Once I finished reading Shakedown Socialism, yesterday I started another book I had on my list.
Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose.
The more I read, the more I like it.
This morning, I was in a good mood. Day advanced… and now I’m pissed off by this country and its rulers.
The senate passed a bill on internet controlling and censorship, collectivist pseudo internet-freedom groups totally blinded by their stubbornness in gringo intrusions (always according to their interests… when a US court rules ‘in favour’ of their interests, Democracy works with Providence)… a socialist government taxing almost the air and showing companies the exit-door… a total and utter crap of a country as you see.
Anyway, I don’t think this lasts so much…. if this was a civilised country. As it is not, may be it’s time to start looking other places in the world… may be New Zealand? It’s the farthest place on Earth from here…
On Tuesday, the Spanish blogosphere was thriving with the domain hijacking of one website linking to sport events and retransmissions.
While some spoke of outrage to the Spanish sovereignty, others wondered if a prosecutor located in the United States, launching a petition under U.S. law, against a server hosted in the United States had to do something with the Spanish sovereignty.
Finally, as TorrentFreak published yesterday, it seems that all this happened because the most watched sporting event of the year … in the United States, will take place next Sunday: the Super Bowl.
And U.S. copyright authorities began seizing domains in what is already known as The Super Bowl Crackdown.
But as much as the Spanish justice has appointed, twice by the way, that activities of the site in question are legal in Spain, or as much as it does not link directly to emissions in the United States … both the domain and hosting are located in the United States, which puts them under U.S. jurisdiction.
It would be interesting to know on behalf of who acted the N.Y attorney. Of himself… or if it was at the request of anyone… as happened with Easy DNS and Amazon in the early hours of the Wikileaks case.
Once known who initiated the movement, we can speak of interference … or not.
The rest are even more examples of the topical anti-Americanism from some people who, on the other hand, consider Obama as the Messiah and savior…
Odd country.
When sometimes I talk with people and tell them I like Ayn Rand’s work, or when I call myself a Randian/Rand-er, I get a rare look.
It may be for the signs of Atlas anyone can see at the Tea Parties, and because of a huge sector of Tea Partiers likes Rand’s novels.
After that, one only has to link Sarah Palin and the Republican Party, which took a great advantage of the Tea Party movement, and we get the full picture: if you read Ayn Rand, then you are one of those awful right-wing neoconservatives.
It is of no matter that Rand herself warned not to vote for Reagan, the President who gave the neoconservatives the push they needed.
It is of no matter that Rand’s objectivist views collide frontally with the new-left pseudo fascism of Leo Strauss’ teachings.
It is of no matter that Ayn Rand’s objectivism it’s based on reason, and Strauss’ neoconservatism is based on religion (whatever) and faith.
All the facts does not matter at all for the general Spanish public. But the better, best of all, is that one can be “too much liberal”. Yeah. Now it is really a bad thing to appreciate liberty.
I don’t like Sarah Palin very much, but I agree with a great bunch of the Republican Party concepts (of course not with the Christian fundamentalist wings), and would vote happily for people like Ron Paul.
Crucifixion's bright side, the end of all 'Organic Intellectuals'
If you were not aware, Spanish Congress rejected the first try to pass a bill on Internet covert censorship under the disguise of Anti-downloads, in disguise of the new Sustainable Economy Act (Ley de Economía Sostenible), intended to re-float Spanish economy.
After that, the President of the Spanish Cinema Academy invited some ‘representatives’ (of his own choice) of Spain’s digital society to an informal breakfast, in order to re-take the debate, as the divide between the show-business people, close to the socialist government, and spanish society went so bad due to the former’s accusations of “every internet user is a pirate stealing our bread”.
Meanwhile, some of the socialist President’s strong-men were quietly doing their job to have the bill passed through the senate, without having so much debate in the House.
Then it turned out that at the end of last week, a lawyer made a call to the President of the Academy, Alex de la Iglesia. The idea: to work for The Common Good© and write a proposal to amend the un-amendable: the censorship section of the law.
After commenting his idea to the other guests at the famous breakfast, the representatives (of themselves) quickly took distance… but not enough, as a certain radio station made his own wikileaking session and announced that a minimal agreement had been reached between Internet Representatives© and The Government©.
And then everybody started shooting, bringing up the phenomenon of the “fog of war“, which cause tremendous casualties on all sides due to friendly fire.
Anyway, now all of them retreat: “I did not wanted to do that”, “they lied to me” …
But while this happens, while Internet Representatives©’s who got engaged into the trap fire on their own side while dodging bullets, the process to pass the bill continues, invisible to eyes and questions.
All this brings up the concept of “organic intellectuals“, which I will refer as OI onwards. The OI is that intellectual who,
unlike a traditional intellectual, is a bourgeoisie scholar who cultivates strong roots in his/her community, working to maintain links with local issues and struggles that connect to the people and their experiences.
This piece of Marxist theory could be summarized using the words of Marx himself, in just two words: Useful Idiots. Onwards, Useful Idiots©. The Useful Idiots© are
Those people who in the fight for an ideal, can be transformed into instruments of political groups.
Usually, once they finish their work, they end up being shot, or enjoying a guided tour of Siberia or collectively crucified (and even then the problems continue).
This is exactly what is happening to Brian of Nazareth the lawyer David Maetzu, proponent of the amend, who is being shot from everywhere, accused of being a collaborationist, a censurer, a destroyer of p2p, and of causing San Francisco’s Earthquake and anthropogenic climate change.
Central Politburo distributing medals
By the way, despite being a slow and painful death, crucifixion is an outdoors activity. So, out on the door, line on the left, one cross each.
A currency has value because everyone involved has confidence in it, and everyone agrees to give it value. It may be precious metals or stones, shells or bits of painted paper.
In the Internet, this usually works in a three-party way: seller, buyer and a financial institution processing the operation. This institution, as PayPal or any other, acts as a trusted middle-man, increasing transaction costs and limiting the minimum transaction size.
Bitcoin is a p2p digital currency, without any central authority issuing more money or tracking transactions. You generate your own Bitcoins using free cycles of your computer processors, and later use them to pay for services… or get paid in Bitcoins if you sell something. Even you can change them for other currencies like USD or EUR.
As this is a relatively new currency, there are not much places accepting it, but it’s growing and growing.
Bitcoins will not be a substitute for any major currency, but can be a useful mean. At the end, there will be a total of 21 million bitcoins.
I’m giving it a try.
A 100% anonymous citizen
I’m not going into technicalities, but simply point out that anonymity on the Internet does not exist or is very difficult to achieve. And that is exactly what happens with false passports.
But under the usual propaganda, author-rights management companies, the entertainment industry, paranoids and progressive politicians panopticon lovers build up excuses to launch their tirades and disciplinary proposals. The (pen)ultimate, creating an Internet ID.
I say penultimate because the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace been developing since last summer.
Last January 7th, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said that
We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.
Praise the Messiah, who cares about and wants us to get rid of those evilish passwords, you know, the weakest point of a security system: humans.
That collaterally we enter the era of voluntary but compulsory transparency (if you do not want a Trusted Identity is because you are hiding something and you’re probably a terrorist) has nothing to do with Progressive Governments giving steps toward totalitarianism and absolutism, it is a conspiracy theory. And this paragraph contain high doses of sarcasm, if not noticed.
The original story can be read on ReadWriteWeb.
Living in an openly socialist country gives one the opportunity to, let’s say, enjoy the multiple nonsense about the reasons of the current financial crisis.
The best of all is, as Oleg Atbashian puts it in Shakedown Capitalism, the one that blames capitalism and its greedy selfishness. But one thing a progressive does not think about, is that Capitalism is not the same than Corporatism, and its abuses.
Capitalism by itself, meaning an economic system without the State messing things up, is not the cause of any harm. Some will win, some will loose, but everyone will have the chance, as the means of production (hands and brain) are private owned: your hands, your brain, you.
Some people will choose to ‘rent’ their time and/or abilities and work for other people (and become a wage-earner), but some other people will put their abilities to work for themselves.
Basically, a capitalism for dummies explanation should that Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand regulates the free market through three concepts: competition, supply and demand. The more the supply and competition, the more prices drop. Less competition and supply, drive prices up.
But extreme lack of competition can become a monopoly. And this is where the fun begins.
Monopolies exist when there is none but one supplier. As there is no competition, the only seller can put any price.
In a real free-market economy, one could work and try to break the monopoly by offering a cheap alternative. But it happens that more often than expected, monopolies are not ‘natural’. It is usual that the State keeps for itself some sectors of the economy. Or worst, it grants a license to a company, preventing further competition by rising taxes, over-regulating the market and other artificial barrier-rising activities. In other words, it ensures artificial scarcity in order to grant one company, usually from a friend, exclusive rights to operate a market.
But there can be organised monopolies as well.
We can find a good example with the telecom industry in Spain. Back in 1924, state-founded and owned Telefonica financed its networks and infrastructure thanks to Spanish taxpayers.
It was not until 1996 that the Popular Government decided to privatise the country’s only telecommunication operator, to one of the President’s friend, and two years later, the first land-line ‘competitor’ appeared. It was a public-enterprise state-owned, and it was forced to use Telefonica’s coper cables and infrastructures for a price. Sound business.
12 years later, almost 10 operators exist. Only two of them are building their own infrastructures, in high populated urban zones, while the rest keeps paying the rent to Telefonica, who now owns almost all telecommunication infrastructures in the country, paid initially by We The People.
But the funny thing is that, despite of the almost 10 operators, there is no real competition because, as if it was by magic, all of them charge the same price for the worst telecommunication services in Europe: around €50 for a triple pay with 40 channels of utter crap full of ads, free local (since 2001) and national calls and 600 kBps download rate (with only 10% guaranteed by contract)
As a result, Telefonica keeps a share of 80% of the total market due to its former monopoly.
In this case, as in most of them not to say all of them, the fault is not on the system, but in the ‘actors’. Almost all systems work, until someone cheats or a saboteur comes and places a bomb.
While under a fair competing capitalist system, almost everyone can make a living and a little percentage is much over standards, collectivist systems guarantee that a very small percentage is extremely well, while the rest of people ends up not having toilet paper.
But the blame of The Financial Crisis is better to be put on capitalism greed caused by “them”. But who are them? No one knows. Including them.
While news agencies, papers and on-line media are burning with the last news coming from the live ‘revolution’ in Tunis, some of the most recalcitrant socialist ‘activists’ started to point their fingers to Hosni Mubarak, the kelptocrat President of Egypt, and start counting the seconds remaining for his overthrow.
What they seem to avoid is that Mr Mubarak, as the very same Ben Ali, the kleptocrat ex-President of Tunis, are True Socialists, members of the local Democratic Party, and both parties have full membership in the Socialist International.
Anyway, despite this complete lack of noticing the reality, or the incredible willingness of ignoring it, this is sure to happen: Ben Ali is out, and will negotiate his future with some delegate from the Socialist International. His heir Ghannouchi is already commanding the country, preparing to reap what he has been sowing these years. Mubarak will keep on with his business, pumping money out of Egypt to his accounts. And, finally, the Useful Idiots will keep their pointing to nowhere… as True Idiots.
Shout 'racist' and sue your neighbour
Last November, in a diversion tactic from Spanish PM Mr. Shoemaker (english translation for Zapatero), the Government proposed a new law by which surnames to newborns would be given… by alphabetical order.
Absolute nonsense? Let me explain. Thanks to The Inquisition, spanish citizens have two surnames: the first from dad, second from mum. This was to ensure purity of blood after the expulsion of jews back in 1492, as Spanish sephardim followed the mother’s line.
Having both surnames of the parents publicly shown, The Inquisition eased any inspection denounce or Auto de Fe by automatic check: bad second surname = let’s have a long talk.
600 hundred and something years later, the Socialist Government thought about it and resolved that equality of surnaming should be applied, so now, surnames are given by alphabetical order, unless both parents are against it.
But after that, the Government was not fully satisfied. Spain needed more equality. Even more equality than other countries. So the The Ministress of Tic-tac-toe The Healthcare™, The Equality™ and The Social Policy™ launched another equally bullshitting proposal: the Law on Equal Treatment and Non Discrimination.
By this law, the Spanish Government pretends to promote and defend freedom of discrimination… sorry, I meant being free from discrimination. The Ministress wants
to create a society that does not humiliate anyone and also a society that does not allow anyone to be humiliated. A society where they feel safe and where they feel protected by the law.
But what the news I linked does not say, but really appears on the draft (although not this way as The Government excused), is that with this law, anyone can accuse anyone of discrimination by birth, racial or ethnic origin, sex, religion, belief or opinion, age, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity, illness or any other condition or personal or social circumstance, and the accused will have to prove that he or she did not discriminated. In spanish legal slang, this is called inversion of proof charge.
This is how a big door will be opened to all those really charming people who shouts “Racist!” (or anything) when they don’t get what they want, giving them legal advantage, and providing equal odds to every person in the country to be sued by a bullshitter.
I think I’m going out to earn redistribute some non-discriminatory monies from all those people I can’t stand… oops… I obviously meant that I will be going out to be a Good Citizen and report all those damn discriminators to the new State Authority for Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination.
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