Category Archives: The State

Which Is The Worst Mouthpiece Of Propaganda?

Free Speech, Individual Rights, Media, Russia, The State

It’s not RT TV. Russia Today reports openly and extensively on assorted proposals to restrict freedoms throughout Russia as well as on existing restrictions in that country:

“Moscow magistrate convict Russian nationalist of extremism” tells of restrictions and bans imposed by the Moscow City Court on an individual whose activities are viewed as “extreme.”

More headlines exposing illiberal restrictions: “Russia may criminalize multi-ethnic fights between individuals,” which is also silly. It is already naturally unlawful in almost all criminal codes to attack another individual unprovoked. This latest Russian proposal is just a species of the hate-crime legislation endured in Europe and throughout the Anglo-sphere.

Another of today’s RT headlines: “Opposition party proposes 5 year jail term for insulting patriotism.”

Social engineering is par for the course in the US, except that American leaders incentivize values in opposition to the traditional values Putin seems after:

“New Family Code to protect traditional family, religious values – key lawmaker.” The Russian “head of the lower house committee for family issues has described a new set of legislative amendments protecting the values shared by basic religions, and inspiring young people to choose marriage over cohabitation”:

Other possible changes could include outlining priorities in favor of traditional families and traditional family values. These include the concepts that have been supporting the Russian nation for over a thousand years – the union between a man and a woman, several children in a family, families uniting several generations and the deep connection between these generations.

Either way, shaping society in politically pleasing ways is not the role of the state.

Back to the point of the post: RT covers quite well what we in the US would and should consider the state’s encroachment on liberty.

Can you say the same about mainstream media stateside?

MORE.

Surveillance For Thee But Not For Me

Constitution, Founding Fathers, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Politics, The State

Remember when the The Transportation Security Administrator dared to manhandle Sen. Rand Paul in the same way these goons grab our privates daily? Rand responded by telling CNN’s Erin Burnett, essentially, that the TSA folks were good people bogged down by inflexible rules. He followed up with special pleading, suggesting a system of sectional privileges and rights, based on professional need and proximity to power.

But that’s the way the system was destined to work. I know: This nerd’s lasting infatuation is with the unsung heroes of the American founding: the Anti-Federalists. And one of the Anti-Federalist essayists said that the Constitution creates a city or district in which power is concentrated. Once the elected representative (too few to represent anyone meaningfully) reached Rome on The Potomac—they would act as a cloistered, privileged ruling class, impervious to the people’s pleas.

And this has come to pass.

That phony, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), is furious that the CIA “has secretly removed documents from computers used by her panel to investigate a controversial interrogation program.” Lo and behold this bitch has “discovered” the Fourth Amendment and is bemoaning its violation. “The Fourth … bars unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as various federal laws and a presidential executive order that prevents the agency from conducting domestic searches and surveillance,” Feinstein preached.

Man of the people whistleblower Edward Snowden said all there is to say. He “accused the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee of double standards on Tuesday, pointing out that her outrage at evidence her staff were spied on by the CIA was not matched by concern about widespread surveillance of ordinary citizens.”

Snowden said almost all there is to say about the premise of surveillance for thee but not for me under which Americans labor.

It is eminently reasonable to surveil politicians. Because of the special privileges and powers they are able to arrogate to themselves, they ought to be exempt from many of the so-called protections afforded to ordinary citizens.

And of course, they should be denied the vote.

Tyranny And Technology

Homeland Security, Liberty, Technology, The State

Other than for who will be missing from the event, the “South by Southwest (SXSW)” festival of “technology and innovation,” held in Austin, Texas, holds little interest for this scribe.

The three mighty men who’ll be absent from the venue that was “the launching pad of Twitter and Foursquare” are men who’ve truly used technology to advance the cause of freedom.

“Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, along with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist to whom he leaked his trove of classified government documents,” are scheduled to attend SXSW … but via videoconference.

“If Mr Assange and Mr Snowden were to set foot on US soil, they’d likely be arrested immediately for crimes against national security,” informs BBC News.

Sounds tyrannical to me.

Mitochondrial Disorder: Myth, Iatrogenesis, Or What?

Family, Healthcare, Relatives, Rights, Science, The State

My inclination is to say that Mitochondrial Disease, “a new and rapidly developing medical subspecialty,” is one of those made-up maladies Americans excel at conjuring and then milking for attention, attention-seeking activism, fund-raising, etc. There are rewards and reinforcements to be had in cultivating disease.

Mine is a hunch. However, so does the gamut of “Mitochondrial diseases” appear to be more conjecture than science—to say nothing of the circularity in the argument for their existence: A person lacks energy, therefore the Mitochondria, the locus of energy in the cells, is faulted.

I know nothing about the epidemiology of mitochondrial disorders, although the one study focuses on populations in the more affluent parts of the world: Northern England and Northern Finland.

Perhaps Africans are too preoccupied with survival to “develop” this malady?

The context: Fox-News host Megyn Kelly has been banging on non-stop about the mitochondrially impaired girl, Justina Pelletier. The 15-year-old girl was “taken into Massachusetts State Custody after her parents disagreed with doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital over her treatment plan.”

A guest summed up the travesty more succinctly than the host:

Boston Children’s Hospital and the Department of Children and Families, DCF, [took] this child away from these parents, who love this daughter and who want to care for this daughter, and who simply disagree with the recent diagnosis of a newly minted physician who only had been out of medical school for seven months, who disagreed with her actual treating physicians from Tufts..

Irrespective of whether this newly minted disease is mythical or authentic—there is absolutely no ambiguity in the following: The hospital staff involved in removing this girl from her loving parents, together with the personnel from the Department Which Ought To Be Dissolved; they all belong behind bars for their actions.