MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

UK Government Greases Skids For Fleets Of Surveillance Drones Over Cities | ZeroHedge

Posted by M. C. on January 4, 2022

The idea of giving women who feel threatened the power to summon drones is patently a cynical PR stunt to acclimatize the public into accepting the general introduction of drones as a tool of mass surveillance.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/uk-government-greases-skids-fleets-surveillance-drones-over-cities

Tyler Durden's Photoby Tyler DurdenTuesday, Jan 04, 2022 – 02:00 AM

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

In what appears to be a cynical PR stunt, the UK government is considering plans to allow women who feel threatened on the street to call upon surveillance drones that would arrive in minutes and shine a bright light on any potential attacker.

What could possibly go wrong?

“Women in fear of an attack will be able to use a phone app to summon a drone, which could arrive within minutes armed with a powerful spotlight and thermal cameras to frighten off any potential assailant,” reports the Telegraph.

Trials will take place on campus at Nottingham University at a cost of £500,000 during which the tech will be used to “protect students and staff.”The scheme will be submitted to the UK government’s Innovate research program, and could eventually see helicopters being replaced by drones as a front line tool of law enforcement.

“It is a high capability drone that costs just £100 an hour but can do 80 percent of what a police helicopter can do,” said Richard Gill, the founder of Drone Defence.“It cannot do high speed pursuits but it can do the other tasks such as searching for people and ground surveillance.”

Gill noted that 25 drones could do the job of one police helicopter in London for the same price, with the drones being housed at five base locations across the city.The idea of countless government drones whizzing around a city keeping tabs on people is garishly dystopian.Allowing individuals to access the drones would also be completely open to abuse and misuse.Innumerable people would make a mockery of the system by constantly calling upon the drones to harass random people or use the drones for target practice.A far more effective means of preventing such attacks would be to allow women to be armed with pepper spray, but current law in the UK makes that illegal.Changing the law would give women the power to defend themselves while avoiding the dystopian nightmare that state surveillance drones would bring.The idea of giving women who feel threatened the power to summon drones is patently a cynical PR stunt to acclimatize the public into accepting the general introduction of drones as a tool of mass surveillance.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Watch “Why Subaru Engines FAIL” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

Re-torque the head bolts! Looks like the engine needs pulled for that.

I did not realize all those downsides to boxer engines.

https://youtu.be/bJSYDBjkJNQ

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Watch “Secrets of good acoustic imaging” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

The worst place for a “bookshelf” speaker is a bookshelf.

https://youtu.be/sfDgzNCnAGY

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Narrative Implosion: German Authorities Report Most Omicron Cases Among Vaccinated

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

Germany’s official government health authority reported last week that 90 plus percent of new Omicron variant cases are among vaccinated individuals, obliterating the long-repeated claim that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Other narratives are also crumbling – former FDA head Scott Gottlieb says cloth masks are useless. What will the covid authoritarians do next?

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Dispatches from the New Normal Front: The Ministry of Truth’s War on “Misinformation”

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/dispatches-from-the-new-normal-front

Margaret Anna Alice

“Free inquiry on a free platform is the only practice that distinguishes a free from a slave society.”

—Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 (paperback, Kindle, audiobook)

When I was little, I had a poster of a raccoon with his paw over a kitten’s mouth saying, “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s someone talking while I’m interrupting.”

I was notorious for interrupting, asking questions, and getting so lost in thought, my mom had an ear doctor test my hearing because I was constantly saying, “What?”

That poster came to mind as I watched the Ministry of Truth campaign against “misinformation” first roll out. Today’s version of that poster would say, “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s someone’s information contradicting my disinformation.”

Raccoon Kitten Poster: Someone's Information Contradicting My Disinformation

As we all understand by now, when Minitrue defines the “truth” as 2 + 2 = 5, then 2 + 2 = 4 becomes “misinformation.”

If you’re like me, you’ve probably had more than a few brushes with memoryholing and maybe even unpersoning as a result of Big Tech’s mass censorship rollout.

Not that they’d answer, but I’m tempted to ask the censors, What is the danger, if the sources are patently noncredible? Why treat us like infants incapable of assessing the validity of facts for ourselves? If the misinformation is so evidently false, let us see that on our own and the question will be put to rest.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant and so on—but yeah, that’s precisely the problem, isn’t it. Darkness must prevail for their narrative to survive the illuminating exposure of sunlight—even if the gatekeepers have to blot out the sun Bill Gates–style.

A few months ago, I started experimenting with real-world attempts to deprogram New Normalers on a private platform. I’d say it’s about a 70:30 Covidian:free-thinker ratio, not counting those remaining on the sidelines, quietly nodding in agreement but too cautious to speak out.

What I’ve discovered, based on the failures and successes of others as well as myself, is it is nearly impossible to gain traction on the “science” front. Their allegiance to the “experts” and the mainstream narrative is imbued with a religious fervor, and anyone who voices even the most hesitant of concerns is a heretical tin-foil hoax plandemic conspiracy nut.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Privatize Education – Econlib

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

What is going on here? What is going on is that when it comes to public education, the children and their guardians, the parents, are simply not “customers.” Rather, they are wards of the state.

https://www.econlib.org/privatize-education/

By Walter Block

In the view of Terry McAuliffe, former Virginia Gubernatorial candidate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

According to Mary-Michelle Upson Hirschoff, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law, it is not even clear that parents have an unambiguous right to have their children excused from instruction they regard as objectionable. She states: “The curriculum of a public school in a democratic system of government is necessarily a subject of political debate. These controversies dramatize the inherent tension between the interests of the state and the interests of the parents in shaping the child’s development.”

And what is the position of Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers? She declared war on “culture warriors” who are “bullying teachers.” She elaborated: “But culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic. They are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history.” She opposed those who want to “limit learning and stoke fears about our public schools.”

Whatever happened to the axiom, “the customer is always right?” This is a basic foundational premise which operates all throughout the private economy. The customer wants to purchase new dungarees with holes in them that look ten years old? All the buyers need to do is snap their fingers and their wish is the command of the business sector. Do they want electronic vehicles? Entrepreneurs hasten to provide them. The same with computers instead of typewriters; cell phones in place of land line telephones and cameras; “roughage” instead of food that makes life worth living. They like large groceries instead of mom and pop stores, or, electronic shopping? Again their wishes are sovereign. “The customer is king” might well be the motto of the capitalist system.

Why is this not working in education? Why are there millions of parents outraged with what their children are being taught? The problem is so serious that Attorney General Merrick Garland has felt the need to involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation to quell these protests.

What is going on here? What is going on is that when it comes to public education, the children and their guardians, the parents, are simply not “customers.” Rather, they are wards of the state. Yes, their taxes finance public schooling, but they simply have no say in what goes on there, any more than they have control over other gigantic government bureaucracies. Wait, I spoke too quickly. They do have the ballot box. But this power can be implemented only every two or four years, and mainly impacts politicians, and only very, very indirectly, tenured bureaucrats in the teachers’ unions.

Instead of begging, pleading, complaining about the corrupt miseducation intellectually crippling their children, they should transfer their children to private schools. Why do they not do that? It is simple. Then, they would have to pay twice over, once through taxes for the “education” of other children in public schools, and a second time, directly, for their own kids’ private education.

How did this system get started? Public schooling began in most of the country in the late 19th century. It was initiated, mainly, by Protestants who wished to rid the country of the supposed evils of Popery and Catholicism. They did not have the power to ban private schools of the latter. They did the next best thing from their perspective: forced parents who patronized them to pay twice over. They were unscrupulous, but good economists; they knew that demand curves slope in a downward direction. Force the Catholics to pay double, and a lot of the impetus of Catholic education would be lost.

So, parents unhappy with woke public education being crammed down the throats of their children have a natural constituency: Catholics. And in addition Jews and members of other religion groups who also provide private education.

Forced school busing was beat back by massive numbers of outraged parents, and this latest attempt to impose political correctness can also meet the same fate, if the non “customers” can but become organized instead of limiting themselves to sporadic protests.


Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and is co-author of An Austro-Libertarian Critique of Public Choice (with Thomas DiLorenzo).

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Hidden Agenda Behind Biden’s Insane Gas Mileage Requirements – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

The point is to reduce car ownership

https://spectator.org/the-hidden-agenda-behind-bidens-insane-gas-mileage-requirements/

by Eric Peters

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that all new cars that aren’t electric must average 55 miles per gallon by 2026. 

This amounts to a Great Leap Forward of almost 20 miles per gallon from the currently ordered 36 miles per gallon that all new cars must achieve, else their manufacturers be punished for making them via “gas guzzler” fines applied to them.

Which are then passed on to the people who buy them. Which makes it progressively more difficult to afford them.

That being the point of the fines, you understand.

The Biden administration considers it their right and duty to punish you for buying the car you want if it doesn’t do what they like.

The free market being an intolerable affront to them. Can’t have supply and demand determined by … supply and demand. That would be even worse a thing than free association.

The administration will say they are “saving you money on gas” via their “rules.” Which is true in the same way that “ruling” you must live in a small apartment in the city “saves” you the bother of having to cut a lawn. They do not say anything about the cost of the apartment — including the diminishment of your personal space — and your control over it.

Nor, of course, do they say anything about using “rules” to make you pay more for what you don’t want. An affront which brings us to the following fact:

Right now, only two new (2022 model year) cars meet the new “rule” — just barely. They are the Toyota Prius and the Hyundai Ioniq.

Both are partially electric cars (i.e., hybrids) and also small cars designed to be primarily economical cars. They are not bad cars. Indeed, they have their merits — chief among them their ability to average about 55 miles per gallon. But they are not cars most people want — or else you’d already see most people driving them.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

HHS, the Tip on Biden’s Spear Against Christians – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

https://spectator.org/hhs-the-tip-on-bidens-spear-against-christians/

by George Neumayr

Joe Biden spent much of his first year undoing the policies of his predecessor. Biden has taken special relish in wiping out Trump’s protections for the religious. Christians in particular have a target on their backs under Biden. He routinely calls them “discriminatory” for simply upholding historic teachings of Christianity.

Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services is the tip on his spear against Christians. In December, Republican senators and congressmen sent a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra blasting him for his attempts to exclude faith-based adoption and foster care agencies from government contracts.

“According to the Administration for Children & Families’ annual Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) report, 407,493 children are in foster care, 117,470 of whom are waiting to be adopted. With these staggering numbers in mind, our primary goal should be safe, loving, and permanent placements for all children,” they wrote.

Becerra would rather see those tens of thousands of children languish without homes than turn them over to adoption and foster care agencies that do not conform to Biden’s LGBTQ agenda. This is utterly perverse. Those agencies, precisely because they operate according to moral and religious principles, are the best for children.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Max Boot’s Rant Against Oliver Stone – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

Max Boot is a thing, but why is he still a thing?

Washington…CIA Post

https://www.fff.org/2021/12/22/max-boots-rant-against-oliver-stone/

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Max Boot, a conservative who has long favored regime-change operations on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment, is going after Hollywood producer and director Oliver Stone. His beef with Stone? He’s upset because Stone has long maintained that the U.S. national-security establishment employed one of its patented regime-change operations here at home, against President John F. Kennedy. 

The title of Boot’s piece, which was published in the Washington Post, is “Oliver Stone Just Can’t Stop Spreading Lies About JFK’s Assassination.” In his article, he attacks Stone not only for his 1991 movie JFK but also for Stone’s latest update to the movie, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass.

Interestingly, Boot makes a reference to Stone’s accusation “that Kennedy’s autopsy reports were falsified.”

Actually, the more accurate way to put it is that the U.S. national-security establishment conducted a fraudulent autopsy. That fraud was reflected in both the autopsy photographs as well as the final autopsy report.

But like many other proponents of the official lone-nut theory of the assassination, Boot doesn’t address any of the main features of the autopsy fraud in his rant against Stone.

Let’s take two examples. (Others are detailed in my two books The Kennedy Autopsyand The Kennedy Autopsy 2.) 

For 30 years, the national-security establishment had falsely claimed that there was only one brain examination in the Kennedy autopsy. 

It was a lie. And when people are lying about something that important, you know that they are up to something that is rotten and no good.

In the 1990s, the Assassination Records Review Board determined that there were two different brain examinations in the JFK autopsy, the second of which involved a brain that did not belong to Kennedy.

How did they determine this? The official photographer for the autopsy, John Stringer, was at the first brain exam. He stated that at that brain exam, the brain was “sectioned” or cut like a loaf of bread is cut. That’s standard procedure with an autopsy that involves a gunshot to the head. Stringer took photographs of the brain, which also is standard procedure.

One of the three military pathologists who conducted the autopsy, Col. Pierre Finck, stated that he attended the brain examination. But he was not at the brain exam that Stringer attended. Stringer verified that. That means that there was a second brain exam. At that second brain exam, a different photographer was present taking photographs. The brain at the second brain exam was not “sectioned.”  A sectioned brain cannot be reconstituted into a non-sectioned brand. That’s how we know that the brain at the second brain exam had to be a brain of someone other than Kennedy.

It’s also worth mentioning two other things about the brain exam. First, when Stringer was asked to examine the official photographs of Kennedy’s brain, he specifically denied that those were the photographs he took. Second, the autopsy report reflects that Kennedy’s brain weighed 1500 grams. An average brain weighs around 1350 grams. Everyone agrees that an extremely large portion of Kennedy’s brain was blown out by the shot that hit him in the head. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, there is no possibility that Kennedy’s brain could have weighed 1500 grams after having a large portion of it blown away by the gunshot.

What does Boot say about the two brain exams? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Extreme Tyranny Today Has Been Caused by Mass Voluntary Compliance – LewRockwell LewRockwell.com

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2022

In this country, there are 330 million people, and a handful of evil want-to-be rulers. Let that sink into your clouded minds. Where lies the real power? We control our own destiny, so there is no excuse for any to allow this extreme tyranny. There is no excuse for failure. If this country and the world allow their own slavery, that is exactly what they deserve.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/01/gary-d-barnett/the-extreme-tyranny-today-has-been-caused-by-mass-voluntary-compliance/

By Gary D. Barnett

“A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it.”

“But O, good Lord! What strange phenomenon is this? What name shall we give it? What is the nature of this misfortune? What vice is it, or, rather, what degradation? To see an endless multitude of people not merely obeying, but driven to servility? Not ruled, but tyrannized over? These wretches have no wealth, no kin, nor wife nor children, not even life itself that they can call their own.”

Étienne de La Boétie, “The Politics of Obedience”

Who among you has no master? Who among you is not a slave? How can so many be ruled by so few? A huge preponderance of all societies cannot negate these questions, for there can be no certain answer or honesty from obedient and irresponsible fools. Ignorance is no excuse, cowardice is shameful, and indifference is immoral. Mankind has sunk to his lowest level, but compliant commoners fear not. The enslavement of billions at the hands of a few evil masters will allow the collective to wallow in self pity together; solidifying their happiness with their own servitude. For all of you who submit to orders, for all of you who have willingly given up your freedom, this is the bleak future you are building for yourselves and your children.

If you find these words harsh, so be it, for you are the cause of this madness; you are the cause of all this pain. Those with the ability to fight but unwilling to do so for their own freedom, are not worthy of empathy. The weakness of the human crowd has always been with us, but never at any level that is evident today. The human condition has deteriorated to such a miserable state as to be sickening. We are witnessing universal apathy at work. Watching millions, and even billions, bow to false authority in the face of extreme tyranny; tyranny that is levied only by the very few, is astounding. It is astounding not because it is unique or of value in any way, but because it is so horribly pathetic to watch.

The soul-less among us who have chosen to attempt total rule have succeeded at every turn, but they are not the real problem. They are however, now openly coming after all children, and plan to inject deadly poison into every child possible. This could never happen in any competent or moral society, but common love of family, self-defense, and morality have it seems, disappeared from view. What kind of parent would allow this to happen? Open toxic experimentation using children is now accepted policy by much of the population, and even with just minor threat or inconvenience, a high percentage could be injected with a bio-weapon with the blessing of those charged with protecting their own. By simply saying no, and standing by that decision, this atrocious plot to destroy children for life could be stopped. But will the sheep stop it? At this point, any mass uprising and refusal to allow this madness to continue seems far removed from the minds of this robotic and compliant proletariat.

As of late, there has been much talk and publicizing about pushback and resistance, but the tyranny has never slowed, and in fact is getting worse with every passing day. The monsters in charge are still laughing. If there were real resistance, resistance with teeth, how could this happen? Actually, it could not. The false hope evident is based on smoke and mirrors due to indifference, and is being promoted by the mainstream of course, but also by many ‘alternative’ sources who continually talk out of both sides of their mouths while claiming to be advocates of liberty. Any acceptance of the ‘Covid virus’ narrative, a complete lie to be sure, negates any argument being levied by claimed do-gooders calling themselves libertarians, alternative voices, or tellers of truth. Attempts at having it both ways are not only futile, but are helping the master-class in their efforts to fool the public, and therefore are very dangerous to the sought-after audience of those relying only on hope and the eternal seeking of the easy way instead of accepting reality. Intentionally reporting only ‘good news’ does not good news make, especially in times fraught with lies, deceit, criminal mandates, psychological torture, manslaughter, and murder by the state. In fact, that strategy does much more harm than good.

There simply is no ‘virus pandemic,’ there is no Covid-19, and there are no variants of same, because no such thing as SARS CoV-2 or Covid has ever been separated, isolated, identified, or shown to exist. Not one sample from any sick human claimed to have this mystery disease, has ever been properly qualified or quantified. In addition, no PCR test can identify or diagnose any particular ‘virus,’ especially one that has never been proven to exist, so how can this scam be believed based on this nonsense? This is nothing more than a purposeful conspiratorial propaganda campaign being used to corral the easily led masses into accepting their own slavery.

If this were the first time in history that such a fraudulent strategy had been used to fool the people into voluntary submission, one might give pause when placing blame on the so-called victims. But this method, a purposeful plan in fact, has been used throughout history to tyrannize the common man. All that has been necessary for the falsely claimed ‘leaders’ to obtain more power and control over societies, has been to dumb-down, indoctrinate, and make dependent the masses, so that the tactic of fear alone could be used as a weapon. This tactic has now reached such a pinnacle of success that it defies imagination. Nothing is even hidden at this stage; completely open and obvious to any thinking individual, but lost to the hordes of obedient drones referred to as the public.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »