US Government Admits Defeat

When a Bush General says a Bush Plan is working, it can only lead to the response, "Gor' Blimey, Guv, who'd 'a thunk it?"

But when the unsubtle underlining motif of this response is that the US should start getting out as soon as possible, after already having achieved victory you understand, it's quite clear that the Pentagon, despite spending perhaps over a trillion dollars, has lost and has thrown in the towel.

There's only a few ways you can take over a country against a hostile populace. (1) Take over an already existing control structure established over a long period of time, often via the other two policies to be described, (2) Exterminate one major group to placate other previously hostile groups, (3) Decimate the entire population to cow them into submission.

So let's see how the Washington DC Imperiocrats could have really 'won' in Iraq:

(1) From a purely empire-building point of view, the Americans could have followed the lessons of the British Empire when it took over India by taking over the previous Mogul power structure. But I suppose in simply taking over the Ba'athist Party and changing a few names at the top, the American government would have looked a teensy-weensy bit cynical, even for Fox News.

(2) They could've followed the Roman Imperial model when taking over Britain, and wiping out a few tribes to placate other pro-Roman tribes, or indeed wiping out the entire Druidic cult in Anglesey, down to the last man, to placate those who had been in thrall to the Druids. But organising lines of Marines to walk through cities slaughtering everyone in their gun sights, as the British also did in Tasmania, would have looked a little too like Vietnam for most people's comfort.

(3) They could've followed the Duke of Cumberland's model in Scotland, after Culloden, when his Highland clearances decimated the Scottish population (which to this day has left large areas of Scotland less occupied than it might otherwise be). But seeing as many of those rebellious Scots under pain of instant execution left hurriedly for the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia, to escape Butch Cumberland's tender mercies, wholesale decimations like this probably are too much for an Army which draws many of its modern-day recruits from these same 'rebel' areas.

So where does that leave the US Army? I reckon it has two end games. One, is the familiar 'last helicopter leaving from the roof of the surrounded embassy' scenario, sometime in the next five years. The other is to invade Iran to keep the showboat running. Though unless one of the strategies, (1) to (3) above, is adopted in Iran, it will just be the last helicopter leaving from the roof of the Embassy in Tehran (after the slaughter of a couple of million Iranians), rather than from the rooftop in Baghdad, with perhaps another five years added on to the destructive baby-killing ignominy. And with China dumping US treasuries and the Fed pumping billions of counterfeit dollars into the maw of inflation, I'm beginning to doubt the Americans can afford it. Is this (I hope) the beginning of the end of the American Empire? Let us hope so.

There is one other alternative, of course, and that is for the US Army to march out immediately with its held head high, get onto the boats (or onto the airliners), and get back to continental North America where they belong. Or even better, back into the productive economy of North America rather than the wasteful one of the military. Such a policy is of course that declared by Dr. Ron Paul.

But apparently, Fox News and all the other neoconservative mass-murderers, would prefer the Iranian war option, with perhaps the odd nuke thrown in for fun. It would seem they would prefer more slaughters of innocents rather than admit that in any way they are wrong.

God help us all.

Vote Labour - It Almost Makes Sense

Whilst listening to Sir Terry Wogan this morning, I almost lost the will to live. No, not because of Sir Terry, who helps keep me sane each day, but by a story reported on the 8 o'clock news. Apparently, the Tories think we need less carrot and more stick to raise the quality of our lives (i.e. more taxes, regulations, mercantilism, planning, controls, and generally more banal and wealth-destructive socialism).

Here's their plan. They want to charge me more stamp duty each time I move home, ban me from owning a Plasma TV screen, ban me from having standby facilities on electronic devices, tax me more for using air travel, tax me more for using roads (thereby allowing me, how generous of them, to be allowed to cycle to Edinburgh), tax me for out-of-town shopping car parks so they can use the money to prop up useless local bus services nobody uses, and generally remove me from "the hedonistic treadmill where individuals can never be satisfied".

Or as Professor Mises might have put it, destroy all of my human impulses which drive me to help improve the world through either initial wealth creation or voluntary trade. In a sop to Karl Marx, all of the above plus much more, is to help "improve my quality of life" and "equalize opportunities for all". How my life can be improved by banning me from voluntary activities and taxing me into the ground for daring to go more than five miles from my home is "improving the quality of my life" I have no idea. Though I'm sure it will improve the quality of life of all the extra bureaucrats and other parasites who will be brought in to monitor these regulations and live off these taxes.

Which led me to a rather startling conclusion which almost sent me into an unassuming roadside ditch. I don't vote in elections, as it legitimises these socialist (Tory and Labour) idiots, but if you put a gun to my head and made me vote, I'd only be able to go one way.

Hoots Mon, McBroon, I'm yer man. You can stick the Tory Party up a dog's bum.

My God, that it should come to this. If Her Madgesty Margaret Thatcher was dead, she'd be turning in her grave.

Why Oh Why Oh Why...

...did all of these American Investment Banks, filled with some of the smartest people I've ever met, waste so much money on subprime mortgages, wrapped up in some of the stupidest derivative contracts ever devised?

This was a question that was puzzling me the other day. Yes, fractional reserve fiat money banking leads to terrible dislocations, misallocations, booms, busts, recessions, depressions, and other gargantuan assortments of perennial state thievery, but surely it hadn't also infected the brains of all these bright ambitious people too, in the Investment Banks, and simply stopped them thinking and plunged the rest of us into such financial turmoil? (And if you don't think you've personally been affected by what's happened in the last month, on Wall Street and in the City, then I'm afraid you need to break out the Cod Liver Oil pills to boost up your own thinking.)

Why had these smart hard-working millionaire bankers invested so much of their investors' money in subprime mortgages? I tried to think up some Austro-economic paradigm to explain it, but nothing fitted. However, this was because I was too stupid myself to realise the answer to the problem was much simpler. It was straightforward government planning and controls that had led all of these bankers to soberly choose an intelligent path of wasting wealth on legions of hopeless cases. Because of the way government had framed the market, this centrally directed wastage became the only rational choice available to Wall Street. How so?

The magnificent Thomas DiLorenzo, explains. Thank you, Professor. I shall break out my own Cod Liver Oil pills, immediately! :-)

Scotland Edges Closer to Freedom

Och Aye, the Noo, as I say when I'm in Edinburgh sampling Glen Morange...

Alex Salmond, of the Scottish Nationalists, head of the state mafia in the Kingdom of Albany, has instructed all of his court bureaucrats to call this mafia 'The Scottish Government'. Gordon Brown, the Scottish head of the state mafia in the Kingdom of Albion, has instructed his court bureaucrats to continue calling Salmond's mafia 'The Scottish Executive'.

Boys, boys, boys,...Now then, now then, now then!

Pity the poor BBC. In its bid to crawl to both courts, it is calling the Scottish mafia, 'The Scottish Government' in Scotland, and 'The Scottish Executive' in England. Such independence of spirit, well worth the licence fee!

Oh sweet happy day when Scotland finally secedes from the rotten British state. It can't come soon enough, dragging McBroon down with it one fervently hopes. And although I philosophically dislike all politicians, the odd rogue like Bonson Jorris or Her Madgesty, still make me smile occasionally, as did 'Slippery Salmon' today. Like all politicians he knows the ultimate power of words, hence his cunning use of the term 'Scottish Government', to slowly slip the leash, one phrase at a time. He is ratcheting in the direction of Scottish secession freedom, therefore I applaud him. Shame about all the other socialist policies he follows, but praise should be given where praise is due.

But won't it be sad if Scotland does slip the leash, and McBroon is left like the last Macaroon at the Party, a Prime Minister without a constituency. Oh my, how I'll weep.

And so, as the afternoon wears on, and my first double-gin-and-tonic of the weekend grows ever closer, along with its ice and its limes, I shall make my toast to Alex Salmond. Slange!

The Golgafrinchams are Coming!

Nurse, the screens!

The injections are continuing, in the best Robert Mugabe-esque tradition of solving a shortage of wealth by ramping up the printing machines, or in the case of the Fed, the Bank of England, and the ECB, by ramping up the insertion of numbers into previously blank computer registers.

Yep, the Fed and the ECB between them have just 'injected' (a.k.a. counterfeited) another £44 billion pounds of extra paper rubbish into their currencies. Once the fractional reserve confidence trick gets hold of that lump of nervousness, we're looking at another £440 billion pounds worth of extra paper notes floating around the world's fiat-money-based economies (or £0.44 trillion), without including what the Bank of England are up to or the Australian Central Bank.

Crumbs. A trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. Though of course we're not talking about real money (which is gold or silver), but paper scrip of a kind the Weimar republic or modern-day Zimbabwe would be proud of.

I don't know exactly when it's coming. But a 'Big Bang' is coming to an economy near you, real soon. And no, I'm not talking about a theory of Richard Feynman, but the economics of the Golgafrinchams who on reaching Earth a million years ago, began using the leaves of trees as their major currency, before burning down the forests to contract the money supply.

Strangely, in a rather bizarre genetic coincidence, the first Golgafrincham man to suggest the burning down of the primeval forests as an Open Market Operation, has 100% of his genes represented in a handful of men still alive on the Earth day. Though I don't think I'll be giving out any prizes for pointing out that virtually all of these men now work as the heads of state Central Banks. Even a Mungoid like Robert Mugabe could have worked that one out! ;-)

Vote Conservative - Let Us Put Your Children into Slavery

It would seem that not only are we supposed to slave away for our entire lives to support the legions of Ne'er-do-well parasites sucking at the mother teat; David "Slavemaster" Cameron would like us to spend actual time as actual slaves. Obviously, as an anarchist I would argue strongly against foisting legitimacy upon these bums in Westminster and Brussels by ever voting for the scum. But even if I was a democrat, just what would be the point exactly of voting Conservative? No doubt once implemented the six-week plan, just as with an initial 2% initial income tax, would quickly inflate to at least two years (to make the camp logistics work out more efficiently, you understand). And if then Britain were to stumble into yet another imperial war, thousands of miles from home, what better place to get our new recruits than from the reserve pool of the state's slave children? "Vote Conservative - Let Us Kill Your Children in Self-Aggrandizing Imperial Wars Abroad" is hardly a slogan you'll see Cameron broadcasting aloud, but it's right there if you scratch a single millimetre under the surface of this pompous arrogant Blimp.

Fat Man on a Bicycle

In a fit of pique this week, at the striking bums of Metronet, I shelled out on a commuter bicycle, namely, the Strida. Rather strangely, I'm very excited about riding it on Monday, after testing it out this weekend.

The current betting is that I'll last about three days before regurgitating back onto the dreadful London Tube. However, I hope that I can carry it on much longer (if a satanic Transport for London's bus driver doesn't kill me first with a murderous left turn).

So why am I contemplating joining the collectivist herd of socialist-environmentalist-anarchist-take-yer-pick human haters of Old London Town, in their angry waspish uniforms of Lycra? Well, (1) if it's good enough for Bonson Jorris, then it's good enough for me; (2) I really can't hack the sovietism of the idiotic Tube any more, especially the Central Line; (3) I need some more exercise and fresh air; (4) I want to die, killed by a London bus driver.

Let's see if I can do more than three days and can hold out from morphing into a human hater myself, demanding that others be forced to pay for more cycle lanes and be forced to stop using their own preferred means of transport. In the meantime, if you spot a Fat Man on a Bicycle, looking lost as he cycles across Hyde Park on a triangular orange contraption, resplendent in a Henry Hazlitt T-shirt or an England rugby shirt, then wave, say "You are Jack Maturin and I claim my ten pounds!" and then tell all your friends.

Oh, how I'll laugh. And BTW, I may wear a bright yellow helmet for visibility, but I will never wear Lycra. Joining the herd is one thing. Looking like them is entirely another.

Call of the Shrike

If while trundling down some Victorian rails at half the speed of the Victorians, on First Great Western trains or some other fascist transport structure run by the UK state's hapless Department of Transport, you come across any pools of free time, I must recommend a recent favorite read of mine, Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, a novel itself based upon pools of free time.



As a sort of space age Canterbury Tales, it is fairly horrific, with plenty of blood and gore delivered by the Sauronesque Lord of Pain, but remains a fascinating read nevertheless. Obviously as an Austrian I couldn't help but notice the parallels between the odious "Hegemony of Humanity" and the imperial "United States Government", but if you've read all the Neal Stephenson or Bernard Cornwell novels available at your local bookshop, then look no further for future entertainment than Mr. Simmons (though do also buy Fall of Hyperion too, as one book requires the other). Happy shriking!

The Elephants are Back at the Waterhole

And there you were thinking that although the Americans and the Europeans are up the spout with counterfeit money, good ol' Blighty had managed to avoid the curse of legal tender scrip.

But, alas, it seems we're about to get 'layered' under yet another splurge of non-existent 'wealth', causing further long-term disruption to our economy by fooling entrepreneurs and investors with lower-than-real interest rates, causing them to falsely believe there are more savings in the economy than actually exist, and thereby causing them to build up a really pop-tastic inflationary bubble. If Gordon times it nicely, this bubble may explode just on cue after the next General Election. Good old, Gordon. He's such a card with this 'independent Bank of England' nonsense. What I love about this centuries-old state counterfeiting scam, is the language which wraps it in such a seeming swathe of 'sensible' business speak. Let's try to process this spam back into real terms:

The Bank of England has finally stepped into the liquidity crisis by offering to inject additional short-term cash into the system, but has ruled out taking action to address the escalating problems in the medium-term, three month debt markets.

"Offering to inject" - Crikey! The Bank of England really are heroin pushers, promising the banks who buy Government bonds that it will print up whatever they need, in counterfeit cash, to fool their customers even longer that they invest wealth wisely.

The Bank will provide about £4.4bn into the credit markets next week if overnight rates continue to be "unusually high". If the problem persists it has the option of injecting similar amounts in each of the following weeks.

Now that we've announced this splurge of fake wealth, you guys can all relax and stop trying to fix it yourselves. We'll be along with the wheelbarrows next week. Please help yourselves. Oh, and if that's not enough, we'll be along indefinitely until you're sated with paper. And in the meantime, could you be so kind as to keep buying up Gordon's government bonds so he can keep paying all of his state-client tax consuming parasites with money stolen via the back door of inflation, from tax generators.

The move should "relieve some pressure on interest rates for overnight borrowing which have" in the past month "been unusually high relative to bank rate," the central bank said. "The Bank's objective is that interest rates on secured overnight borrowing should be close to base rate."

"Thank goodness the Old Lady of Threadneedle street has offered to bail us out with all this paper rubbish," said one banker. "It should fool the taxpayers a bit longer, and enable us to have nice big fat bonuses at Christmas, as usual. If they print us enough, we should even be able to buy up some more of that nice Mr Brown's UK government bonds with the same rubbish they give us, less bonus cash, of course!"

Intervention has been long awaited by City financiers, who have accused the central bank of being "Victorian" in its handling of the crisis.

Gladstone used to let the wealth of the people fructify in their pockets. How old fashioned! Much better to steal the wealth of the people via the back door of fiat currency inflation. Make mine a double in "The Old Doctor Butler's Head"!

And so state-fed inflationary growth continues, with young people being unable to buy homes, with real-term wages decreasing, with people needing to work longer into their old age, and with more parents needing to leave their children in the hands of state carers so they can get out and earn enough of this rubbish paper scrip to pay off their mortgages from the same banks who are robbing them via the back door of Bank of England "cash injections".

And just look at those numbers. £4.4 billion pounds! And by the time fractional reserve banking kicks in, that will turn into an extra £44 billion pounds floating around the economy. And they're going to do this every week, until the banks are off the hook. Let's say that's 10 weeks, for fun. That will be an 'injection' of an extra £440 billion pounds into the economy, over a three month period. If that goes on for a year, that would be £2.2 trillion counterfiat pounds appearing as-if-by-magic from thin air, benefiting the City and the Government, but correspondingly screwing the rest of us by exactly the same sum.

Thanks, Bank of England. It's so nice to know you can open the floodgates, whenever you need to, to bail out risky investors from the holes of their own devising, especially those who buy up all those bonds from Gordon. Nice one.

Sorry Ladies...

But I'm afraid, for the moment, that I'm unavailable for action. For Miss Knightley has once again acquired all of my attention.



However; Fear ye not! For I'm the most fickle man in Christendom. It will probably be all over well within 72 hours, just like the latest wretched Tube strike.

Thank Goodness for Corporate Welfare

Because without corporate welfare, where would the City be today, with all of its major banks sucking up counterfeit money from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England? Bust, crashed, and burned. Probably.

Oh glorious day of 100% gold reserve banking, with fractional reservists and counterfeiters being tossed into stocks and pelted with rotten credit derivative instruments and other garbage, come to us now!

Though I must say, I was amused when Bernanke said yesterday that his job as chairman of the Federal Reserve wasn't to bail out risk-taking and mistaken major Wall Street investors. I'm sorry, Mr Bernanke, you obviously haven't read your job description. Because that's exactly what you're paid so handsomely to do. You muppet.

The Ghost of George Lives On

Apparently, all the youth prisoners (a.k.a. pupils) at the UK state's mental conditioning prisons (a.k.a. state schools) are to receive "happiness lessons".

Now call me "Mr Crabby", but are no-one's hackles raised at this? Getting people to self-control their emotions and getting them to thereby be more respectful of authority and the state may float your boat (and it certainly floats the boats of all those tax consumers who are afraid that one day the buried anger and hatred of the tax paying sheep may one day smash all the state's glorious palaces), but do "happiness lessons" not chime a certain chord within, a chord which the state's denizens are always desperate to shut down at the first signs of its ringing?

George Orwell had a name for this chord, and for these lessons. He called them "Thought Control".

Politics is Showbiz for Ugly People

Ok, it's humiliating to admit it, but I did watch a little of Big Brother this year. Why? Because I'm really sad. And because of the occasional gem such as that above, which for me succinctly sums up a lot of what politics is about. Especially when I have to look at the ghastly Fizzog of that odious rat, Gordon Brown, preparing to cut and run whilst appearing like he isn't.

What an utter shower we in the client state have become if we're actually prepared to vote for this Stalinist bombast.

No, We're Not Surrendering - This is Victory

Ok, if the British government's pulling out of Basra today wasn't a humiliating retreat for their Army, then why did the squaddie play 'Retreat' on his bugle when the Union flag came down?

The sooner the American imperial legions (including their British auxilliaries) are out of Iraq, to save the lives of our troops and to let the people of that region sort out their own mess, the better.

Bring them all home, now.

Ron's the One

As someone who believes the salvation of the world will, and can only, spring from the Ludwig von Mises institute in Auburn, Alabama, it is heartening to see just how well Dr. Ron Paul is doing in the Republican straw polls over there in the heart of the American Imperial Morass. All we hear about over here is how Hillary is doing with Bill. However, even if Dr. Paul crashes and burns (as is almost inevitable) and doesn't serve for eight years followed by eight more years of President Rockwell, Paul's revolution may have finally lit the fuse under the fascist neocons and marked the beginning of the end for their terrible American Empire. God Bless Dr. Paul, and all who nominate him in the Republican primaries. Go Ron, Go!

Keep the Faith

Yes, it's unlikely, but let's wish England the very best in the real World Cup, the one for real men, rather than all those handsomely paid Mulberry handbag merchants in soccer land. Come on England!

(Though let's face it, the New Zealanders - plus assorted 'integrated' Samoans, Fijians, etc. - will actually win it. Oh well.)

Climate Changing Horror!

Apparently, the climate is changing. This is the first time this has ever happened. This is why the bloody term is shoved down my throat on virtually every single TV programme I can stomach watching, and why the term appears on every second page of every magazine and newspaper on the planet.

Christ.

Though I must say, I had to laugh yesterday in Cheddar Gorge when a man dressed up as a neolithic flint knapper said, '...and seeing as we're in the middle of an Inter-Glacial period, it's going to get about 4 degrees warmer over the next thousand years, and then it's going to start getting much colder, and then we'll really hear all everyone start complaining...'.

If I believed in democracy, I would say 'Make that Man Prime Minister!', despite the heavy beard and the grubby fingernails. And he showed me some wizard flint arrow-heads too. What a star!

The Utter Failure of All Socialist Bums

And while I'm in the mood, I must say on my long walk home tonight, I had to smile in a cavalier fashion when I thought about the latest news of unintended consequences on the government's food policy in their compulsory mental conditioning centres (a.k.a. state schools).

Apparently, forcing schools to force children to eat 'politically correct' rabbit food has sent swarms of children into town centres to look for fried Mars Bars and lard-dripping chips. Quelle shock! Just what on Earth did these morons expect?

No doubt the solution won't be to sack the legions of muppets in the government's department of education overseeing this idiocy, it will be to 'make' staying at school for lunch 'compulsory', and the appointment of yet more fools to snoop on the streets checking for 'renegade' lunch-time Mars Bar eaters.

What an utter shower.

This is What Communism Feels Like

After having schlepped from Angel Court, behind the Bank of England, to Paddington station, tonight, to get home in time to turn round and go back again, I have a few questions about the Metronet strikers who apparently "deserve" copper-bottomed guaranteed pensions fed from my private bank balance for the rest of their lives.

Can these bums be sacked for breaking their employment contracts? Can I sue them for lost time and worn-out shoe leather? Is the Queen an Aardvark?

They should all be given one-way tickets to North Korea and kicked onto the plane. Then they'll be able to find out what a real iron rice bowl looks like.

Thank God for the cold lager on tap at the Globe pub on Baker Street. Cheers.

Ronomania

Ok, I know, it's ridiculous, but being a libertarian means both being an outrageous optimist and a terrible pessimist. And as such, I'm feeling both very despondent and very excited about the snowballing run of Ron Paul towards the White House.

Yes, he'll probably have a terrible car accident or go down in a plane if he actually ever gets in with a sniff of real power, in the novelesque mode of Neal Stephenson; and let's face it, he'll probably get pushed out of the race before even that due to a conspiracy of neo-con deadbeats.

But there's just that little word, 'if'.

If he makes it through the nominations to beat Il Duce Moroni Giuliani, and if he then beats El Laviscia Clintonia in 2008, and if he can make it to a second term to get eight years in office, and if he lives that long in face of all those mysteriously exploding planes and Washington coups against him, there is the merest glimmer (and I mean the merest glimmer) that we super-Jeffersonians could once again see the faintest re-birth of a golden liberal civilisation.

There's an awful lot of ifs in that, and an awful lot of conjecture, and Dr. Ron Paul will need to find a successor to follow his legacy (Can you imagine President Rockwell?), but although it is all a soap bubble and I refuse to believe any more in democracy, I just can't believe how excited I am that Ron Paul is actually making waves in America.

As an atheist I can't believe I'm saying this, but I keep praying that the Ron Paul dream can go all the way. As long as he's in the race, there's the tiniest chance that humanity may have turned the corner.

I may be spending too much time on the Central Line again, the heat may be melting my brain., and you'll have watch out for my terrible depression if and when he drops out. However, in the meantime:

Go Ron, Go!