Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Xenophobic Judge Equates Immigrants with Sub-Human Species

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Brooklyn Criminal Court judge John H. Wilson recently published a xenophobic children's book, The Hot House Flowers.

This loony bastard wrote the most inhuman of analogies into his children's book. He equated immigrants with weeds, and natives with pretty flowers. What a wonderful way to teach children that people who look different than you are sub-human!

Anyway, I absolutely love analogies, and I use them all the time. I am quite comfortable with them, and I believe that I can detect and correct a failed analogy more easily than I can tie my shoes. I wrote a book review at Amazon informing the buying public of his failed analogy, and correcting it at the same time in order to make a case for open borders. You can find my review if you click on the customer reviews section after clicking on the link above. I will also repost it here for your convenience:

A failed analogy; We are ALL roses

The analogy in this book is fatally flawed even on the surface. Observe:

Humans are all the same race; the same kind of flower. The different skin colors and body features would analogize to different petal colors of the same flower species, NOT different flower species alltogether.

The different human races would more properly analogize to different color roses (yellow, red, white, etc) rather than a mix of geraniums and dandelions. In this way, we can see that having a garden with many different colored roses is much prettier than a rose garden with only one color. Furthermore, different color roses don’t starve or stunt off the others. Rather, they compliment each other.

I imagine that Mr. Wilson would act like the Queen of Hearts in his own backyard, insisting that all his roses be red, and dishing out harsh penalties for those who would allow white roses in his garden. Would Mr. Wilson employ buckets of red paint or garden shears to attain the uniformity in rose color that he demands? Perhaps a combination of the two? But the Queen of Hearts was well known to be mad in Lewis Carroll's famous tale.

I don’t want a garden where roses of different colors are forbidden. Even the most vibrant red rose petals will bore a person eventually if no other rose color is to be found in the garden.

Finally, we can examine the reason for Mr. Wilson's analogy error. Why does he equate different human races with wholly different species of plants, rather than correctly equating them with mere different variations of the same plant? Because, to Mr. Wilson, those humans who are different to him are not humans at all. To Mr. Wilson, the immigrant humans are sub-human, less than human, and not to be equated in value with his own kind. Mr. Wilson simply MUST equate different humans as a different species alltogether in order to justify his xenophobic sentiments.

When I see different faces, I see different colored roses. They all smell sweet, and they all bloom beautifully. But when Mr. Wilson sees different faces, he sees weeds. To Mr. Wilson, only the red roses are truly roses, every other shade is just a weed.


The answer is simple: Open borders, open gardens, opened eyes, and opened minds.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

A Christmas Humdinger!

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Mondo Diablo 26: A Christmas Humdinger!






Enjoy! -- Hellbound Alleee

Friday, November 24, 2006

A world ruled by corporations ?

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For the rabid socialist, I suppose that market anarchy may sound like a nightmare - a world controlled by corporations! Of course, the socialist is the last person who can possibly complain about this, since he seeks a ruling class so powerful that it holds economic power as well. So even if this criticism was true, market anarchists wouldn't be the only guilty party.

The other major problem with this criticism is that most market anarchists don't believe in "corporations". "Corporations" are a legal fiction invented by the ruling class (at least when in control of the law)- historically to promote colonialism and gain revenues from corporate registrations, and nowadays to raise corporate taxes and lower the risks accrued by members of the ruling class.

A corporation, considered as a person, is a fantasy. Only individual human beings can be persons. A corporation as a concept does not exist either. Only individuals and their property compose what we call a "corporation". Therefore this concept must be deconstructed and torn down. To say that "Exxon did this or that" makes no more sense than saying "the United States did this or that".

So we're talking about people. Do people abuse each other? You bet. But this is not a peculiarity of "corporations". True, to a certain extent the legal shield of the "corporation" fantasy does promote some abuse, but apart from that we're just looking at the natural process of human relations.

If you want abuse, look at the state. The state is the greatest source of war, violence, exploitation and abuse there is. When was the last time a "corporation" waged war against another? Raised taxes? Brutalized its customers? Suppressed the selling of life-saving medications? People don't tend to do this to other people, because that makes them sour customers. States have no customers- they have slaves. And that's the whole difference.

No one wants to be controlled by others. But the clearest danger in that respect is a concentration of force. And that is what the state is! That is what we want to eliminate. So next time, before you talk about corporate abuse, talk about state abuse first, and decide where you stand - for people trying to make a buck, or people who'll kill you if you don't surrender all your bucks.

The statists want to pretend that we need to rein in "corporate greed" with "corporate responsibility". "Corporate responsibility" is, like "sustainability", nothing more than a code-word used to suppress progress. Should individuals who actively trade with others be honest and forthright? Of course. Should they be prosecuted for fraud if they lie in the context of such trade? Of course. But does that mean "corporate responsibility" is worth the sound waves it's propagating on? No way.

“Social responsibility” is now a movement, designed and defined to promote narrow political agendas, silence critics, tarnish corporate reputations, give companies leverage against competitors, and make up for power lost at ballot boxes or in union halls. Liberal foundations like Heinz, Pew and Soros help bankroll the movement – and labor bosses use pension funds for campaigns that don’t always serve their members’ best interests.

(...) CSR’s “ethical beacon” is actually more like the bonfires pirates once lit along Ireland’s coast, to lure unsuspecting ships onto the rocks, where they would be plundered and destroyed. (...)

Campaign ExxonMobil employed street theater, shareholder resolutions, kangaroo courts and myriad accusations, in an attempt to force the oil giant to recant its skepticism about global warming and its continued investments in petroleum, rather than “ethical” and “responsible” technologies like solar power that impact vast acreage to produce expensive, unreliable energy.
Paul K. Driessen, "Social responsibility doubletalk"


Until the market anarchic perspective predominates in economics and society, and the notion of "corporation" is defeated, will responsibility ever be fully expressed.

The most ridiculous belief in corporate abuse is the belief that layoffs are evil. Without even getting into economics, that belief doesn't even make any sense ! If you are against corporations, then why would you protest when a big corporation loses power? Wouldn't you want all big corporations to fail? Protesting layoffs makes me think of neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust. Why deny the only accomplishment you have? If you assume that it is bad, then aren't you assuming that your own values are bad? It's all quite ridiculous.

While there are many different ways of living in society, the fundamental choice is quite simple- either you value freedom and progress, or you value force and hardship. Anyone who argues against trade argues against the former. Unlike state capitalists, however, we should not think that corporations are conductive to freedom or progress- quite the opposite.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Hellbound Alleee Thanksgiving Show

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The Hellbound Alleee Network



Hellbound Alleee Show 130: Thanksgiving and Morality






Enjoy! -- Hellbound Alleee

Saturday, November 18, 2006

December Skies

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Thursday, November 16, 2006

Make-A-Statist-Complaint generator!

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The rise in can be blamed on and its principle of . We must demand in order to .

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The democratic folly

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We all know that democracy is nothing more than utilitarian "might makes right" strong-arming. But what if the advocates of "direct democracy" had their way? These bullies believe that the strong majority should ALWAYS have its way against the weak minority, in all circumstances. What kind of circumstances? Well...

* People on a street should be able to vote against a neighbour and kick him out because he does not have the proper skin hue.

* A school board or greedy mall owner should be able to vote off his neighbour and steal his property, and kidnap him if he refuses to leave.

* A population should be able to vote on medications to ban, dooming tens of thousands of people to a painful agonizing death in the process.

* A population should be able to vote on enslaving the poorest and most defenseless amongst its numbers, for an indefinite number of years, with death a strong possibility.

* If most people agree, someone caught with a small quantity of a forbidden substance should be held for ransom, then kidnapped for months on end. This same procedure should be applied to anyone who breaks the arbitrary rules decided by vote. They should be held for ransom (sometimes for millions of dollars), and then, when it is decided that they make a good scapegoat, kidnapped and put in a small room with bars for years and years. People think that this magically makes people more subservient.

* People should be able to vote to steal resources from someone who has a lot, and give it to two people who have less. After all, making two people slightly more happy more than counterbalances stealing from one person, doesn't it? Good of the many, and all that.

* People who sell products that some other people don't like- because of their religion, political affiliation, whatever- should be voted out of their business or their profits whenever the "victimized" faction gets enough support. Their customers, of course, are completely unimportant. Who cares about your values? The majority has spoken.

* People should be able to vote to kill anyone who is determined to be a traitor to the community.

If your "direct democracy" bully cries "but there should be limits!", he is a little too late. Because all of these things are done by the "limited" state, right now!

So much for "limits". Constitutions are just little pieces of paper that grant extra legitimacy. So they just make the problem worse, because they throw even more smoke at people's minds, who believe that their government is justified by the constitution of their country. Who has ever signed a constitution? What happens if you don't agree with it? Blank, blank, blank... are the minds of the statists.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

How to argue with a libertarian / Capitalism in the poor

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This is really funny: "How To Argue With A Libertarian." Perhaps the statists should take some lessons!

4. Criticize capitalism by its worst cases. But do not (ever!) compare these to the worst cases of statism.

Example: "The Enron scandal was the product of unfettered profit seeking under capitalism." If a libertarian replies that Stalin's brutality was the product of a statist program, change the subject or claim that your brand of statism precludes such abuses. Better still, try to argue that Stalinism was actually a kind of capitalism.



Thomas Woods makes an excellent point in "Are Capitalists Bamboozling the Poor?" He discusses a fact that never fails to come true in statist propaganda: whatever improvement to the quality of life of the poor brought about by the market, people will oppose it vociferously. Statists hate no one more than the poor.

For lack of a better term I am dubbing it Woods's Law: whenever the private sector introduces an innovation that makes the poor better off than they would have been without it, or that offers benefits or terms that no one else is prepared to offer them, someone — in the name of helping the poor — will call for curbing or abolishing it.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Mondo Diablo Episode 24

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The Hellbound Alleee Network


Listen and Burn!


Your Friends Won''t Understand






Enjoy! -- Hellbound Alleee

The magical statist fairy tale

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All belief systems are, fundamentally, fairy tales. They believe in magical beings, magical powers, and magical thinking- from the whole Christian nonsense all the way down to the magical spine of the chiropractors or the politico-scientists' belief in the power of numbers over reality.

The statists are no exception to this belief in magic. Their belief in anarchy as a horrible state of affairs betrays their belief in the state as a magical force. They say things of the order of "without government, there would be crime in the streets, and nothing would stop people from killing you and stealing your house!".

Now of course, there are two basic problems with that kind of talk. The first is that people do not magically become evil because there is no more government. I drive the point home by asking them "if there was no more government, would YOU kill me?". Those who do have the courage to answer will say that they wouldn't, but that other people might. It's always other people. It's funny how every time you ask one of those self-righteous ignoramuses, they're always the only moral person on Earth. Maybe they should have moral competitions amongst themselves, so they can decide who is the only moral person once and for all!

But the more important point here is that we already have plenty of crime. The state does not, and cannot, "cure" crime. Nothing can possibly stop someone from killing me if they so desire. And what's worse, we observe that countries with bigger governments have more crime! Now, this is not to say that the state is the only factor in determining the crime rate, but it is one factor. Bigger governments create more criminals simply by virtue of their legislative power and their promotion of social warfare. How does this surprise us, if we understand that fundamentally government is nothing more than a parasitic group of thugs whose main activity is to constantly threaten people to obey their edicts or be met with force?

Statists have this magical fairy tale of a group of thugs that somehow makes everyone else a moral person. Sure, by comparison to a politician I am very moral, but the existence of the state does not make me a moral person. Neither does the arbitrary code of laws of the state. Although behaviour can be guided in a positive or negative direction by structural intervention (which, in the case of the state, is always negative by definition), virtue or vice itself cannot be imposed from above. It is the result of one's character, habits, and capacity to reason.

But it is a common belief of all collectivists- religious, political or otherwise- that morality can somehow be imposed from above, top-down, and that men can be turned into angels by the purifying touch of a monopoly of force. This is a ridiculous belief, hardly worth any attention, and yet people still believe it. It is the same belief that motivates people to push their religion on other people. They firmly believe, without any evidence whatsoever, that only their religion is moral, and that people need to be "civilized" by adopting their religion before all others. This is pure propaganda.

Which of course brings us to the question of "justice". I am always astonished when it is affirmed that we need the state in order to have "justice". Now, look at this scenario. You have a group of thugs, liars and murderers lording it over us, dictating what we can and cannot do, constantly stealing our money, constantly threatening our security and privacy, and somehow we are supposed to believe that only those people can give us "justice"!

Sure, the state criminals have a big interest in stopping OTHER crime syndicates and criminals. Otherwise they would not be a monopoly. Other criminal elements are their competition, just like how religion was competition to the Communists. But that is not "justice"- except in the statist fairy tale.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Reconsidering 9/11 / Hug a Hummer today

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Bill Christison asks us to reconsider the facts around 9/11:

If something other than an airliner actually did hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and if the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center actually were dropped to the ground by controlled demolitions rather than by anything connected to the hijackings, the untrue stories peddled by The 9/11 Commission Report are clearly susceptible of being turned into major political issues.


He seems pretty reasonable, but I'll let you decide if you agree or disagree with him.


Did you know that studies have found that hybrid cars are less energy efficient than most other cars, including Hummers? Reason Foundation has the lowdown:

Spinella's customer satisfaction surveys show that 62 percent of hybrid owners are dissatisfied with the fuel-economy performance of their cars given what they have paid for them.

This means that when gas prices go up, these people don't rush out to buy more hybrids. "They buy a Chevy Aveo," says Spinella. "It delivers the same fuel economy as a Prius, but at half the price."
(...)
Comparing this data, the study concludes that overall hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles. But even more surprising, smaller hybrids' energy costs are greater than many large, non-hybrid SUVs.

For instance, the dust-to-dust energy cost of the bunny-sized Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. This is quite a bit more than the $1.949 per mile that the elephantine Hummer costs.

Monday, November 6, 2006

Statist "justice" : throw the die part 2

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The market anarchist solution to justice is primarily concerned with consumer demand as the drive for accountability, due to the incentive system involved. The general thought in market anarchist circles is that establishing accountability will make everything slowly better and more adapted to people's values. This is, of course, correct, and restoring accountability to the justice system would be a tremendous improvement. We would see less abuse, limit times for trials, much lower costs, and a fairer system all around.

Would market anarchist justice be made too complicated by a multiplicity of codes? Not at all. In fact, since every conflict would ideally be regulated by one single code negotiated by the two agencies involved, the situation would not be much more complicated than what we have today. The only complication would be in cases involving someone who belongs to no agency or who belongs to agency which has not yet been to the negociation table. Procedures would obviously be developed to deal with these specific kinds of cases.

Now I'd like to go beyond what market anarchist theory has to say on the subject, and look at specific implementations of justice.

First, let's look at the vengeance aspect. Statist justice is based on retribution, on inflicting punishment, instead of restoration. People celebrate the punishment of an assumed guilty party, while gaining nothing at all from it except a thirst for vengeance which is really fabricated by the way the state has perverted justice. The state of the same society after the trial is worse than it was before it, inevitably.

Restorative justice (also called conciliatory justice), on the contrary, aims to ensure that society is, if not better off from the whole procedure, at least as good as it was before it. There are three main parts to this idea:

1. Arbitration between the victim and the offender is strongly encouraged, or otherwise consensual methods, with judge or jury-based trials used only when all other methods fail.
2. The offender must compensate for the damages he inflicted to the victim. If financial restitution is not possible, the victim and the offender must agree on an equivalent.
3. Reintegration instead of isolation (jail): Inscribing the process within the context of the greater society, encouraging rehabiliation by reconnecting the offender to the social context instead of isolating him from that context.

That's the first part of the puzzle. Another part of the puzzle is the concept of Informed Consent, which I discussed extensively before. Restorative justice is an excellent concept, although best applied to a smaller scale. Informed Consent, on the other hand, is a more general concept and is applicable at any scale. We already know that agencies would function on the basis of arbitration, i.e. they would choose the courts that would receive their cases in this or that context. But Informed Consent would be the way by which the decision-making process (the actual trial) would take place, involving the arbitrators, experts, and representatives from both parties.

This structure addresses both the enormous power of judges, and the confrontational nature of the system. As a corollary, the issue of wealth becomes less important, as conviction or lack thereof depends no longer on the persuasion and credibility of a lawyer, but rather on a consensus. Even if one party is not present, there will still be arbitrators and experts there to take up some of his side of the story, although obviously they don't have as much interest in defending him as he would himself. It would also give a more impartial, or at least multi-faceted, approach to the truth.

Finally, a form of hierarchical debate could be an excellent tool in doing the ground work for a case- deal with all the procedures that come before it, as well as prepare for the dialogue by setting the agenda and the arguments from all sides on each point.

What about appeals? Well, here's how I think it would happen. There wouldn't be any appeals at first, and people would be dissatisfied with some decisions, especially if there is no mediation or restitution (which would definitely lower the rate of dissatisfaction). The most reliable courts would naturally seek to leverage this reliability advantage over their competition, and would put themselves under an oversight system, and publicize this fact. The oversight system would check all cases brought to that court, and check for technical or judiciary errors. When errors are found, and the guilty party wishes to appeal, it would then nullify the decision of that court and make its own judgment (using whatever process is desired).

This oversight would be a competitive advantage, since all other things being equal a system with appeals is more desirable for consumers than a system without appeals. So more courts would want to have such a system. It might not actually happen like that, but this is a natural scenario. The point is that there are situations where there is an incentive even for the courts themselves to have appeals put in place for their customers. This is something that opponents of Market Anarchy don't seem to understand: as long as there's a demand for something, producers will be interested in providing it.

Friday, November 3, 2006

Statist "justice" : throw the die part 1

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What is the role of the "justice system" under a state? First, to exclusively enforce the arbitrary code of laws of the ruling class, and reject all others, in short: to maintain the legal monopoly. Second, to give the appearance of justice, that is to say, to condemn someone plausible for a crime, by duplicity if necessary. Third,
to slow down the growth of law down to a manageable level. It's like indoctrination in a cult- you can't give them too much at a time. Once one layer of law is assimilated, you can then continue to the next one. So the "justice system" is a safeguard against unhealthy levels of coercion, permitting the state to cruise gently from layer to layer without being derailed.

Now, the main feature of the system is its centralized authority. In a trial, the judge possesses unquestionable control over the proceedings, although of course he is bound by certain rules and procedures. This is natural, given what we have just seen. A decentralized process wouldn't entail the specific kind of outcomes that are needed for the statist "justice system". It may allow too many laws to stay on the books, or not enough laws, or refuse to prosecute someone against whom insufficient evidence is presented, or even downright reject the legal monopoly's position. The latter does exist in "jury nullification", but only exists because the concept of a jury would otherwise be meaningless, and at least in the US, and US courts do their very best to ignore it.

Another important feature of the system is the concept of a jury. Juries are a vital tool to fulfill its second purpose, which is to say, to minimize people's criticism of the system. By having twelve average Joes give their ignorant stamp of approval to complicated legal cases, the system is ensured that its judgment is acceptable to the general public as well. It does not ensure actual justice to the people involved, but their opinions are irrelevent compared to that of the population at large, who is the actual "consumer" of the system (through the maintenance of legitimacy). So juries are sort of a "market research" process, where the best scapegoats are found.

Of course, the idea that people should be coerced into being part of a jury and expected to judge someone else's coercive acts is insane, and so is the idea that twelve ordinary people are habilitated to render such judgments (especially given the low caliber of people who get past the selection process). The whole concept of it is insane, but within the statist framework it makes perfect sense. After all, the coercion of the state is supposed to be "good", "necessary" coercion in order to counter that of private individuals.

The end result of this process, therefore, is not justice, but rather convenience. It is convenient for the state to have scapegoats and to have a valve mechanism, and it is convenient for the general public to see some people executed or jailed. None of this is based on facts however. The only real use of the system is for the ruling class. This is similar to the socialized "health care system", where the most powerful either get preferential treatment, or go get treated elsewhere. It is always the rest of us who pay dearly for their power.

Let's be honest here. In the system we have today, pretty much anyone who the weight of investigation falls on can be trumped up as guilty, especially if they had cheap representation. Coerced confessions are routine (even on children), railroading investigations is routine, relying heavily on unreliable eyewitness evidence is routine, "lie detectors" and other frauds are routine.

I hope I don't even need to mention the death penalty. In the US, approximately 10% of death row inmates (between 1976 and 2004, 1012 executions and 117 exonerations) are exonerated (and who knows how many more were executed when innocent). 10% of defects would bankrupt most private companies- but for the "justice system", it's business as usual.

To summarize, the five main problems with the system are:

1. Total lack of accountability.
2. The confrontational nature of the system, which puts an emphasis on persuasion instead of facts. Corollary : the wealthy and powerful can manipulate the system better.
3. Judges have a centralized control over the proceedings.
4. The coerciveness and uselessness of jury duty.
5. Vengeance as a motivator.

In the second part, I will discuss the market anarchist/IC solution.

Kent Hovind Guilty of Unintelligent Tax Evasion

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Boy do I have conflicting emotions right now. A jury just found Kent Hovind, a.k.a. Dr. Dino, guilty of 44 counts of tax evasion.

He faces up to 288 years in prison, while his wife faces up to 225 years.

I think Kent Hovind is a moonbat. He is disingenuous, spectacularly stupid, and an all around butt head. However, I don't think he should go to jail for not passively accepting the monetary theft perpetrated by the state.

Kent Hovind is deserving of ridicule. Kent Hovind is deserving of ostracization. Kent Hovind may even be deserving of a banana cream pie to the face. But he is not deserving of prison time merely for not paying taxes.

In fact, I think he should be commended for standing up to the government and not paying taxes. Too bad nobody else will see it that way. Kent Hovind got taken down, which is good, but for wrong and immoral reasons, which is bad. Unfortunately, Kent's defense was extremely weak. His attorneys presented no evidence, and called no witnesses. He attempted to use a religious excuse, something to the effect of,"We are doing God's work and therefore shouldn't have to pay taxes." Looks like the jury didn't but that one.

I may just have to start wearing a "Free Kent!" t-shirt.

Only an entity as evil as the government can make me stand in solidarity with a particularly revolting creationist.

On a side note, not too long ago I was kicked out of jury duty for my political and social views. If I was somehow seated in the jury for this case, I most definitely would have voted not guilty for Hovind. How odd.