Thursday, October 29, 2009

IEA dies

Tom Harrington spots that the Institute of Economic Affairs, a rare voice of sanity in the UK, has just committed Cato-Institute-Style hari-kiri by appointing an EU-loving Westminster village insider as its leader. (Just to let you know the man's full quality, he is a former media director for the socialist 'Liberal Democrats'.)

Oh dear.

That'll serve the IEA right for being so physically close to the Hydra's head in Westminster.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is in Auburn for a reason, and it ain't the climate. It's to make sure that they don't get contaminated by the evil ring of power 'Inside the Beltway'.

Perhaps the IEA should take the same medicine, before we lower its coffin into the ground? (Though perhaps it's already too late.)

Come to Henley On Thames, in Fair Ithilien, chaps. Get yourselves away from that Mordor smog inside the Westminster Mountains of Shadow.

Country roads, take me home

Well, Emirates airline take me home, on the 3:10am flight out of Dubai Airport.

I've been locked in the Jumeirah Emirates Towers hotel for two weeks now and I think a state psychiatrist could now officially sanction me as completely mad.

Heaven knows how people cope in socialist jail cages, for years on end, for victimless non-crimes, if I'm starting to lose my mind after two weeks in a luxury hotel, with eight restaurants, a thirty metre pool, and the most helpful hotel staff I've ever met?

It really is time to be going home.

Though I shall be shutting my eyes to the grim-faced passport checkers from Slough, at Heathrow Terminal Three, and ignoring all Daily Mail headlines of societal collapse caused by that idiot Gordon Brown, to try to regain my sanity, once my feet are back on the ground in the sceptred isle.

Though fortunately, my exit strategy for escaping this sceptred isle, when the Great Depression finally hits, is a step further forward. A few more heaves, and the escape rope will be in place.

And so, before my car to the airport arrives, one last soiree down to 'The Noodle Bar', for a last portion of Thai Green Curry...

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

We are not worthy

I had the great honour and privilege of spending several hours alone in conversation, recently, with a living breathing Professor of Austrian economics. We don't need to name names here, but the scope, the range, and the power of the thinking of such people, left me staggered with admiration.

As a mere back-street propagandist and barricade-manning volunteer for the Austrian cause, I felt a bit like Salieri in the company of Mozart; able to appreciate the splendour of the thought but incapable of reaching the same symphonic heights myself.

Oh well, perhaps if I'm good enough in this life I may come back as an Austrian Professor myself, at some point in the future.

If you are at that tender undergraduate age where such things are still possible, then I would recommend that you go for it, because it truly is the noblest cause; the salvation of civilisation will be in your hands.

What could be better than that?

Will Spain lead the world towards an anarchocapitalist future?

Jesus Huerta de Soto thinks it might, in an article so full of clarity, I almost cut myself reading it.

Hyperinflation or Great Depression? The 'Event Horizon' is close

If I'm reading him right, Dr Gary North is predicting that central bankers will continue propping up their government treasuries until a financial hyperinflationary 'Event Horizon' is reached.

Because of our hugely complex modern societies, urban society will collapse if the central bankers allow hyperinflation to occur. As central bankers are generally urban dwellers, who do not know one end of an unplucked chicken from another, the self-preservation instinct of central bankers will cause them to cut their government treasuries adrift at the moment just before the event horizon.

They will stop buying government bonds with counterfeit money. They will allow interest rates to gravitate upwards towards a more 'natural' level. (I.e. a lot higher than they are now.)

This 'Event Horizon' choice will immediately create a Great Depression in the economies thus affected, as unwanted and unnecessary businesses, currently propped up by false interest rates, collapse by the tens of thousand. Because governments will have no funds to 'bail these businesses out', due to being cut adrift by their own central bankers, and so long as governments do not resort to guns and bullets, these Great Depressions could be over quite quickly.

However, if as is likely, governments do resort to price controls, guns, and bullets, to 'prop up' these unwanted businesses, then we could be in these depressions for decades. In the UK's case, I think they will try to bounce us (probably successfully) into the Euro. But could the current Euro countries cope with a moribund Britain begging at their knees?

If central bankers do cave in to government pressure, and go past the event horizon with their counterfeit cheque books still open and their purchases of government bonds remaining at full tilt, the ensuing hyperinflation could kill millions of people in the 'western' world, as food riots and other revolutionary forces run amok in cities full of people who can create nothing worth bartering for in a society where food and energy suddenly command the vast majority of everyone's attention.

Think Argentina on steroids. Zimbabwe is perhaps the wrong analogy to use, because of its fairly small cities and the ability of much of its population to return to the land to feed itself and produce useful agriculural products which can then be bartered, plus a strong tribal tradition where you look after your own. After a hundred years of deliberately trying to destroy the family and the extended family, to create state subservience, the western world's welfare state socialists have even severed this potential lifeline.

The Weimar republic itself is also a bad example, because much of Germany's population at the time was still close to the land and could still generate the basics required for day-to-day living by popping over to Uncle Hans's farm and working all day slopping out the cow shed in return for a hatful of eggs. Or even in Austria by selling tasteless paintings to dumb-schmuck tourists on the streets of Vienna.

Could a graphic design consultant in North London barter his way into a hatful of eggs by 'selling' his logo creation skills in a hyperinflationary society where money is useless? Or more importantly, in Dr North's analysis, could a central banker barter his apparatchik political and financial blathering skills for a hot chicken sandwich? I wouldn't have thought so. I wouldn't even ask one to shine my shoes, as they would probably be incapable of even combing their own hair without help.

So expect a great big financial crunch, when central bankers know that the hyperinflation event horizon is near. They already know that they will be the first against the wall in a hyperinflationary situation, especially when there are lots of lamp-posts and piano wire around, therefore they will probably not allow it to happen. (At least we hope they won't.)

Purely from a personal perspective, a Great Depression may be fairly bad for most people, but central bankers aren't really going to suffer, are they? They'll still be picking up salaries of valuable money and will be the last to be made unemployed. In a hyperinflationary situation, they will be the first to go down, as the middle classes bear down upon the central banks armed with avocados and artichokes. I'll bet, for instance, that there weren't too many central bankers begging on the streets in the 1930s. So what would you do if you were in their shoes? I would go for a Great Depression choice every time and to heck with the car manufacturing plants in Sunderland.

So what you gonna do, Pilgrim? Is Uncle Gary right? Or is he being too spectacularly pessimistic, in the style of Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Jim Rogers, and Peter Schiff?

Obviously, you may know that if I had to bet my own life on the opinions of the above gentlemen against the prognostications of Obama, Bernanke, Brown, and King, I would tend to go for the former. But that's just my humble opinion. In the meantime, while you're thinking about it, may I suggest:

Physical gold. Physical silver. Well-hidden. As much physical protection for your property as you can safely provide. Get yourself out of a large city and into the country. An exit strategy to a commodity-based or manufacturing-based economy, which produces something people need. Along with gold coins stuffed into a money belt buried somewhere unobtrusive in your back garden.

Just in case.

Of course, I'm assuming that Gordon Gecko Brown and other idiots do not sack all the central bankers and then with 'Emergency Powers', just start running the printing presses directly under the command of their own miserable government treasuries.

And then we will generate those same angry political forces which the Weimar republic created, and all of those bone-head 'intellectuals' in Britain, who refuse to lay the blame for anything at their paymaster government's door, will have all the British National Socialists they could ever wish for, to march against. If they aren't rounded up and shot first.

No, surely not. Politicians are far too sensible and long-sighted to be so stupid.

Aren't they?

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Banksters

Tom Harrington spots the miscalculation that defending banking is defending capitalism.

False flag flu event unravels even further

We all know governments are incompetent, and that the bigger and more powerful they are the more incompetent they get, but the swine flu 'pandemic' just gets more ridiculous each day.

More real science here.

Global cooling continues

And if you want the real science behind this, rather than the cock and bull propagated by the watermelon socialists behind the global warming lobby (green on the outside, red on the inside), then try this excellent article, by George Giles.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Marc Faber: Total Disaster Ahead

Crikey.

He's worse than Gerald Celente! :-)

Karl Marx was a communist!

No, really.

As a former die-hard religoid head-banging socialist, all of my favourite Austrian writings are in the area of curing people from this dreadful mentally disfiguring disease. Hence, 'Socialism' by Ludwig von Mises, 'A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism' by His Hoppe-ness, and 'The Road to Serfdom' by F.A.Hayek, are all on the well-thumbed shelf.

All marvellous. All brilliant. All salvationary. Particularly in my own personal case.

But no-one can beat Uncle Murray. In this tour de force, the Archangel Gabriel of the Austrian School shreds into Karl Marx like a collective tribe of ravenously famished Tasmanian Devils.

He starts with the fairly obvious line that Karl Marx was a communist, but then takes you from there into a whirlwind tour of a thousand years of history, in the way only Uncle Murray can, causing old socialists like me to laugh out loud at our utter stupidity at originally believing this bilge.

Yes, it's always good to top up my anti-socialism immunogens. Thank you Murray Rothbard.

The only question, once again, is how did he manage to read so much. Are there really 27 Murray Rothbards out there? It's the only rational explanation.

BTW, look out for the line on yachts.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Uncle Gary in playful mood

The Northster has a radical plan for the Americans:

That they should follow their own constitution!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

The last post

Back in the stone age there were probably British post men complaining about their working conditions. The message then was probably the same as it should be now:

"If you don't like what you're doing, then go and do something else. The world does not owe you a living."

But Mandy knows that the Labour Party does owe the post men a living, because their union helps bankroll the socialist cause in Britain, and has done so for many decades.

So while the oil of small industry in Britain, cheques through the post, grinds to a halt due to a nationwide postal strike, causing further misery to those brave enough not to be lumpen employees, Mandy fiddles away with brinkmanship and other feeble foibles, to steal from working Britons, to hand tithes to the postal unions.

His only concern is can he get away with it. Can he continue to pour more yet untold billions down the maw of the postal unions, without those being forced to provide these resources marching on Downing Street and dragging Mandy and his quisling Gecko down from their high armoured residences and throwing them both into the Thames?

We did it to King James II in 1688. Perhaps we ought to do it to our new King Mandy the First, too?

How long does anyone think it would take Federal Express, UPS, or Deutsche Post, to start delivering letters in the UK if the Royal Mail monopoly was taken out from the statute book and then ceremoniously burnt at Tyburn Cross?

I reckon it would take about 17.562 nanoseconds.

"Oh, what about crofters without email living on isolated Scottish islands with brothers living on similarly remote Cornish islands who they need to send regular written updates to, about their business interests in islands off the Welsh coast. Their postal services might be slightly worse than two businesses right next to each other in London."

Well, we could argue about that, and I am sure I would win that argument, but we can leave that for another day. Because today, everyone's mail services are definitely identical to everyone else's, due to government monopoly, i.e. there is absolutely no service whatsoever. And it's costing us a fortune.

Even when the appalling Post Office is open, the letters service is terrible, expensive, and confusing. Just like everything else the dead hand of government touches.

Destroy their monopoly. Do it now. I thought all you socialists were opposed to monopoly anyway? So what on Earth are we waiting for?

No monopoly. No problem. The issue will disappear entirely in 24 hours, never to return. It is such a no-brainer, it defies belief that we haven't done it already. But then, with a bought-and-paid-for intellectual class in Britain, much that was once incredibly easy to understand is now tortuously bound in socialist rigmarole and clap-trap.

Just take that monopoly page out from the statute book, Mandy, and burn it. Maturin Towers will even be happy to pay you for the matches.

As the Meerkat says. Simples.

All-women shortlists: David Cameron chooses tokenism over principle

Sir Simon Huffchester paints David Cameron for what he is: Tony Blair Mk II.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Britain is still mired in recession, latest numbers show

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

Don't worry though, folks.

I'm sure the Bank of England will eventually print enough pounds to get prices growing again.

£10 million pounds for a bag of nuts, anyone?

Thursday, October 22, 2009

The first full day in Salamanca

So, the Mises Institute crosses the Atlantic and opens up a conference in Salamanca, the long-time home of the Spanish scholastics, who via the Spanish-Austrian Catholic Habsburg link transmitted their economic ideas to Vienna, hence to New York, hence to Maturin Towers?

And I'm here stuck in the Middle East (drinking Pina Colladas)?

Monkeys.

I'm with Stupid

I know. Here's a plan.

You take a stalled economy, which has failed because of too much tax being extracted to pay for useless government programs.

You then try to help this stalled economy recover by adding more taxes and spending even more money on even more useless government programs.

This, alas, is what passes for 'radical free-market conservatism' in the UK.

George Osborne, the oily friend of shady Russian mafia billionaires, really is an idiot. Is he really the best financier the Conservative Party can find?

If Margaret Thatcher was dead, she would be turning in her grave.

The intellectual class in Britain - Bought and paid for

I was having a conversation with a friend of this site, yesterday, and the subject came up of the English intellectual class and its sheer apathy and supinity.

What exactly is wrong with them all?

From Thomas Becket through to Lord Acton, via Shakespeare and Cobden and Bright, the star of influence of England's intellectuals has sometimes shone very brightly, usually coinciding with an overall expansion in human freedom. But now, the historical quality of these people is a dying ember in a cold fire of docile passivity.

This is despite more people in England now perhaps claiming to be 'intellectuals' than have ever claimed this dubious title before.

Yes, there are exceptions, such as heroic Dr Sean Gabb, and the two Libertarian Alliances. However, where is the opposition to the state and its horrific power grabs in the last one hundred years, particularly in the last couple of years?

Where is the opposition to the state in the universities, in the media, in politics, and in every other nest of comfortable sinecured 'intellectualism'? To ask the question, obviously, is to know the answer.

Because virtually all of England's intellectuals are now bought and paid for.

The state has stolen its shilling from the working people and then handed this shilling over to the 'intellectual classes' via their jobs in its subsidised universities, in its licensed media, and particularly within its tame poodles at the BBC. It has bought their subservience and their support with a guaranteed daily dog bowl of stolen pensioned sustenance.

Perhaps their patron saint is the rotten professional northerner Melvyn Bragg, who has become a millionaire many times over through his unparalleled ability to wag his tail and lick the hands of his political masters?

The 'intellectuals' of England are bought and paid for. Just like camp dogs.

I have only one thing to say to all of these pathetic rent-paid-for Rovers, Fidos, and other assorted lap dogs.

Woof!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The myth of phantom money and "green shoots"

Gerald Celente on the "Greatest Depresion":

The Real Reason for More Troops in Afghanistan

US Army veteran Michael Gaddy knows.

Who killed JFK?

Fifty years after the slaying of a US President, who dared to try to dismantle the military-industrial complex, the truth may finally be emerging:

=> The New York Times Shines a Light into the JFK-CIA-Joannides Scandal

So who does Maturin Towers think did it? Well, see if you can work that out from part of the speech delivered two years before the JFK killing, by outgoing President, Dwight E. Eisenhower:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

Jeff Randall - Britain should get out of Afghanistan

As Tom Harrington notes, the orthodoxy of 'reasonable' opinion in Britain, that we should be killing Afghanis to prop up a corrupt US satrap in Kabul, to enable US oil exports from central Aisa, is beginning to crack.

Well done Jeff Randall for daring to step outside the fold:

=> Make Britain safer

The blood of all the dead and maimed British troops lies on the hands of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, along with all the dead Afghanis who have been slaughtered in the carnage.

We should get our troops out of this disgusting imperial bloodbath right now.

Why I love Dubai

The longer I spend in Dubai the more cleansed I feel, because I am away from the snake-pit of socialist welfare-warfare rent-seeking politics that passes for life in modern Britain.

I am away from 'The Tube', postal strikes, postal unions, the NHS, Gordon Gecko Brown, David Cameron, quantitative counterfeiting from the Bank of England, the BBC, the British police, environmentalist bums, socialist bums, and other destroyers of civilisation and other legions of lazy self-righteous rent-seeking parasites.

I couldn't tell you what Gordon Brown has been saying, and what the headlines are in the Times, the Daily Mail, or the Daily Labourgraph.

Last night, I also sat on a private beach, underneath the 'Burj Al Arab', watching the sun go down over the Dubai Palm, while sipping a Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic. The view I had of the hotel was virtually identical to the shot above.

And for a few wonderful hours, the horrors of thinking about life in Britain melted away to nothing. If I was a single man, I would never go back. And it would be a joy never to hand the rats who run Britain another pound of tax, to prop up their rotten miserable little US imperial satrap.

I'm also surrounded by highly intelligent Arabs who cherish the family, moral values, self reliance, zero taxes, and entrepreneurship.

Yes, Dubai has its problems, which we needn't go into now, but for at least a little while, it is great to be outside the bubble of daily British life.

Plus, I'm really learning how to haggle in 'souks'.

Marvellous.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Evolutionary fitness

A great PDF article on evolutionary fitness and how to develop a healthy program of food intake and exercise based upon our lives in the Neolithic.

The best part, is that the article says you should never exercise for more than 40 minutes, under any circumstances.

I can live with that! :-)

=> Evolutionary Fitness

The regulation of the shape of toilet seats

In a classic speech, Tom Di Lorenzo shreds the regulatory system that passes for 'Hallowed Democracy', in the failing welfare-warfare states of the western world, with their populations where more than 1 in 20 is a regulatory bureaucrat preying on the rest of us:

=> The Regulatory Imperium (MP3)

Walter Block on Socialized Medicine

In a superb analysis of socialised medicine, Uncle Walter takes apart the socialist clap-trap behind disastrous state-run health care systems, rotten limb by rotten limb.

Canadian lovers of the appalling Canadian health system will want to block their ears about twenty minutes in:

=> Blog description of speech (including link to MP3)

=> MP3 file

Go, Uncle Walter, go.

The 2nd American Revolution

Gerald Celente predicts a second American revolution, in a devastating piece where absolutely no punches are pulled.

Don't bet against him.

His predictive record is unparalleled.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Brrr... Wrap up warm - Global warming is making it colder

Environmentalist morons everywhere must be hating the fact that the Earth is getting cooler at the moment. Muppets:

=> Global Warming is Melting

UPDATE: Another excellent article on why the global warming scam is crumbling:

=> Climate change dominoes fall

Government crime: Or did I repeat myself?

The Northster explains Gresham's law and how it applies to bimetallism and the modern counterfeited monetary system:

=> The Fed's Bad Money

Friday, October 16, 2009

Deflation and Liberty

Currently, the vast majority of the world's Keynesian economic "gurus", all of whom failed to spot the greatest depression in history, are pushing the hilarious line that we should all be terrified of the boogie-bear of "deflation".

Of course, AngloAustria wonders why the entire 19th century in both the UK and the US, which saw the greatest economic growth in the whole of human history, was marked by a hundred years of almost continuous deflation, give or take the odd statist war.

But Jörg Guido Hülsmann absolutely nails this fantastical mass-inflationary boogie-bear in the following brilliant PDF. Read it and weep:

=> http://mises.org/books/deflationandliberty.pdf

The myth of the Marshall Plan

Many of the world's dicators, particularly in Africa, drive around in armoured Mercedes paid for unwittingly by western taxpayers. Much of this funding comes in the form of "aid" trying to match the "success" of the Marsall Plan, which followed WWII in Europe.

Therefore, to stop these dicators, we need to destroy the myth that the Marshall Plan was in any way useful.

This is done spectacularly well by Tyler Cowen in the linked-to PDF below:

=> http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/Marshall_Plan.pdf

This debunks the five central myths of the Marshall Plan:

Myth #1: The Marshall Plan played a significant role in the recovery of Western Europe following WWII

Myth #2: The Marshall Plan encouraged free markets and sound economic policy

Myth #3: The Marshall Plan boosted the American economy

Myth #4: The Marshall Plan's operation was not influenced by domestic US special interests

Myth #5: US foreign policy, following WWII, was one of "free trade" and an "Open Door"

Hopefully such excellent research, debunking the myth of the Marshall Plan, will help free the people of Africa from ongoing dictatorial oppression and debilitating welfare dependency.

Crickets

I have now watched every film that I think worth watching on the current Etihad, Emirates, and Virgin Atlantic movie rolls.

So thank the Lord for Mises.org podcasts!

The Tom Woods podcasts are particularly entertaining. He tries to work the word 'crickets' into every one. I now play a game of trying to guess where it's going to come before he says it.

Hey, it helps pass the time in an educational way:

=> http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=author&ID=424

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Biggest Bust Will Follow the Biggest Bubble

Excellent Bill Bonner article on the coming curves of the Depression, the prospects for Dubai, global warming, and much else.

Harrods to sell gold bullion for first time

Tom Harrington spots the growing trend for gold sales in the UK.

Where communism meets selfishness

I'm currently re-reading Justin Raimondo's excellent "Enemy of the State", his concise biography of Murray Rothbard. I'm currently up to the bit where Rothbard lays into the proto-Objectivists in New York, for wanting all of humanity to become virtual "communoid" clones of each other (all presumably smoking very rational brands of cigarette).

This is just before the Reisman split.

Superb.

Especially if you need any ammunition to deal with infestations of modern Objectivists.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The importance of being Ludwig

Uncle George Reisman writes an excellent tribute on the importance of Ludwig von Mises to the future of mankind.

Flash Forward flash in the pan

I must say, I've been dreadfully disappointed by 'Flash Forward', the most heralded American TV import since 'The Bionic Man'.

With a brilliant 'Lost'-like idea, of everyone falling unconscious for two minutes, and then waking up with premonitions, it soon tailed off into the usual cliches of 'Government is Good', 'Heroic FBI officers saving the world', predictable dialogue, awful tinny music, and the more senior the person in the US government machine, the more female and the more black they are.

Indeed, you can almost work out someones seniority on sight, in the glorious mankind-saving machine that is the US government in American TV, by their skin melatonin content and their X-chromosome ratio.

It's the white guys at the bottom, then the black guys above them, and then the black women above them. And all of them use the same corny lines taken from the authorised US scriptwriters' book of cheesy phrases. "You gotta do what you gotta do", "I just wanted some me time", "Suck it up", etc, etc, ad nauseam, in that brutal mechanistic way typical of "Fringe", "Stargate Universe", and all the other "Government is Good" twaddle that passes for 'cutting edge' entertainment on our TV screens.

It makes you realise just how good 'Lost' is, when you endure such tedious state-loving rot. What was funniest was when the most senior government drone appeared (a black woman) and complained about the FBI men having spent too much money on their research. Since when did anyone in Mordor-on-the-Potomac ever complain about their people spending too much of other people's money? At that point I just switched off.

No doubt in Flash Forward the FBI will eventually save the world and the evil people will turn out to be some white men in some rogue part of some private "free market" corporation.

Well, maybe. Fortunately I won't be sticking around long enough to find out.

Poor old Joseph Fiennes. Although his American accent is much better than Hugh Laurie's, fancy having to deliver such dreadful dialogue after having been so wonderful in 'Shakespeare in Love'.

As the Great Bard himself may have put it, if forced to listen to such appalling script writing; "That it should have come to this!"

No doubt Fiennes' pay cheques are making up for the disappointment. So good luck to him on that front, at least.

I wonder if he'll make as much as Hugh Laurie? And don't get me started on 'House' having been forced to give up his opiates by the genuflection of his own scriptwriters to the DEA.

A plague on all their houses.

Cash for Clunkers Success

I just love this graphic on Karen De Coster's Lew Rockwell post, explaining the "success" of Obama's Cash for Clunkers program:



Fantastic! :-)

Madness! Why I know I'm not Peter Schiff

I'm about to embark on a lightning trip to New York to deliver a 2-hour lecture on finance, in Wall Street, followed by an immediate return to the UK.

And here's why I personally think this 'Green-Shoots' recovery is a figment of Ben Bernanke's over-active imagination. Because this is going to be an economy class trip!

I went into the City and derivatives a couple of years ago, to both understand finance better after reading 'Man, Economy, and State', to be in a position in a few years time to help the coming Austrian revolution, and to also always travel business class, after years of schlepping it in coach while working in the IT sector.

But the credit crunch has put paid to all of that.

Yes, crossing the Atlantic twice in 24 hours really sticks it to the greens, but to cross it twice in cattle is really going to stick it to my poor aching body.

I just hope I haven't seen all of the in-flight movies.

Fortunately, the magic of online check-in has allowed me to change my seat from 62G (Yikes!) to 35G. Yes, it's not much of an improvement, but it'll be an extra inch of leg-room, and an extra inch wider, and a tiny bit quieter.

I bet Peter Schiff doesn't have to subject himself to this kind of treatment.

So why am I subjecting myself to this torture? Well, it's a new business opportunity which I'm keen to explore, and if it goes well, I could be in a position to at least demand 'Premium Economy' next time, if not the full Business Class banana, before the UK and US economies really collapse in a couple of years' time.

But there's more.

Because after I get back late Friday night, on Saturday morning I'm flying out to Dubai, for two weeks.

Fortunately, for this trip, I'm turning left at the door and going Business. Thank the Lord! They better have plenty of champagne on board, because I'm going to need it.

Do you need any more evidence? Forget the West. The money is in the East, my friend. So go East!

Have you started learning Arabic or Mandarin yet? D'you not think you ought to?

You may find it hard (I'm finding Mandarin really tough), but at least get your children immersed in Mandarin, if you should get the opportunity.

The brain's ability to learn languages fluently freezes at puberty, so this will best be done before the age of 14, if at all possible.

Good luck.

Who needs state-bloated universities?

You want to learn mathematics to degree level? Here was the old primary choice:

1. Take three years out of your life, put yourself into horrendous debt, and pay the state-bloated charges of a state-bloated university, to subsidise the "old socialist" views of a tired mathematics lecturer hack and their tenured cronies.

And now here's the new choice:

2. Pay nothing, and work your way through the Kahn Academy in your own time, while you keep working to pay the bills:

=> http://www.khanacademy.org/

The state-licensed gatekeepers of knowledge are coming down.

Excellent.

Exposed: The Swine Flu Hoax

Great Lew Rockwell article on the pandemic Gordon Brown wanted to be more serious so he could have something to do:

=> http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/bosworth1.1.1.html

Thanks to Paul.

Uncle Gary kick starts the slumbering AngloAustria

The "free speech" by Uncle Gary North, on your calling in life, which brought your reluctant English Austrian back from the beach:

=> http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/?p=episode&name=2009-08-31_136_making_a_difference_in_the_world.mp3

Listen out for the line to Lew Rockwell, on the benefits of being paid.

Sky News political debates

Sky News have recently been running a campaign to get Gordon "Gecko" Brown to dare to appear in a 'Leaders Debate'. Although they have finally managed to get the craven man to finally agree to this (after Mandy will have ordered him to do it), what was really interesting was the video they kept pumping out 24 hours a day, to force Mandy's well-manicured hand.

Alas, I can't find a copy of this either on the Sky News site, or on YouTube, but the essentials of it were this:

"They want to have power" - Cut to three shots of Cameron, Clegg, and Brown - "They want your taxes" - Cut to various shots of bureaucrats spending money - "And they want your vote"

Now I don't know whether the author of this script was a closet Hans Hoppe fan, but I reckon it's pretty much impossible to more succinctly state the reasoning behind the ideology of democracy.

If you lend these idiots your vote, you thus lend them your power and thus the ability to empty your wallet, whenever they feel like it, to pay off their clients.

So if you want an end to these idiots attempting to run your life, to their vast personal benefit, you know what you've got to do.

Don't vote.

The day that every genuine tax payer stops voting for these muppets is the day that marks our victory over them. They will have no legitimacy at that point, and therefore no taxes and no power.

So now you know why there is a continuing campaign to encourage us to vote, mainly led by the Westminster village cheerleaders in the government licensed media, "or lose the right to criticise any newly elected government".

If I refuse to vote for one of three selected Mafia Capos in a Henley Organised Crime election, does this mean I lose the right to criticise the local Mafia when it robs me on its next protection racket run?

I should coco.

So well done, Sky News, for condensing this message so brilliantly, if albeit unwittingly, about the link between voting and being robbed by criminals.

UPDATE: As Paul says in the comments, no-one puts the message above any better than Uncle George Carlin:

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

How Much Vitamin D Do You Really Need?

While living on airplanes over the summer, I've been taking about 5,000 I.U. of Vitamin D3 each day. You can buy 5,000 I.U. doses, here.

Obviously, while all around me have sniffled and coughed their way through the entire world's recycled collection of colds, coughs, and weaponized accidentally-released flus, I've been breathing the free clear air of the blessed.

As one who used to spend half the year with some form of cold, this has been a great relief. For more on Vitamin D, try this.

For my sins, I know someone who is very close to the UK's NHS 'Task Force' on swine flu. He's never heard of Vitamin D and its ability to fend off flu. And neither has anyone else he knows on the 'Task Force'.

Well, at least the hundreds of millions the Labour government has just spent on untested flu shots, from pharmaceutical companies who will no doubt contribute towards the Labour party at the next election, has not been wasted on anything as cheap and simple as 5000 I.U. Vitamin D pills.

For more on government ineptness over the mysterious swine flu, which has never been anywhere near any swine, try here.

Remember, if the idiots and morons in any government near you try to make their death medicine vaccines compulsory, to make all that spending on them seem reasonable, then do whatever it takes to avoid taking these deadly organomercury cocktails of untested viral poisons.

Later on you can ask these same governments whether the whole swine flu affair was caused by the accidental release of a weaponized strain of the 1918 Bird Flu virus.

Some people, of course, have said that this has been a conspiracy to 'test' the virus out, and to deliberately induce a mass panic to take our eyes off the global inflation crisis.

Poppycock, I say. If it is a weaponized flu that is currently going around the world, its release was entirely accidental, in fact probably the definitive government cock-up. Just like every other government cock-up.

The preciousness of time

Uncle Gary on why time really is the one irreplaceable resource.

Tweet tweet

Crikey, I think I've figured out Twitter. I've embedded a widget on the right-hand side, where you can link to my "Tweets" (if that's the right word).

I still haven't worked out how to 'follow' anyone, but what the heck. It's a start.

I Aten't Dead

"I Aten't Dead" was the catch phrase of Granny Weatherwax, one of my favourite characters in the Discworld series. Like the apocryphal "borrowing" witch, I've just been resting, folks.

But Uncle Gary has spurred me once more to man the breach, with his talk on fighting the enemy.

Alas, I think the 4,000 word diatribes may be a thing of history (except occasionally), as I have discovered that time really is the most precious of resources. However, until I spot Mises.org opening up a UK franchise, which I'll gladly volunteer to work for, the flag of Austrianism must be kept flying in England, somehow, somewhere, while the slough of British socialism hisses and snarls its way towards a horrible One World government, via bin inspectors who will trawl their way through your garbage, so they can fine you a thousand pounds for failing to recycle all of your potato peelings.

That it should come to this.

Onward, fellow believers in liberty. We shall not stand for these pygmies, their self-loathing hatred, and their propensity to steal from everyone in the name of making everyone better off.

Unfortunately, there's little we can do directly to get them off our backs, while the vast majority of the population believes in democracy, so let's just try to laugh at them instead, until their rampant Ponzi systems of inflation, taxation, debt, and regulation, collapse of their own accord.

Let us raise a toast to that glorious day. It may be sooner than we think.

Pip pip!!