STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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September 29, 2015
That evil acts occur when nations go to war is no surprise. Soldiers arrive already expecting it, their leaders having described the enemy as vermin worthy of death. What some American troops found in Afghanistan is different. It was not an evil they brought wi ...
September 29, 2015
Since the economic downturn of 2008, the critics of capitalism have redoubled their efforts to persuade the American people and many others around the world that the system of individual freedom and free enterprise has failed. These critics have insisted that i ...
September 29, 2015
Today is the 70th anniversary of the UN. It is not clear how much good the UN has done. Some UN Blue Helmet peacekeeping operations had limited success. But mainly Washington has used the UN for war, such as the Korean War and Washington's Cold War against the ...
September 28, 2015
"After all, it's their car," says the author of today's excerpt. This is incorrect. No one "owns" his or her car, if ownership means the right to do what you want with the object you own. What we really have is a sort of long-term conditional lease. The so-call ...
September 28, 2015
This month marks the seventh anniversary of the bursting of the housing bubble and the subsequent economic meltdown. The mood in Congress following the meltdown resembled the panicked atmosphere that followed the September 11th attacks. As was the case after Se ...
September 27, 2015
Synopsis: Nairobi Bombay, a blogger for an anonymous Internet site, is investigating reports that unusually large numbers of people are dying in the new homeless camps. Meanwhile, Dancing Fawn also uses anonymous Internet links in an attempt to track down her m ...
September 26, 2015
"The natural progress of things," Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground." Today we'll see how this process began in Europe, and one of the first steps in the evolution of European law. THE GUILDS Medieval guilds ...
September 25, 2015
We do not know what Pope Francis and President Obama discussed during their 45-minute private Oval Office meeting this week. It would be nice if he heard Obama's confession, but they would likely have needed more time. Their conversation, whatever it was, will ...
September 25, 2015
In a recent Labor Day speech to union workers in Illinois, Hillary Clinton declared that if she is elected president of the United States, she would make sure that “some employers go to jail for wage theft and all the other abuses they engage in.” Her incen ...
September 24, 2015
Bitcoin promoters who long for recognition got their wish last week. It is not an official currency, nor is it likely to become one. The cryptocurrency is an official commodity, though. Whether this is good news remains to be seen. The designation resulted from ...
September 24, 2015
A seven-year old story that occurred in Prince George's County, Maryland, has stuck in my mind more firmly than any other as an example of the indiscriminate barbarism that can happen at the hands of the police state's knuckle-draggers. The story is this: A pa ...
September 23, 2015
The story we excerpt today is almost two years old. The topic, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, is interesting but what it reveals about governmental deception is even more so. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post obtained top-secret documents detailing CIA drone ...
September 23, 2015
Caught up in the spectacle of the forthcoming 2016 presidential elections, Americans (never very good when it comes to long-term memory) have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over militarized police, police shootings of unarmed citizens, asse ...
September 22, 2015
We all know that the various forms of democratic governance don't work nearly as well as advertised. Representatives usually turn corrupt in short order, no matter how the people select them. They devolve into oligarchy under a democratic façade. The same is t ...
September 22, 2015
When is the price of some marketable good or service at or near zero? When either the supply of it is so plentiful that virtually any demand, no matter how great, can be satisfied or when no matter how large or small the supply of it may be, people's demand for ...
September 21, 2015
Last week's much-publicized and completely unnecessary arrest of young Ahmed Mohamed brought to light an alarmingly (pun intended) broad Texas law against so-called "hoax bombs." The statute is an open invitation for police to detain anyone for anything. In Tex ...
September 21, 2015
Is the current refugee crisis gripping the European Union "all America's fault"? That is how my critique of US foreign policy was characterized in a recent interview on the Fox Business Channel. I do not blame the host for making this claim, but I think it is i ...
September 20, 2015
Synopsis: Dancing Fawn, an abandoned mother with few options, has discovered a little piece of cyberspace where all communications are anonymous and untraceable. After setting up a business there, she decides to explore a bit and maybe find out why the place is ...
September 19, 2015
It is a striking fact that as central power increases, human initiative decreases. (Regulation forbids adaptation.) When private actions are punished, fewer of them are seen. Individual initiative, however, stands at the base of human progress. We need more of ...
September 18, 2015
Relations between the U.S. technology industry and federal law enforcement look less cordial every day. This summer saw FBI Director James Comey begging them to believe he is not a maniac for demanding back-door access to private customer data. Now Microsoft is ...
September 18, 2015
The greater the economic freedom, the wealthier and happier the people. From minimum-wage laws to higher progressive taxation to greater unionization to larger welfare programs to more regulation, left liberals demand a stronger and more economically active cen ...
September 17, 2015
Each year on Dec. 7, ceremonies occur to mark the 1941 surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Each year the memorials get less attention as those who actually saw the event pass away. Will Sept. 11 also lose its hold on our collective memories someday? Proba ...
September 17, 2015
Capitalism is the engine of a society's prosperity. It remains mostly hidden, unnoticed, but attacked and reviled when attention is focused on it as a result of some scandal. But what drives this hostility toward capitalism? To clarify: What drives the hostilit ...
September 16, 2015
Yet again, the public is seeing video of a police-citizen encounter gone wrong. Retired tennis star James Blake, whom everyone agrees was guilty of absolutely nothing, was nevertheless tackled and handcuffed by an NYPD officer with a history of using excessive ...
September 16, 2015
In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.). Indeed, at a time ...
September 15, 2015
Any American, regardless of age and ancestry, who flies to Turkey in hopes of joining the Islamic State has made a terrible choice. He or she is taking a road that leads nowhere good. On the other hand, anyone who has parented teenagers learns to expect bad cho ...
September 15, 2015
For over a decade, now, the American economy has been on an economic rollercoaster, of an economic boom between 2003 and 2008, followed by a severe economic downturn, and with a historically slow and weak recovery starting in 2009 up to the present. Before the ...
September 14, 2015
The writer for Germany-based Spiegel rightly notes the increasing wealth concentration in the United States in recent decades. The rich are indeed getting richer, while many in the bottom 99% struggle to make ends meet. He veers off course, however, by blaming ...
September 14, 2015
Reports that the official unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent may appear to vindicate the policies of easy money, corporate bailouts, and increased government spending. However, even the mainstream media has acknowledged that the official numbers unders ...
September 13, 2015
Synopsis: Dancing Fawn has decided to use a hidden area of the Internet to support herself and her twin daughters. She knows any activity she engages in there will probably be illegal, but she must take the chance. Her children are worth the risk. What she does ...
September 12, 2015
Failed civilizations require surprisingly long periods of time to reset. During these periods, power devolves and legitimacy – the belief that it is right for us to serve rulers – falls apart. Resetting legitimacy is ultimately more critical than restoring ...
September 11, 2015
Political mavens tell us polls are mostly meaningless this long before an election. I certainly hope so. As Jeffrey Tucker says in today's excerpt, the current data point to a seriously problematic outcome next November. Nascent authoritarianism has long simmer ...
September 11, 2015
Millions of refugees from Washington's wars are currently over-running Europe. Washington's 14-year and ongoing slaughter of Muslims and destruction of their countries are war crimes for which the US government's official 9/11 conspiracy theory was the catalyst ...
September 10, 2015
The phrase "to carefully gerrymander" is more than just a split infinitive. It is apparently a legally permissible activity in Missouri. The Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District tried its best to make sure no annoying voters could stop its new taxes, ...
September 10, 2015
Being humble or even productively self-critical isn't fashionable. People groundlessly and publicly proclaiming, "I'm the greatest" or "Nobody is as smart as me" seems commonplace today. When people hold differing opinions, I have noticed many people "listen" t ...
September 09, 2015
The presidential race is already entering silly season. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to build a wall spanning the U.S.–Canada border. Do we have a problem with Canadians sneaking into the United States to take our coffee and donuts? No, of course not. Ca ...
September 09, 2015
“Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps ...
September 08, 2015
Islamic State militants may be crazed killers, but at least some of them are taking an interest in the evil that underlies modern banking. They claim the group will soon issue gold coins as its medium of exchange. In compliance with sharia, the new dinars will ...
September 08, 2015
The attempt to establish a comprehensive socialist system in many parts of the world over the last one hundred years has been one of the cruelest and most brutal episodes in human history. Some historians have estimated that as many as 200 million people may ha ...
September 07, 2015
Civil disobedience in defense of individual rights can be noble and effective, but its success usually depends of the view of the evaluator. People defend disobedience when they agree with its goal. Senator Rubio defends the Kentucky county clerk who says that ...
September 07, 2015
Last week Europe saw one of its worst crises in decades. Tens of thousands of migrants entered the European Union via Hungary, demanding passage to their hoped-for final destination, Germany. While the media focuses on the human tragedy of so many people uproot ...
September 06, 2015
While Dancing Fawn considers how to make a living in the hidden area of the Internet and Joshua Weidemeyer catches counterfeiters who work there, another resident of that 'new badlands' continues her clandestine life. Although the lone woman seemed to be sittin ...
September 05, 2015
Western civilization is poorly understood, aside from vague images and the thought that it is "what we have." This civilization, in danger of being centralized to death by the current ruling regimes, has been unique and valuable. We really should understand it ...
September 04, 2015
Government officials including FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers frequently demand greater investigative powers. They justify it by highlighting – some would say hyping – terrorist threats from ISIL and other radical groups. To s ...
September 04, 2015
It's no secret that government absolutely loathes juries. They are an obstacle, an encumbrance to greater power, and government sidesteps the jury trial any chance it gets. But a jury trial is our right as American citizens, for now, and government has to deal ...
September 04, 2015
America's descent into totalitarian violence is accelerating. Like the Bush regime, the Obama regime has a penchant for rewarding Justice (sic) Department officials who trample all over the Constitution. Last year America's first black president nominated David ...
September 03, 2015
Our view of civil rights has to evolve as technology changes our lives. More often than not, the changes are for the worse. Fifty years ago, could the police enter your home without a warrant and review your family photos for criminal evidence? No, and they sti ...
September 03, 2015
"The West is empty, even if it has not yet become really aware of it. An extraordinarily inventive civilization, surely the only one capable of meeting the challenges of the third millennium, the West has no soul left. At every level – nations, races, culture ...
September 02, 2015
Many non-scientists hold a romanticized view of scientific research. We think it is very black and white, with scientists rigorously searching for measurable evidence, and happily conceding when experiments prove a hypothesis wrong. In fact, scientists are as h ...
September 02, 2015
“If the freedom of speech be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”—George Washington The architects of the American police state must think we’re idiots. With every passing day, we’re being moved further down th ...