in 1945, Italian commies finally did something right: they hanged Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini, hanging from a meat
hook in Italy, April 28, 1945.

During his reign of oppression and media control, Mussolini, and his economic model, fascism, won the accolades of government-protection-seeking businesses, the magazines and newspapers they owned, and other morons in North America. Fascism (today, the politically correct terms include "corporativism", "corporatism", or "public-private partnership") also became the model upon which Franklin Delano Roosevelt would base his "New Deal". In his 1997 article in The New American, entitled The FDR Legacy: Lest We Forget, William P. Hoar explained:

During the post-election period, but before FDR took office, there was a worsening of the economic conditions. More and more state banking holidays were being called. In March 1933, Hoover wanted to call by executive order a federal bank holiday, but President-elect Roosevelt would not endorse such a move. As a result, when he took office the economic situation was in virtual paralysis. That was the idea. The previous month Barron's magazine had declared that "a mild species of dictatorship will help us over the roughest spots in the road ahead." Action was needed. The Nation, a "progressive" journal, published a piece entitled, "Wanted: A Mussolini."

FDR would oblige such demands.

FDR, looking, appropriately,
like the caricature of the man
on the Monopoly game board.

"We must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline," he said in his first inaugural. "I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people." Nor would he hesitate to take matters into his own hands: "In the event that the Congress shall fail to [act] and in the event that the national emergency is still critical ... I shall ask the Congress for ... broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe."

FDR at his 1st inaugural address.

FDR was himself a creature of Wall Street, and those very "economic royalists" had helped elect him governor of New York; he was a friend of the very bankers he often disparaged to great political effect. For example, just after assuming office, FDR wrote to Edward Mandell House, one of the founders of the ubiquitous and influential Council on Foreign Relations: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson -- and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W.W. [Woodrow Wilson, to whom House was an intimate adviser]."

Emergencies are a boon to the power-hungry, as Hitler and Mussolini -- both statists like FDR -- had proven. Hoover would later express dismay at how far FDR would go with his power grab, including proposing a bank holiday three days after refusing to go along with Hoover's similar proposal. Roosevelt, by Hoover's count, came up with "emergency" executive orders more than 200 times. The new President, recalled Professor Robert Higgs in his masterful Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987), also used the term "emergency" in various public statements more than 400 times during his first two years in office.

Everyone, related Higgs, "who had not already jumped on the emergency bandwagon now hastened to do so. Congressmen attached the emergency label to almost every bill they enacted. In their rush to legislate, they often conformed to their characterization of the laws they passed. For example, the Emergency Banking Act of March 9, 1933, which validated the President's legally questionable declaration of a national banking closure, was approved by a unanimous shout in the House of Representatives after thirty-eight minutes of debate, even though no member of the House had a copy of the bill."

To find an ostensible basis for declaring the banking holiday, Roosevelt looked at
what had been done during World War I and went so far as to invoke the Trading with the Enemy Act. In the name of fixing the crisis, property rights of bank depositors were abrogated, gold was confiscated, and, as noted by Professor Rothbard, the federal government was placed "in control of a vast, managed engine of inflation."

In 1932 the Democratic Platform had called for a 25 percent reduction in federal spending. In fact, such a bill was pushed through Congress almost immediately upon Roosevelt's election. The problem is that the program was never put into effect. What amounted to a New Deal party tossed those promises onto the trash heap. Planned deficit spending became the order of the day. The famous "100 days" of action -- which produced a deficit larger than Hoover had managed in his final two years -- was met with almost no resistance. More and more power accrued to the office of the President.

Under FDR, as M. Stanton Evans recounted in his book Clear and Present Dangers (1975), "executive legislation" became commonplace. Roosevelt "secured emergency power to reorganize the government as he pleased, subject only to a veto by the legislature -- a reversal of constitutional functions that has become quite customary since. His agents drafted bills and carried them to Congress for enactment."

As the Foundation for Economic Education's Richard Ebeling explained in his article When the Supreme Court Stopped Economic Fascism in America :

In June 1933 Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), after which FDR created theNational Recovery Administration (NRA). Modeled on Mussolini’s fascist economic system, it forced virtually all American industry, manufacturing, and retail business into cartels possessing the power to set prices and wages, and to dictate the levels of production. Within a few months over 200 separate pricing and production codes were imposed on the various branches of American business.
The symbol of the NRA was a Blue Eagle that had lightning bolts inone claw and an industrial gear inthe other.

...to destroy freedom
Every business in the country was asked to have a Blue Eagle sign in its window that declared, “We Do Our Part,” meaning it followed the pricing and production codes. Citizen committees were formed to spy on local merchants and report if they dared to sell at lower prices.

Unwitting (or evil) store
owner contributes to the
demise of capitalism

Propaganda rallies in support of the NRA were held across the country. During halftime at football games cheerleaders would form the shape of the Blue Eagle. Government-sponsored parades featured Hollywood stars supporting the NRA. At one of these parades the famous singer Al Jolson was filmed being asked what he thought of the NRA; he replied, “NRA? NRA? Why it’s better than my wedding night!”Film shorts produced by Hollywood in support of the NRA were shown in theaters around the country; in one of them child star Shirley Temple danced and sang the praises of big-government regulation of the American economy.
The NRA codes were soon joined by similar controls over farming with the passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). Farmers were given subsidies and government-guaranteed price supports, with Washington determining what crops could be grown and what livestock could be raised. Government ordered some crops to be plowed under and some livestock slaughtered, all in the name of centrally planned farm production and pricing.

1998 USA Postage Stamp
Proudly commemorating
fascism.

Mussolini's corporatism, and FDR's response to it, have left a mark on North American society as deep as Lake Superior. Agriculture, as a case in point, is heavily regulated by "marketing boards" and the like, which control the supply and prices of produce (see here for more information) . The recently-elected Prime Minister of Canada was quoted this month as saying he is in favour of continued supply management of agriculture.

Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper rides a tractor
in support of government
intervention in agriculture.
Parades of angry, tractor-driving farmers around the country's legislatures are becoming a regular occurence. Some ask for the power to grow what they want, and how much. But others, weened on Mussolini's fascism/corporativism, beg for for even more government intervention, guaranteed revenue streams, and the like.

Farmers in tractorsprotest at the legislaturein Ontario, Canada

In Ontario, Canada, years of electricity price controls have led to crumbling electricity infrastructure and to supply that cannot keep up with demand growth. With a growing population, Liberals and "Progressive Conservatives" alike are in favour of one form or another of "public-private partnership" for the building of new hospitals. Progressive Conservatives go a step further down Mussolini Avenue, proposing that health care be taxpayer funded, but that more private-sector service providers be added to the government teat. The same economic and moral poison has infected virtually every state and province in North America...though nobody - except real capitalists - dare call it by its name: fascism.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Finally, for all of those apologists who like to put pure evil in a "fair" light, and to suggest that fascism has (oops, sorry, "had"...for those in denial) its upside, let's put one thing to bed right now: Mussolini did not make the trains on time. As snopes.com explains:

After the "march on Rome" (which was itself a myth of fascist propaganda) on 28 October 1922 that resulted in King Vittorio Emanuele's appointment of Benito Mussolini as prime minister and the accession to power of the fascists in Italy, Mussolini needed to convince the people of Italy that fascism was indeed a system that worked to their benefit. Thus was born the myth of fascist efficiency, with the train as its symbol. The word was spread that Mussolini had turned the dilapidated Italian railway system into one that was the envy of all Europe, featuring trains that were both dependable and punctual. In Mussolini's Italy, all the trains ran on time.

Well, not quite. The Italian railway system had fallen into a rather sad state during World War I, and it did improve a good deal during the 1920s, but Mussolini was disingenuous in taking credit for the changes: much of the repair work had been performed before Mussolini and the fascists came to power in 1922. More importantly (to the claim at hand), those who actually lived in Italy during the Mussolini era have borne testimony that the Italian railway's legendary adherence to timetables was far more myth than reality.

All of which just goes to show: you can kill the dictator, but you cannot as easily kill an evil meme.

Divine Revelation: Sacrifice Yourself for a Better Nigeria

2006-04-27T10:41:00.000-04:00

20th Century Nigerian Headdress: "An ambivalent symbol associated with life and fertility.
Death and sacrifice."

Nigerian newspaper This Day (Lagos) reports on the recommendations of a newly inaugurated and dedicated "National Restoration Network": a " faith based non religious, non political and non ethnic movement with the vision and mission to return Nigeria to an orderly, disciplined and corruption-free nation, where common good, justice and fear of God become our national values and virtues."

The article (misspellings and bad grammar are from the original source) reads like it was taken from the Ayn Rand Horror File:

Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, stressed the need for self sacrifice, selfless service, commitment and fear of God in our quest for national restoration, growth and development.

Ezekwesili submitted that:

"God has divinely deposited in us all, the neccesary ingridients to affect changes positively towards national restoration.

And what Horror File entry would be complete without this?:

She emphasised that to...make sacrifice for the common good was a personal choice which usually have some costs attached, pointing out however, that in doing so, people must cast aspersions on you, but that with persistence, strong resolution and faith in God, there are always rewards in form of self fulfilment, peace of mind, honour and respect at the end of the day.

The Director of Lagos "Business" School, Professor Pat Utomi:

...emphasised that leadership carries a burden of good knowledge, sacrifice and service to make the much needed difference in the lives of the people...noting that...poverty...and leadership that is insensitive to the plights and needs of the people, were the root causes of conflct situations and backwardness in the nation's development.

What gave rise to the National Restoration Network?:

The coordinator of the Network, Mr. Chibuzor Eze of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International, said the birth of NRN was sequel to a divine revelation and instruction from God to bring hope for Nigeria with a prospect of becoming a great nation to be sought after in the next ten years.

Uh huh. Eze also:

...extended NRN's hands of fellowship and partnership to all well-meaning Nigerians in the quest for national restoration and reformation towards becoming a world power.

God. Divine revelation. Self-sacrifice. Common good. Nigeria a world power. Somehow, all of that goes together so, so well.

Oh, and by the way: I encourage readers to write to me with the name of a good lawyer. It turns out that I've been personally selected by a the wife of a murdered Nigerian government official to help the wife get US$30.2M out of the country. I get to keep half!

Thank you God!

Science Saves Earth Again: Muslims Must Pray Continuously While in Space!

2006-04-26T22:01:00.000-04:00

London's Daily Telegraph reports:

Malaysian scientists and religious scholars are trying to determine how Muslims should behave in space, as the predominantly Islamic country prepares to dispatch its first astronaut next year.

More than 150 delegates attended a seminar to consider how to pray in space given the difficulties of locating Mecca and holding the prayer position in zero gravity; as well as other questions such as halal food and washing.

"It's as important as sending the astronaut," said Mustafa Din bin Subari, deputy director of Angkasa, Malaysia's space agency. "We want to stress that being a Muslim does not restrict you from doing anything."

The application of a religion founded in the 7th century Arabian desert to space travel in the 21st century is complex. The International Space Station (ISS) moves at almost 17,000 mph, so the relative position of Mecca is constantly shifting. With 16 orbits a day, and the timing of five daily prayers determined in relation to sunrise and sunset, devout Muslim astronauts could find themselves intoning their chants 80 times in 24 hours.

"This is not possible," said Mohamad Sa'ari Mohamad Isa, of the National Technical University College of Malaysia at the meeting in Bangi, near Kuala Lumpur. The electronics lecturer has helped to develop a computer programme called Muslims in Space to determine when prayers should be made.

Now, if we can just build a space ship big enough to carry all of the world's suicide bombers...

Governance 2006: 1. Transparency. 2. Paralysis.

2006-04-26T16:00:00.000-04:00

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) today reported that:

The mayor of a Montreal borough insists a plan to buy global positioning systems for municipal vehicles is meant to make operations more efficient, not to crack down on lazy workers. "This equipment is not being used to spy on the blue-collar workers to show ... that they've broken their collective agreement," Michael Applebaum, mayor of the borough of Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, told CBC Newsworld on Wednesday.

"It's very clear that the GPS system is able to track the vehicle and inform us if the vehicle is stopped for long periods of time, but that is not the objective here. ... The great majority of our workers are very hard, strong workers who are on the job doing what they are supposed to be doing."

Uh huh. And what are you using the system for, mayor?:

Applebaum said the new system will help city managers keep the public informed about how long snow clearing will take during and after major storms, as well as track the progress of sidewalk de-icing operations.

Ah, but how long clearly takes has nothing to do with the issue of whether employees are dragging their asses? Is that what you would have us believe?

So, let me get this straight. You'll monitor to detect and report obscenely long waits, but you have no plans to do anything about the delays that you detect and report...like, um, taking appropriate action against do-little employees?

Applebaum said it's "unfortunate" that the decision to place GPS systems on municipal vehicles comes so soon after a recent report showing that some Montreal blue-collar workers do little work for their paycheques.
The city secretly followed three crews in the borough of Ville-Marie and found they filled in nine potholes during 90 hours of paid work. The work should have taken about nine hours.

Why the apologetic denials Mayor ole boy? The real story here that the borough is doing the right thing: watching for city trucks that sleep six in a woody park.

Bravo for the monitoring, mayor. Thumbs down for the cowardly denial, and for the foreshadowing that you will fail to do anything about the taxpayer getting ripped-off.

GPS monitoring is a growing phenomenon in North American cities. Mayors with more intellectual honesty and courage than Appelbaum would do well to remember the words of Olive Branch, Mississippi Mayor Sam Rikard:

"If you're doing what you're supposed to do, there's no reason to feel uneasy"