DOWN TO THE DOCTORS: Pirates (Again), Protests, Property Rights and the President

An irreverent look at some of the past week’s headlines by Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath

1. Kiwis Safe After Cruise Ship Fights Off Pirates – That Israeli security team dealt swiftly and effectively to a boatload of Somalis attempting to board a cruise liner in the Indian ocean, thereby saving the lives and property of 990 passengers. Good on them! The owners of other luxury liners would do well to follow the example of the MSC Melody by arming themselves appropriately, and employing people capable of utilising this weaponry to maximum effect.
I would love to see Somali pirates blown into small pieces by cannon fire, torpedoes, rockets or other appropriate tools of self-defence. Piracy is a serious matter, and those contemplating it as a career option need to persuaded otherwise.
More importantly, Somalia urgently needs restoration of the rule of law, so that a government can be formed and action taken to intercept and detain potential pirates before they become seaborne.

2. Marchers Casting Net Wide – A hikoi is planned to protest against the government’s decision not to provide special  seats on the proposed Super City council for indigenous brown-skinned people. The ‘Super City’ concept sucks, and the spectre of race-based seats is an insult to the people it is meant to help. I would hate to be stripped of my individuality, lumped in with others who had similar skin colour, eye colour or ancestral origin, and essentially told that I was so useless and incapable of fending for myself that I could never be elected to a council seat on my own merits. The whole concept of herding people into a group and then telling them they are useless and thus in need of special reserved places for them at the table is insulting and degrading.
This planned hikoi is a disgrace, and its supporters nothing but apologists for apartheid.

3. City’s Tree Lovers To Press MPs For Rethink On Controversial Law Changes – Let’s get this clear from the get-go: anyone who loves trees more than people is a truly twisted sick piece of work. That includes Nick Smith, who likes to hug trees with his tongue.
Anyone who thinks trees have rights -- especially those who think trees have more rights than the people who own them and the land on which they stand -- has a distorted sense of value and a rather dim view of the worth of humanity.
Forget the Local Government and Environment Select Committee bullshit about ‘tweaking’ rules so that people will be ‘allowed’ to prune, cut down or burn down trees they own. Look at the bigger picture. All around New Zealand, people own land on which sit trees, some of them old, some of them native to these shores, some of which would make good firewood or furniture, and many of which are blocking human enjoyment of life.
The important thing is that the land is owned by somebody. The owners have a right enshrined in common law to do what they like with this land provided they don’t cause objective harm to others in the process. If you feel that because someone has cut down a tree that somehow makes you a victim, then seek redress by proving you have been harmed. Otherwise shut the fuck up and mind your own god-damned business.

4. CEO Sacking Hallmark Of A Hands-On Presidency – That’s what the headline says.  I would phrase it another way: Obama is an interfering Big Government statist control freak with an agenda of nationalization and micromanagement that will make Helen Clark look like a libertarian. Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, is told that the President would like him to resign. Rick Wagoner falls on his sword (as should any CEO after losing billions of taxpayer dollars). But he didn’t fall, he was pushed – by a busybody, micro-managing President.  (No wonder GM is now being called Government Motors.)
The mainstream media see this gross disregard for property rights as “symbolic of US having crossed from an era of laissez-faire capitalism to a new kind of managed economy.”  Sadly, the truth is that the US hasn’t had anything remotely approaching a laissez-faire capitalist economy since the early twentieth century. This “new kind of managed economy” is just the same as the old kind, and with the same consequences: a slide in living standards and loss of essential liberties and rights for all who choose to remain part of it.
Rescue packages, stimuli – whatever you want to call them – they are simply socialism with a fancy name. And socialism not only doesn’t work, it kills.

See y’all next week!
Doc McGrath

Quote of the Day: Mark Steyn

“Civilization is not an evolution of mankind but the imposition of human good on human evil. It is not a historical inevitability. It is a battle that has to be fought every day, because evil doesn’t recede willingly before the wheels of progress."

- Mark Steyn

So gratifying, in reflecting on those words, to see the ObaMessiah fronting up against the evil of piracy, in much the same manner as did Jefferson against the Barbary Pirates. Lindsay Perigo offers praise where it's due:

President Obama is to be congratulated for authorising the use of lethal force instead of making a YouTube video appealing to the savages' non-existent good faith. Let us hope this lesson in the realities of the world—that there are bad guys in it—has come early enough in his presidency to effect the rescue of America from his appeasement of the likes of Iran and North Korea.

The world is a more civilised place today for the Navy Seals' heroics over the weekend, in precisely the manner Steyn describes. Let us hope the lesson will be seen elsewhere.

NOT PJ: As-Salaamu Alaykum Me Hearties! [updated]

Bernard Darnton gives John-boy a rest this week. Instead, he takes aim at pirates...

I used to think that if I missed the six o’clock news I wouldn’t know what was going on in the world. That’s true. But I’ve since realised that even if I do watch the six o’clock news I still won’t know what’s going on in the world.

Once you skip past the four weather reports, heroically refusing to be drawn in by the cliffhanger endings of three of them, and all the nonsense “human interest” stories about blind acupuncturists and the like, there’s barely time for any real news.

Apparently the world is being held to ransom by pirates. By “the world” they obviously mean “a handful of boats” , but hyperbole is hardly the worst crime the news media commit.

Somali pirates famously have control of a supertanker with two million barrels of oil on board and a Ukrainian freighter carrying 33 Russian-built T-72 tanks, crates of anti-aircraft missiles, and more small arms than an octopus kindergarten.

The Horn of Africa is being patrolled by the Italian, Greek, Turkish, British, Indian, American and Russian navies. Having the Italians around probably doesn’t do much for maritime security, but even if they swap sides half way through the rest should be able to sort the problem out. However, they’re doing nothing except asking the pirates if it’s OK to supply the hijacked ships with food and water.

Saturday’s newspaper informed me that “Somali sea bandits” “appear undeterred by non-violent tactics.” I checked with Mrs Darnton, who’s a cognitive-behavioural psychologist (that’s the vaguely scientific kind rather than the pervert Freudian kind), and she told me that pirates aren’t known for their retiring wallflower personalities.

This assessment obviously isn’t based on clinical interviews of Somali pirates and so possibly crosses the line from “vaguely scientific” to “witchcraft” , but the conclusion still stands. These are people who live in a country with an average income of $600 a year and they’ve discovered how to make people drop burlap sacks containing tens of millions of dollars from the sky. A stiffly worded letter from the Secretary General isn’t going to dissuade them.

Two-hundred years ago, when America had better presidents than it does today, the US Navy was created with the express purpose of dealing with pirates. The US Navy’s first overseas engagement was in the First Barbary War. The Barbary War is sometimes called “America’s Forgotten War” – a name shared with several other conflicts. (I don’t remember which. They are the forgotten Forgotten Wars.)

At the end of the 18th century, 20 percent of America’s federal government budget was spent buying off pirates. Jefferson rightly said, “Bugger this,” and sent the newly-built US Navy and the newly-recruited US Marines off – not for the last time – to sink boats off the coast of Libya.

The switch in tactics from “pay the people who hijack our ships” to “kill the people who hijack our ships” was a resounding success. One we could emulate today. A modern carrier battle group is the most lethal collection of things that go bang ever assembled, packing more firepower than all the American wars I can remember put together.

Even if the tanker-borrowers are made of sterner stuff than the one-legged be-parroted sorts evoked by the word “pirate”, it would be nice to think that several of the world’s most powerful militaries plus the Italians could take on six guys in a skiff. If they were allowed to.

* * You can read Bernard Darnton's NOT PJ column every Thursday here at NOT PC.  * *
* * Do come back now. * *

UPDATE:  Ending Piracy Should be a U.S. Government Priority says Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

What did Thomas Jefferson say about "sustainability"?

This morning I have for you yet another why Thomas Jefferson is one of my all-time heroes.

He was the author of the Declaration of Independence -- that ringing declaration of Enlightenment values in action -- and one of history's great constitutional thinkers, helping deliver the modern world's first republic; he was the first to state explicitly that the foreign policy of a free country is explicitly free trade -- insisting too that free trade requires free sea lanes uninfested by piracy, and that appeasement of aggressors was both unprincipled and impractical. In his Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, he (with his co-author Madison) insisted on the complete legal separation of church and state -- an insistence without historical precedent, and still an example of how (and why) such a separation should be effected.

Jefferson lent his great mind to almost every area of human affairs, and in each he offered important and path-breaking insight.

And it turns out too he even had something to say about today's fashionable concern: sustainability.

In common use, "sustainability" amounts to a hand-wringing concern with "the well-being of future generations" -- notwithstanding that the wishes, desires and concerns of future generations are in no way known by this one, and that everything indicates (to the extent at least that the enemies of progress are unsuccessful) that future generations will be infinitely wealthier than this one -- a concern then both irrational and unethical, sacrificing as it does the wealth, prosperity and industry of today to a future that is never allowed to arrive.

Answering this question on the possible claims of future generations on this one (in a letter to Madison in a discussion on the Bill of Rights), Jefferson said, in short, that the Earth belongs to the living.

The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. ... I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;" that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it...

Explains Lubos Motl in a lucid post entitled 'Was Thomas Jefferson an Alarmist,'

Jefferson said very explicitly that the past generations - the dead people - or the people who are not yet living have no right to control the resources that exist at a given moment or bind the future generations to pay any money (or land). That's a good policy because otherwise we would be governed by zombies...  

According to Jefferson (as well as any other person who understands some of the basic principles of Western democracy), a generation has no right to bind another generation, e.g. by carbon targets or a territorial debt. Jefferson declares clearly that everything about these resources should be decided by the people who live at the particular moment. The Earth belongs to them in "usufruct". The purpose of this word - meaning the right to use assets of someone else - seems controversial but I certainly assume that the actual owner according to Jefferson is God or Nature and not future generations or anything of this sort... ...[T]he first generation or generations have the right to use them. 

How it could be otherwise? The civilization would be completely dysfunctional if people who don't live right now had any rights to decide what happens tonight. Jefferson knows it, every sane person knows it - probably not only in the West. Hansen doesn't. 

According to Jefferson, should our generation try to give gifts to the future generations out of the resources that, as he has explained, effectively belong to the living generation? Do these distant generations have such special relationships with each other and obligations with respect to each other? Once again, Jefferson is very transparent - maybe too transparent for our tastes, tastes of 21st century sissies - about the relationship that should exist between different generations:

... but that between society and society, or generation and generation, there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation to another.

It's the law of nature, reality itself, that the notion of sustainability seeks to flout. And it's the good Mr Jefferson to whom who we can look to point that out.

Weekend ramble, April 14

Another weekend ramble through sites and sounds worthy of a weekend's worth of exploration.

• As Marcus says, some good news from the (UK) Daily Telegraph -- there's one British Tory who's not all pink:

  David Cameron has embraced the environmental agenda with greater ardour than any other political leader, even inviting Al Gore to address the shadow cabinet recently, after publicly lauding his film, An Inconvenient Truth.
  But one outspoken Tory, MEP Roger Helmer, is eager to distinguish himself from the rest.
  Helmer has organised a "counter-consensual climate conference" in
  Brussels next week, which will see former chancellor Lord Lawson head a line-up of sceptics, including the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming.
  "Many climatologists reject the alarmist scenario, and there have been disgraceful efforts by the establishment to silence the dissenters," Helmer
  tells Spy. "I've decided to organise the conference to give a platform to the
  other side of the issue. David Cameron wants us to put an extra focus on the
  environment and I'm delighted to help in that process."
  And Gore's Oscar-winning documentary certainly won't be showing. "The event will be followed by a screening of the recent Channel 4 film, The Great Global Warming Swindle."

• "This year marks the 100th anniversary of science fiction writer Robert Heinlein's birth. His hometown of Kansas City is marking the occasion with special events." reports End of the Universe. "Even though he's been dead for nearly two decades, he continues to cast a long shadow on the science fiction field. Which Heinlein book are you going to read to celebrate the centennial?"
  
  
• And on Lord Bore of Nashville's forthcoming 24-hour smugfest, Rob Lyons says, don't do it! Live Earth: Change the Record.

  If you weren’t feeling patronised enough by Live 8, the freebie gig in 2005 that called on G8 politicians to cancel Third World debt (which they were planning to do anyway), Live Earth might really tip you over the edge.
  

• Tyler Cowen records something to remember about the Chinese economic miracle:
  

  ...of the 3,220 Chinese citizens with a personal wealth of 100 million yuan ($13
  million) or more, 2,932 are children of high-level cadres. Of the key positions
  in the five industrial sectors - finance, foreign trade, land development,
  large-scale engineering and securities - 85% to 90% are held by children of
  high-level cadres.

  As Samizdata comments, "These filial links between the commanding heights of China's supposedly private sector and its government betray the fact that China Inc. is [still] the unholy alliance of a dictatorial regime and the application of corrupted 'free' market ideals." At some stage the tension between the two will out, but with what consequences?
  
  
• For those who find it hard to keep up with how to avoid offending the easily offended and the politically correct (but I repeat myself), here's a how-to guide to either offend or to avoid offending: A Politically Correct Lexicon.
  
  
• Let's sing the praises of the internal combustion engine. In fact, says Dwight Lee,

  All environmentalists should be singing the praises of the internal combustion engine (ICE) instead of damning it for polluting the environment. The environmental advantages of the internal combustion engine have been obvious for a long time.

  Join him in his praise at TechCentralStation's Our Green ICE Age.
  
• Architects Christopher Wren and Frank Lloyd Wright both liked to play jokes on clients, and it turns out they even played similar jokes, this one by Wren on the Windsor councillors. Can anyone tell us on which Wright building he played a similar joke with his client?
  
  
• Better Living Through Lefty Activism. Well that's the title of this short video at any rate ...
  
  
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism promises "to give [anti-capitalists] an in-your-face economics education that they won't forget — ever." Buy a copy for an anti-capitalist friend today.
  
  
• Tom Beard has news about developer Terry Serepisos' plans for the tallest building in Wellington. Says Tom

  At least you can't accuse him of developing boring buildings. While the later stages of the Century City development on Tory St and the "explosion in a bling factory" planned for Dixon and Victoria streets may be the visual equivalent of a hyperactive kid force-fed with food colouring and party pills, at least they're not the grey envelope-filling cuboids currently being extruded all over Taranaki St like so many rectilinear turds.

  And he throws down a gauntlet: "In fact, and I hope none of my architect friends take offence at this, I can't really think of any New Zealand architects that I could imagine designing a truly exciting 40-50 storey skyscraper..." Any offence taken?
  
  
• For those like me with a taste for hard-core Objectivism, the news that the archives of Stephen Boydstun's Objectivity magazine is now all online is something to sing and shout about. There is some seriously good stuff in here on science and mathematics, value and metaphysics, Aristotelianism and Newtonian physics, and from everyone from Stephen Hicks to Tibor Machan to Ronald Merrill to Michael Huemer. A great resource -- noe making it worth buying another ink cartridge for your printer.
  
  
• Thomas Jefferson’s birthday was earlier this week. Historian David Mayer remembers Thomas Jefferson. Here are the official White House biography, the website for Jefferson’s home at Monticello, and Genevieve LaGreca’s toast to Jefferson’s achievements. [Hat tip Stephen Hicks]
  
  
• What’s Wrong With Contemporary Philosophy. Answer: Lots.
  
  
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali always gives good interview. Here she is again in good combative style in Guernica magazine.
  

  Guernica: It seems when you talk about Islam, it's not your style to say things in a gentle way...
  Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I'm the gentlest of them all, honestly. (laughing)

  Oh yeah, she does irony very well too. :-)
  
  
• Roger Kerr writes on 'The Lever of Riches,' and how we NZers aren't really getting any of it.

  Productivity, described by American economist Joel Mokyr as the “lever of riches”, is a hot topic these days, and rightly so: it's the single most important contributor to reducing poverty, increasing leisure time and meeting health, education, environmental and cultural needs.
  
  That's why New Zealanders should react with alarm to the news last week that the rate of growth in labour productivity (that's the amount of goods and services produced from each hour of a worker's time) was the lowest on record.

  Read on here to find out what's been going wrong.
  
  
• We may not be as productive as we should be, but boy do we have plenty of commissioners to nanny us. Zen Tiger has some slightly tongue in cheek news of new plans to protect our commissioners in Leaving No Commissioner Behind. After all, when you have Children's Commissioner and would-be uber-Nanny Cindy Kiro as a model, then almost everything is possible.
  
  
• Speaking of children and of nanny, Tessa Mayes reports here on how the British government is recruiting children to spy on and ‘re-educate’ the adult population. Kiro et al will no doubt be taking notes. What's Worse Than Big Brother? Little Brother.
  
  
• The ever prolific Tibor Machan explains how to become more prolific yourself: Don't procrastinate. Tibor has tips too on how to overcome your own procrastination, in Remedying Procrastination. Watching Tibor duck out of a conversation a few years ago to use a friend's computer to produce an article on an idea produced in that conversation made me realise just how simple it is to become prolific: it can be as simple as ignoring the calls to Manana. If it worked for Tibor, it can work for you too.
  
  
• Here's an oldie on old Ken Ring's moon madness, a three-parter by Bill Keir from the Auckland Astronomical Society. Good reading.
  
  
• As should have been obvious, Iran's capture and subsequent release of British seamen and marines was a trial balloon that told them much about British and American resolve in the face of piracy. There isn't any. Says Charles Krauthammer,

  Iran has pulled off a tidy little success with its seizure and subsequent release of those 15 British sailors and marines: a pointed humiliation of Britain, with a bonus demonstration of Iran's intention to push back against coalition challenges to its assets in Iraq. All with total impunity. Further, it exposed the utter futility of all those transnational institutions -- most prominently the European Union and the U.N. -- that pretend to maintain international order. You would think maintaining international order means, at a minimum, challenging acts of piracy. No challenge here. Instead, a quiet capitulation.

  See Krauthammer's Britain's Humiliation - and Europe's.
  
  
• Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill has a similar comment: "What is Britain’s role in the world today? Judging from the Iranian captives saga, it is to play the victim." See A Lean, Mean Victim-Making Machine.
  
  
• Based on her reading of Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, Diana Hsieh reflects on how christianity demands one substitute blind obedience for clear-headed moral responsibility.

  Toward the end of the chapter on "The Ascetic Odyssey," Freeman observes that "one can never know whether one is truly saved" in Christianity because "there is no way to judge objectively just how guilty one is in the eyes of God." Consequently, "the only true way to secure a rest from tension on earth is to escape completely from the exercise of moral responsibility; here the 'virtue' of obedience becomes crucial."

  Just another reason to abjure religionists from the field of morality, I'd suggest.
  
  
• On that issue, and relevant to the recent discussions here on christianity and the Dark Ages, Andrew Bernstein has a brilliant full-length review of Rodney Stark's book The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Says Bernstein,

  This book, and others like it—along with their admiring treatment by the mainstream liberal press—are signs of the resurgence of Christianity in America. This is all the more frightening because the arguments are being delivered and embraced at an intellectual, not merely a grassroots, level. If such arguments were sound, their growing acceptance among contemporary intellectuals would present no problem; but, as will be shown, this pro-religion thesis, although convincing to some, is egregiously and provably mistaken.

  Bernstein then proceeds to masterfully prove the mistakes in Stark's thesis. As always with articles at The Objective Standard, the full article is available only to subscribers (but as I've said before subscription really is worth every penny) -- you can get the flavour of Bernstein's full review in the opening paragraphs, and also in his reply to two letters on his article in a subsequent issue. See The Tragedy of Theology: How Religion Caused and Extended the Dark Ages, and Letters to the Editor, Spring Edition.

  Why, you ask, did medieval Europeans embrace Aristotle and the Greeks? More broadly, why is Western culture, despite all its flaws, more committed to reason than is any other culture?

  Read on to discover his answer.
  
  
• "America is the Nation of the Enlightenment." Philosopher David Kelly explains what that statement means, and points out who the philosophical enemies are.
  
  
• "Why so gloomy about global warming?" asks scientist Richard Lindzen. "A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now." See Lindzen in Newsweek: 'Why So Gloomy? Learning to Live With Global Warming.'
  
  
• Far from being a libertarian hero as Tim Wikiriwhi has claimed, Frank Bainimarama is driving a truck through Fiji's constitution. Idiot/Savant considers its prospects for restitution in Fiji: Demolishing the Constitution.
  
  
• And finally, what does Nairobi's plastic bag problem tell us about property rights, and the lack thereof? Says Greg Rehmke, an awful lot. "Sometime symptoms are confused with the disease that causes them. Litter is one such symptom often confused with an economic disease." See Nairobi's Plastic Bags Are Barking.
  

Five years on: 'Civilisation under siege'

Five years ago today, the whole world changed. The unthinkable happened.

When we went to bed on September 10, 2001, it was a very different place than it would be twenty-four hours later. We all watched. We all struggled to take it all in. As the horrific scenes in lower Manhattan unfolded on the TV screen in front of me, I wrote this piece below to help collect my own thoughts. Re-writing it today, I'm not sure that I'd change a single word.

The only thing I might add is that if I was writing the same piece five years after Pearl Harbor, the dragon would have already been slain...

* * * * *

If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere, It's up to you, New York, New York!

This today was a declaration of war—but a declaration by whom, and against what?

2,500 people were killed in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Today, in mainland USA, many many more have been killed in appalling scenes as America was left defenceless.

Airline security was exposed. The Pentagon was breached. The glory of the New York skyline was rent asunder; the twin towers of the World Trade Centre—shining spires of capitalism and twin symbols for man's achievement—are no more. With their destruction, that skyline now stands like a mouthful of broken teeth, and many of capitalism's best and brightest—who moments before had been going about their daily business—have been destroyed, their lives snuffed out in those formerly gleaming spires.

Manhattan and Washington were in chaos. The whole world was in shock. Almost the whole world—for this disaster was no accident. It was the result of careful and calculated cunning on the part of someone.

But whoever committed this outrage, and whatever they claim to stand for, it is clear enough what they are against: As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said soon after the disaster, this was an attack against civilisation itself.

The New York skyline represents one of man's highest achievements—the World Trade Center towers represented that skyline's financial district—the very engine of capitalism—those working in downtown New York are capitalism's best. Today, instead of buying, selling and investing, the world's best and brightest were burnt alive, crushed, or were jumping to their deaths.

What caused this was an act of piracy by everything that slithers against everything that stands—or stood—erect; by the very lowest, against the very highest that civilisation has to offer. And, as in the days of piracy on the high seas, this modern savagery must be stamped out by a fierce uncompromising commitment to the protection and sanctity of innocent human lives.

Civilisation has today been attacked by savages armed only with carpet knives, and it must learn how to defend itself against such an enemy. It has not yet armed itself with the weapons to do so—either philosophically, or militarily. Unfortunately, it must.

The point is often made that the best defence against terrorism is a steely resolve, and an excellent intelligence service. In the last few decades both have been absent, but the lack of steely resolve is the hardest to remedy for this can only come from an uncompromising commitment to the very values that uphold civilisation, and to an unswerving defence of those values—and commitment on the level required necessitates the philosophical weapons both to understand and defend and those values.

For what makes someone hijack a jumbo jet and then fly it suicidally into a 110 storey skyscraper above teeming city streets if not their commitment to horrific ideas? What makes them want to kill on this scale? And to kill themselves in the process? Only the power of ideas can fuel such evil—evil ideas. Evil ideas can only be fought with better ones, which means philosophical self-defence. In the long term, only the philosophy of Objectivism -- the philosophy for living on this earth -- can provide the necessary philosophical weapons to the destructive poison unleashed today.

But America isn't armed. America has lost its way. America is not sure of itself or of its founding values, and instead it thrashes around on the world stage, posturing as the world's policeman and becoming instead a world pariah. In part, much world anger against America comes about through righteous disgust at such unprincipled American actions as the bombing of Belgrade, or of Kosovo, or of Sudanese pharmaceutical factories.

But that said, it is clear that much disgust with America springs also from anti-capitalist, mystic, barbaric, stone-age savagery, and it is crucial that whatever action is taken distinguishes itself by being an uncompromisingly principled action against all such forms of barbarism.

That action must be both internal and external, and there are supreme dangers with both. For nothing is surer than that this barbarism was an attack on civilisation itself, and civilisation must needs survive the barbarism....

LINKS: Refresher course - Cox and Forkum
Liberty or death - John Gagnon, SOLO press release

RELATED: Politics-World, War

Property rights victory

The Institute for Justice is a nonprofit law firm that specializes in defending individual rights. Yes Virginia, it's an organisation full of honest lawyers -- if that doesn't sound too much like an oxymoron. You can read an interview with IJ's Scott Bullock here.

And they've just scored another victory. In Ohio. (That's right, they're an American organisation with no local parallels -- and I say that with great sadness.)

You'll remember that last year the US Supreme Court gave a decision in Kelo v New London that allowed the state government to confiscate private houses, and give them to a private developer -- and you might also remember Rand-reading Logan Darrow Clements who then put in a claim for the house and land of Justice David Souter in order to build the Lost Liberty Hotel, in which guests would find a copy of Atlas Shrugged where they might normally expect a Gideon Bible.

Anyway, in the first challenge of property rights law since Kelo, the IJ have scored a significant victory:

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that economic development isn't a sufficient reason under the state constitution to justify taking homes, putting a halt to a $125 million project of offices, shops and restaurants in a Cincinnati suburb that officials said would create jobs and add tax revenue...

"For the individual property owner, the appropriation is not simply the seizure of a house," Justice Maureen O'Connor wrote in a case that pitted the city of Norwood against two couples trying to save their homes. "It is the taking of a home — the place where ancestors toiled, where families were raised, where memories were made."

...“Our home is ours again!” exclaimed Joy Gamble. “The Ohio Supreme Court has stopped this piracy. Now all Ohioans are safe from the scourge of eminent domain for private profit.”

...Dana Berliner, an attorney for the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice that represented property owners in the case, said Wednesday's decision will have ramifications in high courts and legislatures across the country. "This case is really part of a trend throughout the country of states responding to and rejecting the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo decision last year," she said. "There are now 28 states that have taken legislative steps to protect owners more after that decision, and this case is the next movement in that trend, and I believe now not only legislatures but other courts are going to begin rejecting that terrible decision."

Let's hope so. Let's hope we're witnessing the rejection of the idea that government confiscation of private property rights is ever justified. And well done Dana, Scott and all the good folk at the Institute of Justice.

LINKS: Ohio's High Court backs property owners - Associated Press [Hat tip Bidinotto Blog] Ohio Supreme Court rules unanimously to to protect property from eminent domain abuse - Media Release from Institute for Justice
The supreme assault on private property: An interview with Scott Bullock - TNI
Institute for Justice website
Lost Liberty Hotel - Wikipedia

RELATED: Property Rights, Politics-US, Libertarianism, Objectivism

Bastards bomb the west again!

The brutality in London is a continuation of the war against civilisation that was declared with the 9/11 attacks. Unable to write coherently, and still unclear who exactly commited this atrocity, I'll post fragments of the response I wrote then to try and make sense of that earlier attack, until it's possible to make sense of this one:

But whoever committed this outrage, and whatever they claim to stand for, it is clear enough what they are against: As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said soon after the disaster, this was an attack against civilisation itself...

What caused this was an act of piracy by everything that slithers against everything that stands - or stood - erect; by the very lowest, against the very highest that civilisation has to offer. And, as in the days of piracy on the high seas, this modern savagery must be stamped out by a fierce uncompromising commitment to the protection and sanctity of innocent human lives.

Civilisation has today been attacked by savages armed only with carpet knives, and it must learn how to defend itself against such an enemy. It has not yet armed itself with the weapons to do so - either philosophically, or militarily. Unfortunately, it must...

Civilisation is under threat, and each of us must ask ourselves: where do I stand with respect to the values that underpin civilisation, and that civilisation represents? What have I done to support those values - or to smear them? What have I done to uphold those values, or to spit on them?

As SOLO contributor Bill Grazier said: "Although those bastards can kill our citizens, they'll never kill the human spirit, never extinguish joy or love or friendship... as long as we maintain our strength and dignity, then these bastards will never defeat us."

Fishermen, 21; Greenpeace, 0

I'm all for the right to protest, as long as it's done without destroying people's property, but despite the po-faced all-get-out seriousness with which Greenpeace protests are often reported, I usually find myself falling about with laughter at the response they elicit. They're great entertainment.

Take their latest tilt against bottom trawling. No, not down Ponsonby Road (that's a protest for Brian Tamaki's 'keep-your-bottoms-holy' crowd) -- the world's minor media is this morning carrying the report of a seaborne Greenpeace protest against bottom-trawl fishing being broken up when the fishermen began lobbing potatoes at them. No doubt the only reason the spuds missed was that it's hard to shoot straight through tears of laughter. I haven't laughed this much since the French confiscated a fleet of motley Mururoa-bound Greenpeace vessels over the screams of protest organiser Stephanie Mills back in 1997.

Somehow I doubt whether the organiser of this protest, Msss Carmen Gravat -- official title: "Greenpeace campaigner on board Rainbow Warrior" -- would share my sense of humour about this. However, you can tell her how funny you found it on +872 1302412.

[UPDATE: Amaltal Fishing says it will go to court today to seek an injunction against Greenpeace, which it accuses of high-seas "piracy"...

...Amaltal director Andrew Talley said Greenpeace campaigners from the Rainbow Warrior cut Ocean Reward's net in the Tasman Sea on Tuesday with knives and gaffs. "They are being attacked by a bunch of hairies and hippies with knives and gaffs," Talley said of his crew. "We are shocked at this attack. It's an act of piracy."]