Archive for August, 2008

31
Aug

The Suppression Of Dissent At The Democratic And Republican Conventions

By libertyvini 1 Comment
Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Constitution, US Constitution, Uncategorized, commentary, fascism, liberty, police state, politicians, politics and war
George Orwell, Stop Spinning and Call Your Office

George Orwell, Stop Spinning and Call Your Office

From the United States Constitution, Amendment One, retrieved on 8/30/2008;

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

From a journalist friend in Denver comes a story about the Democratic National Convention that you probably haven’t quite heard;

This is a belated post after a night in the free-speech pen (”Gitmo on the Platte”), but on Wednesday at noon, Rage Against the Machine and Flobots held a free benefit for Iraq Veterans Against the War at the Denver Coliseum.

Performances were incredible, RATM brought out Wayne Kramer of MC5 to play guitar with them, and at the end of the concert, the bands and 60 uniformed vets led about half the audience (7000 people) on an unauthorized march through downtown Denver to the Pepsi Center, for IVAW to deliver a letter to Obama.

The cops shit their pants, they were going to use tear gas about four times on the route, then the DNC and Denver officials decided tear-gassing veterans would not be such a good idea, so they conducted negotiations and “held” people temporarily, then everyone went home.

From today’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune;

Executing search warrants on Friday night and Saturday morning, Ramsey County authorities raided a building in St. Paul and at least three homes in Minneapolis in an effort to head off disruptive protests of the Republican National Convention.

In a statement, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher described the Friday night raid at 627 Smith Avenue South in St. Paul as targeting the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group he described as “a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self-described anarchists who are intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention.”

“These acts include tactics to blockade and disable delegate buses, breaching venue security and injuring police officers,” the statement continued. Fletcher’s statement said no one was arrested. “Numerous items were recovered,” the statement said.
In response to the raids, the RNC Welcoming Committee issued a statement denying any criminal intent and described the officers’ actions as ”violence” that was a sign of more extreme police measures to come.

On Saturday morning, three people were arrested and detained for probable cause conspiracy to commit a riot following a raid at 3240 17th Ave. S. in Minneapolis after authorities executed the search warrant. Ten other people in the house were processed and released after about 90 minutes, said Bruce Nestor of the National Lawyers Guild.

Nestor said he has not seen documents that support a reason for searching any of the locations, but that the warrant, signed by a judge on Friday, seeks multiple items, including electronics and mp3 players, rags, jars, Molotov cocktails, communication between RNC Welcoming Committee members, urine and feces (emphasis mine.)

Utter, complete, transparent bullshit. Rough them up, intimidate them, confiscate all their materials, photograph them so they will have ‘prior’ arrests, by the time you get a hearing the moment is over, the RNC is over, freedom is over. “Oh, sorry, our bad, here’s your shit back, HAHAHAHAHAHA.”

The three arrested, two 23-year-old women and a 25-year-old man, could be held through the weekend, Nestor said. A judge will review their case within 48 hours.  Nestor said the conspiracy to commit a riot charges are vague.

“This is a charge that police use for preventive detention,” he said. “It requires that no actual criminal act be committed and borders on criminalizing political advocacy.”

BORDERS ON? Nestor is being far too kind, BORDERING on aiding and abetting this thuggery.

Via Infoshop News,  video of massive police assaults, including threats, intimidation, and confiscation of computers and papers, on alleged “potentially disruptive” protestors, charging them with “conspiracy”;

Glenn Greenwald documents this, he and a colleague were at two of the houses;

There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than “fire code violations,” and early this morning, the Sheriff’s department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying…

As much as I hate to write this, I must agree with professor Michael Rozeff, who writes in an article about the E-Gold prosecution on lewrockwell.com today, the government of the United States of America has descended into a police state. Here’s hoping the Rally For The Republic fares better.

Like the opponents of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, we have arrived at the realization that, as vigilant as we think we have been about preventing the emergence of such a state, we have found ourselves, as Garet Garett wrote, with that revolution already behind us.

We’re sorry. We tried, we really tried.

(photo from thorough Denver Post article via the lewrockwell.com blog)

30
Aug

Who Killed Bell Labs?

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: commentary, economics, socialism and technology

William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invented the transistor in 1947. (Alcatel-Lucent/Bell Labs)

Wired has a story on the closing down of basic physics research at the former Bell Labs (now Alcatel - Lucent) in Murray Hill, NJ;

Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software.

The idea is to align the research work in the Lab closer to areas that the parent company is focusing on, says Peter Benedict, spokesperson for Bell Labs and Alcatel-Lucent Ventures.

“In the new innovation model, research needs to keep addressing the need of the mother company,” he says.

That view is shortsighted and may drastically curtail the Labs’ ability to come up with truly innovative discoveries, respond critics.

“Fundamental physics is absolutely crucial to computing,” says Mike Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society. “Say in the case of integrated circuits, there were many, many small steps that occurred along the way resulting from decades worth of work in matters of physics.”

Bell Labs was one of the last bastions of basic research within the corporate world, which over the past several decades has largely focused its R&D efforts on applied research — areas of study with more immediate prospects of paying off.

But isn’r research good? Isn’t it indispensable? What evil force has come along and removed all of the R&D dollars?;

Still for fundamental physics research there will be life after Bell Labs, though it will be dependent on the whims of the federal government.

Increasingly, long-term research is being carried out in universities and national laboratories with federal grants, says Lubell.

OH, THAT evil force.

25
Aug

Yo, Easy On the “C” word, Will Ya?

By joeglab 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

I’ve been trying now to get an Obama supporter, including those who call me on the phone, to tell me what “change(s)” in particular Obama supports. Once you get past his super-stardom and actually listen to what he is saying, it seems, not surprisingly, that he advocates more of the same. His anointment of Joe Biden as his running mate drives home that point as noted in Salon.

This single paragraph says it more succinctly than any other I have read.

Ever since it became clear that Obama would be the likely nominee, the political establishment has been demanding of him more and more proof that his “change” rhetoric is just that — rhetoric, and not anything meant as a genuine threat to the prevailing order of things. Obama, arguably out of political necessity, has repeatedly obliged, eagerly trying to offer proof that he is no threat to them, and the Biden selection is but the latest step in that campaign of reassurance. In sum, Biden is a reliable supporter of virtually every prevailing bit of conventional wisdom within the American elite political consensus, which is why his selection has been widely praised by the establishment, whose principal concern is that their fiefdom not be disrupted and that their consensus not be challenged.

24
Aug

Parliament / Funkadelic at Their Sublime Best

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: Music, Uncategorized and commentary

We grew up in the late 60’s - early 70’s on Brill Building pop and Motown pop-soul, followed by all the ’70’s FM rock scene threw at us. Though dimly aware of the crew of George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and, here, Eddie Hazel, the output we were exposed to (”Formaldehyde”, “Dookie Stick” their costumes and stage personas) reduced them to little more than an extended black-culture toilet / pothead joke.

But just click on this clip of the title track of “Maggot Brain”, and listen as Mr. Hazel channels the angels through his sublime guitar playing;[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh3bleXWaCk]

20
Aug

The World’s Biggest Record Collection

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: Music, Philadelphia, Uncategorized, commentary, economics, philadelphia local stuff and technology
Paul Mahwhinney's Ginormous Record Collection

Paul Mahwhinney

Here, courtesy of Sean Dunne and Vimeo, is a vinyl junkie’s wet dream.

Pittsburgh PA’s Paul Mahwhinney is, due to health problems and poor market conditions, forced to sell the world’s largest record collection.

The collection’s value was once appraised at $50 MILLION. In February, he closed his store, Record-Rama, when the collection failed to meet a $3 MILLION minimum bid.

The only possible buyers of a collection that size are the record companies, but they have their own problems.

(Philly people - note the Dynagroove record that pops up at 0:48. (OK, so it isn’t THAT Dynagroove))

This collection is virtually unprecedented, a veritable Library of Alexandria of vinyl.

Another library, the Library of Congress, took a look at his record collection a few years ago.

Based on their survey, they estimate only 17% of the records produced between 1944 and 1966 are available commercially.

Paul Mahwhinney has the other 83%.

Here’s hoping the collection, or the parts therof, finds a good home.

However, at the other end of the Quaker State, Philly’s own Val Shively is no slouch either;

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr0bq5rfOJA]

(link from Eric O’Connor on Postal Blowfish)

20
Aug

Seattle Takes A Bath On Public Lavatories

By libertyvini 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

A few years ago, there was a mania among many cities to “solve” the problem of public urination and defecation by installing mega-expensive, state-of the art restroom facilities. Demonstrations of the units were conducted in Philadelphia, PA and Seattle WA, where this story originated;

After a decade of discussion, five self-cleaning, space-age style chambers were finally opened to the public yesterday…

Seattle has been waiting years for the high-tech toilets. Councils and mayors have debated the issue. It’s been a topic on the campaign trail.

Made in Germany, and leased by the city, the public restrooms are expected to cost a total of about $600,000 a year. They will be paid for through sewer revenues…

“These facilities are self-cleaning, safe, well-situated throughout the city and are free for anyone to use,” said (city councilman)Licata. “They will be beneficial to local businesses because tourists, shoppers, residents and the homeless are equally accommodated.”

But some are concerned that they might become shelter for drug abusers, dealers and prostitutes.

“The community will keep a watch out and make sure they don’t become a haven for that kind of activity,” Stoltzfus said.

Today, we read that the city, of Seattle, whose expenses for the toilets ($5M) over the intervening time period vastly exceeded what was projected, has agreed to remove and sell the toilets - for $12K;

The high-tech public toilets, with sanitizing water jets and automatic doors, were installed in 2004 to accommodate tourists and transients in Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, the central waterfront, Pike Place Market and the Chinatown International District. But the city canceled its contract this spring after the commodes became filthy hide-outs for drug use and prostitution.

The city paid more than it planned to take care of the toilets. Workers had to clean the stalls after trash clogged the self-cleaning mechanism. Losing the toilets will save the city some $4.5 million on the remainder of its operating contract and in cleaning costs over the next several years.

The city tried to sell the toilets on eBay in July, but nobody coughed up the $89,000 minimum bid. In its second attempt, which closed Thursday, the city offered no minimum, and 148 bids were cast.

“We sold them for what the market determined them to be worth,” said Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities. “Did we get hosed? I’m not sure.“

Here you go Andy, maybe one of these will help next time;

Mises Calculator

Mises Calculator

19
Aug

Circus Devils - The Other Band From Akron

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: Music, comedy, philadelphia local stuff and technology

Actually only half two thirds -Todd Tobias (and brother Tim, back in Bob’s good graces apparently after a falling out between the GBV leader and the former bassman) is from Devo’s hometown of Akron, OH, Bob Pollard is from Dayton as anyone can tell you.

The sixth album under the Circus Devils moniker,”Ataxia” by Bob and Todd (and Tim) continues the experimental theme of the project, this time with Todd enlisting a few friends to make videos for several of the songs. “Give Me Extra” and “Eye Razors” manage to channel the spastic soul of early MTV-era Devo videos in a totally original way;

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZFOfNtbEik]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MF9YDMRF1U&feature=related]

Also, Bob is sponsoring a contest for the best fan video for “Winston’s Atomic Bird” from his new project Boston Spaceships - “Brown Submarine”, here are two cool entries;

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsB0lzSKK3A]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJjpA5lkVAI]

And of course, having sworn off touring several times already since the breakup of Guided By Voices, he will be touring to promote the new material (YAY!)

18
Aug

A Riddle

By joeglab 0 Comments
Categories: comedy, economics and politics

Q: How are the fed chairman and a hack plastic surgeon similar?

A: Their “injections” can cause gross distortions.

12
Aug

IFC Film - “Larry Flynt: The Right To Be Left Alone”

By libertyvini 1 Comment
Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Uncategorized, commentary, fascism, politicians, politics and socialism
Larry Flynt In Happier Times

Larry Flynt, In Happier Times

Growing up a good Catholic boy, I learned to despise pornographers like Al Goldstein, Bob Guccione, and Larry Flynt (a not AHEM entirely unhypocritical position.) Coming of age in the confused-but-prosperous 1980’s, I was further encouraged (by the now-burnt-out women’s movement) to despise porn and pornographers as somehow primarily responsible for the oppression of women. The good Catholic liberal in me righteously grunted in assent, if not exactly approval.

I finally awoke from this fog of illogic when I read that some feminists believed and wrote not only did porn cause sexual assaults of women, but that, incredibly, some of them seriously proposed that there was no such thing as volition involved in sexual relations between men and women. This pretty much vaporized any remaining credibility of the “women’s movement” for me, standing in opposition to even my somewhat limited experience.

Yet I retained enough residual revulsion for Mr. Flynt and his ilk to be vaguely disgusted by the hagiographic film “The People vs. Larry Flynt”, a response not helped at all by the casting of the addled-yet-smug Woody Harrelson as Flynt, and the walking trainwreck that is Courtney Love as Flynt’s now-late wife.

Later, Flynt, in response to the wrongheaded and politicized impeachment of President Clinton, offered a reward for evidence of sexual impropriety on the part of a sitting member of Congress. I was, having over several years quietly absorbed the political and culture-war rhetoric of talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, still more disgusted by Flynt, as well as his cultural and spiritual alliance with Clinton, exactly according to the plans of the people who were conducting psy-ops on me and no doubt many thoughtful, small-l liberal people, who were nonetheless not fans of the Clintons.

But after the terrorist attacks of 2001, and particularly after the ‘WTF?’ moment I had a couple of days after Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech, all the Bush Administration bullshit and lies that had been foisted off on us as a people to get us to support and agitate for what was now ever more clearly an unjust, criminal war in Iraq, started to collapse for me.

I started peeling back the layers of the onion, so to speak, canceling my subscription to the War Street Journal, turning off Fox News, and removing the presets that once delivered me to Limbaugh and the now-appallingly bad Hannity (I had been a fan since his local-show days in New York, where he at least still had a shred of decency about him). I started to read Lew Rockwell’s site, and antiwar.com.

I got turned onto alternate news sources, read everything I could about what was REALLY going on in the world, helped start this blog, and became a warrior (mostly cyber) for Liberty, free markets, and freedom of association and expression. I began to see that even among people with very different cultural, moral, and spiritual views than me, there still existed real dedication to those founding ideals, and that shared devotion to freedom and liberty was far more important than differences on matters of personal morality. This is embodied in the fundamental, negative right to be left alone, easily deducible from the non-aggression axiom. This was a central lesson of Ron Paul’s recent presidential campaign. As Murray Rothbard said;

It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative life-styles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of ‘bourgeois’ conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory. Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that ‘liberty is the highest political end’ – not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.

And so, we come around to our old nemesis Larry Flynt. The Independent Film Channel has just aired a new documentary, “Larry Flynt: The Right To Be Left Alone”, video here, which finds Larry and I in almost eerie concord with regard to the natural rights that inhere in our persons, aptly summarized by the subtitle. It turns out that, at least on matters of freedom of speech, expression, association, and the use of government force to commit war and destruction on people, as well as the aforementioned liberties, I have to confess I’m beginning to find a lot to like about the old smut-peddler.

(link from Independent Film Channel via our pal violet)

10
Aug

NYC Subways- Uneconomic, Thieving, Corrupt, Welfare Program For The Rich

By libertyvini 4 Comments
Categories: Austrian Economics, commentary, economics, fascism, politicians, politics and socialism
Coming To A Subway Platform Near You?

Coming To A Subway Platform Near You?

The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority is broke, so it is resorting to selling naming rights to facilities such as subway stations. They are also exploring additional ways of collecting advertising revenue, such as letting ad companies install serial ads in tunnels that when sped past in a subway car appear to be moving. The MTA is already operating so uneconomically that they are removing seats from subway cars so they can squash more commuters in during rush hours (HINT: RAISE THE FARES).

This is an agency that is undertaking an unprecedented expansion program , here also (funded mostly by New York State and - especially federal - taxpayers who will never benefit - approximately $5 billion in Federal money committed so far).

We will detail in a later post why we think such stupendous sums of pelf are being squandered on behalf of the people who live and work in the smallest county in the US, let’s just point out that the former head of the MTA, Peter Kallikow, under whom all this pyramid-building commenced, owns billions of dollars worth of Manhattan real estate (not to mention a kickass Ferrari collection).

The construction of these gigantic edifice complexes are being run about as honestly and efficiently as you would expect, if you have spent any portion of your life living and working in and around Manhattan. If you haven’t, then you would more likely view the progress of these malignant fiscal tumors as complete and utterly criminal wastes of time, money, and resources on people and businesses who mostly do not even need it.

For example, The Second Avenue Subway project, in the planning and construction phases since the 1920’s, is way behind schedule, and way over budget;

In the project’s “Phase 1,” tracks start at 105th Street, run down Second Avenue and link with the F station at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street; 96th, 86th and 72nd streets will have new stations.

No one really knows how much the line will cost - yet the MTA has already gone into occupation-army mode on Second Avenue, digging up five blocks below 96th Street. Stores have lost customers and are struggling to survive. Landlords and residents face eviction.

The MTA’s capital-budget summary (released in February) farcically underbudgets all that work at $4.34 billion. And it takes only common sense to appreciate what a pittance that is.

The MTA says it needs $1.1 billion for the Fulton project - not to lay an inch of track, buy new subway cars or build new stations, but just to rearrange underground platforms and build a pedestrian tunnel to Ground Zero. And in all likelihood, $1.1 billion won’t be enough, thanks to galloping building-trade inflation (as much as 5 percent, by some estimates).

By that light, it doesn’t take an engineer or an accountant to grasp that $4.34 billion for the Second Avenue Subway Phase 1 is a joke.

All of this means that because the MTA’s contribution must of necessity shrink, YOUR contribution will GROW.

I predict the all-up Federal taxpayer ‘contribution’ to the goal of easing the lives of people who wish to earn Lower Manhattan salaries while living in Harlem or suburbia will be upwards of $20 Billion by the time the projects are completed.

(photo from Weird Asia News, lead article from FARK, tip about the subway seat removal program c/o two ladies from Staten Island who I met on the airport bus in Seattle)

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