…is a moderate racist.

I am not very familiar with the recent election shenanigans in the Ukraine, but one thing is certain - I’ll never find out the truth about them over at Lew Rockwell’s Paleocreep Central. Why not? you may ask. Because (I reply, dear Karen agreeably snuggling next to me and whispering something in my ear about bunnies) of the mindless fashion in which True Blue Confederate Lew reaches his conclusions:

“Every neocon in the world is screaming the same line. No rational man could agree on that basis alone.”

ghly translated as “Whatever those pesky Jews are for, we’re against.”

In light of this, I’d very much like to see the “neocons” (whoever they are) come out in favor of oxygen. Then Lew would be obliged by his ideals to stop breathing. This would be a good thing.

One notes that Lew’s desire to never agree with the “neocons” involves him in a good deal of floundering as, torn between religio-political obscurantism and neo-hatred, he tries to find a third position. I have no idea, by the way, whether the “neocons” are all really “screaming” for one side or the other - Lew’s stupidity is so often based on believing his own lies that reading Paleocreep Central is like walking through a wilderness of funhouse mirrors, complete with spring-loaded papier-mache clown. (Bob Wallace) This deserves further investigation, but alas, dear Karen is becoming ever more importunate. Hey, that tickles!

I just deleted 70+ plus spam comments. I’ll let you know when I come up with a plan for turning them back on. Feel free to comment in our forum.

Patri Friedman takes note of Bruce Simpson, the man who wanted to build the $5,000 cruise missile. Since the government of New Zealand has ruined his life, he’s turning to the market:

It would appear that the only way for me to now survive with anything like a modest standard of living is to offer my skills, knowledge and experience to anyone outside of New Zealand who is willing to pay for them.

…

So, if you’re located outside of New Zealand and need a missile (or UAV or RPV) designed, built and tested for you, I’m the person to talk to.

I won’t charge you millions of dollars like the big-boys might. I won’t question your politics or religious beliefs. I simply ask that you provide me with travel to your location plus safe, warm, comfortable accommodation for the duration of the project, and employ me at an agreed rate for my services.

…

Events of the past year have taught me the folly of patriotism, putting the interests of others ahead of your own, and trying to work with government to improve the security of the nation — so I given up on that and adopted a far more mercenary attitude.

My guess is that Bruce Simpson will wind up like Jim Bell, or Carl Drega, or Marvin Heemeyer, or Arthur and Steven Bixby: in prison, or dead. It’s a heroic tragedy: Bruce Simpson can’t live his life without pursuing his values, and the government won’t allow him to pursue them.

They won’t let him live.

Thomas Knapp put it like this:

There’s a subtle difference between the modern American martyrs for freedom and those traditionally defined as martyrs for a religious or political cause. Religious and political martyrs down through the ages have generally died in the act of proselytization or recruitment to their belief or cause. The modern American martyrs for freedom have been killed for no other reason than that they wished to be left alone.

Simpson might not be an American by birth, but if there is anything left in the world now that symbolizes what an American ought to be, it’s one man resisting blind authority. One man who says “No.“

And that’s what Bruce Simpson is.

“But I am fed up with the sickness that permeates my pores from afar.”
- An admirer.

(from the terrifying Perry Bible Fellowship)

Sorry, but we’re getting an avalanche of comment spam tonight so I’ve turned off comments for everyone but NT bloggers. We’ll think of something.

And oh yeah, I’m back.

A curse on Steven Spielburg (pal of Fidel) by Lucius Shepard - with whom, on this issue, I couldn’t agree more.

When at life’s end Steven Spielberg looks back upon his days of nature, I’m quite certain he will be pleased with what he has wrought. He will see no admirable films but a long line of bloated highly colored visions before which billions of ex-people have genuflected and that they have celebrated with uncounted trillions of wasted breaths. He will see shelves of trophies bestowed in the name of artistic achievement but given in the hyperbolic spirit of financial success. And he will very likely see a world in which functional literacy is defined by whether or not one can read the big print on a Kellog’s box. He will then smile and allow the technicians who surround his bed to assist him into a cryogenic unit where he will gaze up yearningly into white light for a moment before he begins to sleep away the centuries. Thousands of years hence he will wake to find himself surrounded by saintly elongated aliens who love love love our art and music, and who think his work is the acme of human achievement (like most aliens we have known, they are not terribly bright). But rebirth and the adulation of these godlike beings will not be sufficient for little Steven. His heart’s wish will not have been granted, and in order to pursue that wish, he will escape the aliens’ loving confine and journey to the ends of the earth, prone to the vicissitudes of a harsh unfeeling world. He will be accompanied by an amusing sidekick, perhaps a little animatronic buddy. Together they will steal an ancient jetcopter and sink beneath the waters of a submerged LA and search the drowned city until at last they will happen upon the ruins of a film museum. They will explore the ruins and eventually reach the display for which they have been searching. But just as they reach it, a steel structure will collapse, pinning the copter, and so Stevie will sit there for a long, long time, a period that will seem every bit as unending as those final thirty-four minutes of AI, staring out at the pantheon of great men, at statues of Kurosawa and Huston and da Sica and Welles and all the rest, his dream of being a real director just out of reach, forever unattainable.

This is, at least, my fond hope.

Remember Elena, the girl who rides her street bike through Chernobyl? Check out her latest project, a free-market archaeology exploration of Kiev. The spectacular photgraphs are too big to post, so here are some captions:

60 years ago a Kiev’s area witnessed ones of the most severe battles of WW2. Covered with earth from explosions the humans, arms and ammunitions was left on a battlefields.

With entering this site, you will join me and my friends for visiting a historic places of battles. We don’t take a standart trips with their boring guides, we take a shovels, detectors and plenty of water. Water because the only way to find something is to dig and when you dig, you drink, you drink a lot because once you found a relic you can’t stop digging, you know, it is real, it was there in time of a great event and you know that next item can be this special one that worth you efforts…

…

Eventually Red army won and cheerful days of communism began. They began with the robery of rich citizens and expelling them from the country. As a scriptural seven skinny crows ate up a fat crow and didn’t become any fater, so is our ragged fellows robbed a rich fellows and didn’t become any richer. Powerty was written all over and the Soviet epoch didn’t left us many valuable things that would be worth digging for them. It left plenty of graves.

…

Speaking of SS awards. I don’t know, which one was the highest award, but I know which is the most valuable on a black market this days. It is ?Death?s Head? silver SS ring, we call them a dead head rings.

The ring on photo is not real, it just a copy. If I was lucky with finding a real SS ?Death?s Head? ring, then you wouldn’t see me riding scooturo on the trenches, I’d already ride a new ninja bike on highway. Collectors pay a big bucks for original rings I have got a copy, because I don’t want to miss a real ring when I find it.

…

In the 1990’s these were the homes of rich people. Today the owners are in jail and homes are left standing unfinished. One day, their owners have been prosperous people who thought the success would last forever… but then, the politics and economic situations changed and every time when it happens the skinny crows coming to power to eat the fat ones.

In this country a rich people will never be safe.

…

Bottles from Schnapps. A German vodka. We found them empty, but a local guys from other search group had more luck and dug up a sealed one.

It was a real war bottle of schnapps and as every true old bottle it was enchanted and from the moment when guys opened it everything went wrong.

Update: Commenter Aaron G. points out a disturbing amount of evidence that the Chernobyl story was (partially) faked. The definitive answer, though, comes from the Chernobyl bike-ride website: “Regardless of what is true, this site has certainly made people think more about Chernobyl and this tragic disaster.”

Just friggin’ lovely.

Wendy McElroy points to this:

Last month, Helen Chenoweth-Hage attempted to board a United Airlines flight from Boise to Reno when she was pulled aside by airline personnel for additional screening, including a pat-down search for weapons or unauthorized materials.

Chenoweth-Hage, an ultra-conservative former Congresswoman (R-ID), requested a copy of the regulation that authorizes such pat-downs.

…

Chenoweth-Hage wasn’t seeking disclosure of the internal criteria used for screening passengers, only the legal authorization for passenger pat-downs. Why couldn’t they at least let her see that? asked Statesman commentator Dan Popkey.

“Because we don’t have to,” Mr. Gonzales replied crisply.

“That is called ’sensitive security information.’ She’s not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else,” he said.

Thus, in a qualitatively new development in U.S. governance, Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know.

And so it goes. Secret detentions, secret laws - all we need now is secret police to enforce it all. I have little doubt that they’re indeed coming, and no doubt whatsoever that they’ll be accepted when they arrive. CBS News will cheer them on, and so will National Review - if it’s a Republican in the White House.

When, exactly, will the United States Of America have secret police empowered with arbitrary arrest-and-detention power? Ten years? Five? Tomorrow? Preposterous, you say? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention: absurdity is dead, buried under the weight of this dying culture. American secret police aren’t unthinkable - actually, they’re the next logical step. And don’t think that these guys aren’t up to the task.

New York, 1964.