pieslinger.net

The Swedish reviewers love Naomi Klein and her Shock Doctrine. So today, in a one-page advert in Metro (pdf, last page) Boris Benulic and I name seven of her reviewers and challenge them to a public debate about a book that we claim is a fraud.

One libertarian and one Marxist who believe that facts still matter on stage vs seven reviewers about the ideas, assumptions and evidence in a book that they praised. Preferrably at the Göteborg Book Fair in September, but they can choose the date, location and moderator, and Boris and I will arrange it all.

[Johan Norberg]

In a crushing defeat for Argentina?s beleaguered president, the Senate rejected increases in the agricultural export tax that have caused a farmer rebellion, with the vice president siding with farmers and casting the deciding vote.
(...)
"I do not believe that a law works that does not offer a solution to this conflict," said a weary Julio Cobos, the vice president, moments before voting against the measure. "History will judge me, I don?t know how."
(...)
The new tax system raised taxes on soybeans from a fixed rate of 35 percent to a rate that has floated up with global prices to more than 44 percent. Amid rising costs for materials like fertilizer, it reduced farm profits and provoked a series of crippling strikes throughout the country, shutting down highways for grain trucks bound for exports and causing scattered food shortages.

The rejection of a measure she fought so hard to defend was a severe political blow to Mrs. Kirchner, who took office in December after her husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, decided not to run for re-election. Facing plummeting approval ratings that have fallen as low as 20 percent support in some polls, Mrs. Kirchner took the calculated risk last month of sending the measure to Congress for debate. Supporters of Mrs. Kirchner?s Peronist bloc control both houses of Congress.

Mrs. Kirchner and her husband, who leads the Peronist bloc, have justified the higher taxes as important to redistribute the country?s wealth and hold down Argentine food prices. But they exacerbated tensions in the country by portraying the farmers? strikes as a political threat, calling the strikers "greedy" and "coup plotters."
[The New York Times]
[HT: Louis Cyphre]

Although the winding down of Argentina to the status of international deadbeat began a century ago, the latest chapter is instructive. In March, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner seized on rising soybean prices to slap "a windfall tax" on soy exports. Farmers refused to pay, the president wouldn't budge, and a deadlock ensued.

Much of the rest of the country joined sides with the growers. But the uprising is no longer a tax revolt. It has become a rebellion against unfettered executive reach ? or, in the view of the opposition, Mrs. Kirchner's authoritarianism. A week ago thousands of Argentines poured into the streets of cities around the country, banging pots and pans to express their dissatisfaction with their president's heavy-handed ways. It was the largest public outcry since the economic crisis in 2001.
(...)
This gets us to the root of the problem, which developed long before the Kirchners' abuses of market and legal principles. The constitution once held limited government and private property to be among the highest ideals of the land. But in the 1920s these protections, which had made the country a magnet for immigrants and the seventh-largest economy in the world, began to erode.
(...)
According to a paper recently released by researchers at the Buenos Aires business school Eseade, external debt as a percentage of GDP has now climbed to 56% compared to 54% in 2001. If you include the unpaid debt to bondholders, the number is 67%. More than a few analysts are worried that should the economy slow, the government may tap Central Bank reserves, sparking a run against the peso or, fearing that, choose default, for the second time in a decade, as its escape hatch.
[Mary Anastasia O'Grady, The Wall Street Journal]

International rice and wheat prices have doubled or tripled in the last two years, but world grain production will reach a record high this year. So how come millions are falling into poverty and starting food riots across the world? The answer lies not in any outsized surge in world demand or fall in world supply, but in the fact that several countries have imposed duties, quotas and outright bans on agricultural exports. This has reduced the amount of grain available for world trade.

To protect domestic consumers from rising world prices, dozens of governments have curbed the export of rice and wheat -- principally Argentina, Brazil, Russia, China, India, Ukraine, Vietnam, Cambodia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Indonesia.
[Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, The American Spectator]
(HT: Sine Metu)

I came up with the idea of a test of two tee shirts. They would be identical, except one would bear the image of President Bush, and the other would bear the image of Messiah Obama. I knew what would happen, but decided to put it to the test myself.

Over at Cafe Press and Zazzle, there are thousands of images of President Bush portrayed as a monkey, ape, chimp, Curious George and much worse. So I decided to add one more to the collection - actually,two more. One with President Bush as a monkey, and the other of Obama. Identical shirts as you can see by the illustration.



The Obama shirt was immediately banned by both CafePress and Zazzle.

If you follow my link, you will see that the Bush as a monkey shirt is up for sale with all of the other Bush as a monkey shirts. Cafe Press has no problem with it. They banned the Obama shirt and sent me two nasty letters.

[Evil Smiley, People's Blog - The People's Cube]

In their 1975 book The Age of Napoleon, Will and Ariel Durant argue that the Reign of Terror during the French revolution was sparked, in part, by price controls.

The economy itself was a battlefield. The price controls established on May 4 and September 29 [1793] were being defeated by the ingenuity of greed. The urban poor approved the maxima; the peasants and the merchants opposed them, and increasingly refused to grow or distribute the price-limited foods; the city stores, receiving less and less produce from market or field, could satisfy only the foremost few in the queues that daily formed at their doors. Fear of famine ran through Paris and the towns....

On August 30 a deputy pronounced the magic word: Let Terror be the order of the day. On September 5 a crowd from the sections, calling for "war on tyrants, hoarders, and aristocrats," marched on the headquarters of the Commune in the Hotel de Ville. The mayor, Jean-Guillaume Pache, and the city procurator, Pierre Chaumette, went with their delegation to the Convention and voiced their demand for a revolutionary army to tour France with a portable guillotine, arrest every Girondin, and compel every peasant to surrender his hoarded produce or be executed on the spot [pp. 62-63].

[Don Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek]

Dear Humble Peasants.

Has anybody noticed the great offensive art the left has been turing out

1: Cross in Piss
2: Virgin Mary in Elephant shit
3: Walk on the stars and stripes

etc

I've been thinking of what kind of art would offend liberals.

Please elaborate.



1: A picture of a paycheck with zero deductions.
2: A polar bear submerged in urine
3: The gay rainbow flag drapped on the ground and walked on.
4: A painting of Che made from camel shit.

[The People's Cube]
And my vote goes for #4.

Violence broke out in Buenos Aires last week when demonstrators protesting food shortages and inflation were set upon by stick-wielding supporters of President Cristina Kirchner. The attackers were led by a sworn enemy of the private sector who was once an official in former President Nestor Kirchner's government.
"The only thing that motivates me," Luis D'elía said, after his assault on a protestor was caught on camera and his actions were justified by Mrs. Kirchner's chief of cabinet, "is hatred against the whorish oligarchs." He then announced that he and his men would patrol the city streets to defend their view that the country's producers are immoral. National police, who answer to the president, did nothing to quell the violence.
(...) the Kirchners have won the support of that segment of the Argentine economy loyal to the principles of 20th-century fascist Juan Peron. These include labor militants, government bureaucrats, the Peronist political machine and the likes of Mr. D'elía, whose thugs act as Mrs. Kirchner's informal enforcers. But by generating inflation and provoking shortages Kirchneromics is also fueling widespread discontent.
The recent trouble began not in Buenos Aires but in the provinces, where agriculture is the main economic activity. Farmers rebelled earlier this month when the government announced an increase in export taxes on agricultural products. Claims that the government's new "retention" rates -aka export taxes- are close to an expropriation are not without merit.
(...) Mrs. Kirchner says the tax increase is a redistribution mechanism, suggesting that growers and ranchers have to be forced to share more of their good fortune with others. But the greater motivation behind the export-tax increase is inflation.
This government, it seems, will do just about anything to reduce inflation except the one thing that would solve the problem: Let the peso strengthen. It has imposed price controls on businesses; frozen, and then subsidized, energy prices; and prohibited the export of beef.
(...) But never mind. Kirchner power does not lie in a rational economic model. The first couple's idea of running an economy is to tax, prohibit, regulate, subsidize and otherwise micromanage every aspect of Argentine life so that no decision can be made without checking first with them. They are, at bottom, unreconstructed authoritarians.
If you doubt this, consider the fact that Mr. Kirchner spent the past five years dismantling institutional checks and balances so that when this moment came, all the power would be in the presidential palace. He and his wife now control the judiciary, the legislature, the central bank, the national police and discretionary spending in the provinces. The only avenue left open to express dissent is civil disobedience.
As we saw last week, that path may be closing down too since the Kirchners now have their own military on the streets of Buenos Aires, led by Mr. D'Elía. The anger and envy behind the rage of this mob is what kirchnerismo has sown since 2002. Those who dare to differ are likely to be met with more savagery.
[Mary Anastasia O'Grady, The Wall Street Journal]

Yesterday evening, paratroops of 'camicie nere' were sent by Cristina Kirchner's fascist government to dissolve a spontaneous manifestation against their sustained policies of ransacking and corruption, right after she pronounced an inflamed speech inspired by the writings of Horacio Verbitsky, a well-known criminal that played a decisive role during the marxist guerrilla wars in the '70s.

After a prolific and esteemed career,
Sir Arthur has passed away in Sri Lanka.
[The Arthur C. Clarke foundation]

Advocates of educational liberty are reeling at a California court decision last week that essentially outlaws homeschooling in that state.

A February 28 ruling by the California Appellate Court for the second district argued that "parents do not have a constitutional right to educate their children in their own home."
(...)
This Draconian ruling "would drastically reduce or do away with homeschooling" in California, according to J. Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association.

The decision has outraged parents and others, who have vowed to fight it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called the ruling "outrageous" and pledged legislation to reverse it if the state's supreme court fails to do so.

However, statist Educrats give it an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
(...)
The irony is, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal notes: "Research conducted by the National Home Education Research Institute in 2001 shows homeschooled students, on average, outperformed their public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects, and that performance gaps impacting minorities and genders are virtually eliminated among the homeschoolers."

But of course opposition to homeschooling isn't about education. Never has been. It's about indoctrination.
[James W. Harris, Advocates for Self-Government]

After watching the Obama-Clinton debate in Cleveland on Tuesday, I came away convinced that both candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination want to run this country like Argentina.

In that country, Juan Peron-inspired labor syndicates and their bosses dominate the economy and work hand-in-glove with the state. Together they have ensured Argentina's isolation from international commerce and investment, and a slow but steady decline in living standards.
[Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal]

The heartbreaking consequences of Cuba's currency apartheid were bought home to my wife and I on a Saturday afternoon visit to Havana's Coppelia "Ice Cream" park. To the right of the park gates was a long queue of Cubans who had only Cuban pesos. They have to wait on average two hours every weekend to get their weekly scoop of ice cream. On the left, there was walk-in access to tourists and the lucky locals who had convertible pesos. Fifty years on, the Cuban revolution has turned full circle in a truly Orwellian fashion. Once again the locals find themselves excluded from the best beaches in their country, as they were under Batista. And prostitution, so rife in pre-revolutionary days, is back - the jineteras being the only group of Cubans allowed to enter the new purpose-built resorts.
[Neil Clark, The Spectator]

The right to life, e.g., does not mean that your neighbors have to feed and clothe you; it means you have the right to earn your food and clothes yourself, if necessary by a hard struggle, and that no one can forcibly stop your struggle for these things or steal them from you if and when you have achieved them. In other words: you have the right to act, and to keep the results of your actions, the products you make, to keep them or to trade them with others, if you wish. But you have no right to the actions or products of others, except on terms to which they voluntarily agree.

To take one more example: the right to the pursuit of happiness is precisely that: the right to the pursuit -to a certain type of action on your part and its result- not to any guarantee that other people will make you happy or even try to do so. Otherwise, there would be no liberty in the country: if your mere desire for something, anything, imposes a duty on other people to satisfy you, then they have no choice in their lives, no say in what they do, they have no liberty, they cannot pursue their happiness. Your "right" to happiness at their expense means that they become rightless serfs, i.e., your slaves. Your right to anything at others' expense means that they become rightless.
[The Ayn Rand Institute]

ON ELECTION DAY five years ago, 885,683 Massachusetts citizens voted for a ballot measure to abolish the Massachusetts income tax - a 45 percent level of support that shocked the state's political establishment, which had expected the question to go down to ignominious defeat, not come within a few percentage points of passing. So when Libertarian leader Carla Howell launched a new effort to junk the income tax earlier this year, the powers that be made it clear that this time they would do everything they could to discredit it.

In August, Howell's Committee for Small Government filed its updated ballot language, and Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation wasted no time pouring scorn on it. (Its name notwithstanding, the Taxpayers Foundation is a business lobby that often opposes broad-based tax relief.) [Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe]

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 79, an avant-garde German composer who influenced a generation of musicians with pioneering electronic music and whose reputation was damaged by provocative statements about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, died Dec. 5. Members of his family announced his death in Germany, but the cause was not reported.

In the 1950s, when he combined electronic sounds with the human voice and musical instruments, Mr. Stockhausen defined a new form of music. His influence was felt in classical music, jazz and pop, among musicians as diverse as Pierre Boulez, Miles Davis, the Grateful Dead and Bjork.
(...)
His music was often dauntingly difficult and sometimes featured as many as four orchestras playing simultaneously. He interspersed electrical tones with hand claps, grunts, whispers and shouts until, in his words, "the distinction between sound and music disappears."

One of his most ambitious works, a seven-part opera called "Licht" ("Light"), took him almost 30 years to write. When he completed it in 2005, it was 29 hours long. His 1995 "Helicopter Quartet" was performed by musicians in four helicopters hovering over an outdoor audience. [The Washington Post]

Shafarevich has singled out the invariants of socialism, its fundamental and unchanging elements, which depend neither on time nor place, and which, alas, are looming ominously over today's tottering world. If one considers human history in its entirety, socialism can boast of a greater longevity and durability, of wider diffusion and of control over larger masses of people, than can contemporary Western civilization. It is therefore difficult to shake off gloomy presentiments when contemplating that maw into which--before the century is out--we may all plunge: that "Asiatic formation" which Marx hastened to circumvent in his classification, and before which contemporary Marxist thought stands baffled, having discerned its own hideous countenance in the mirror of the millennia. It could probably be said that the majority of states in the history of mankind have been "socialist." But it is also true that these were in no sense periods or places of human happiness or creativity.

[Alexsandr Solzhenytsin, preface to the book "The Socialist Phenomenon" by Igor Shafarevich]

I have donated money, books, and blood for people I have never seen and to whom I owe nothing. Nor is that unusual among Americans, who do more of this than anyone else.

But we are not 'giving back' anything to those people because we never took anything from them in the first place.

If we are giving back to society at large, in exchange for all that society has made possible for us, then that is a very different ballgame.

Giving back in that sense means acknowledging an obligation to those who went before us and for the institutions and values that enable us to prosper today. But there is very little of this spirit of gratitude and loyalty in many of those who urge us to 'give back'. [Thomas Sowell, National Review (via: Cafe Hayek)]

When Argentine customs officials caught a Venezuelan businessman trying to smuggle almost $800,000 in cash into the country last month, they parted him from his loot but allowed him to leave the country. He flew to Uruguay and then to Florida where, as someone who also holds an American passport, he has a home.

The mystery of where the money came from and where it was going has not been solved. But thanks to investigative reporting by the Argentine daily La Nación, we now know that there was good reason for Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson to think he could just walk off that plane with a bag of money. As it turns out, the Argentine government of President Nestór Kirchner has a policy of allowing Venezuelans tied to the government in Caracas to come and go freely at Buenos Aires' Aeroparque airport, with no scrutiny of their baggage whatsoever.

This revelation has raised serious questions about Argentine sovereignty and about the relationship Mr. Kirchner has established with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. More to the point, Argentines now want to know whether unchecked Venezuelan traffic through the country is what's behind the acceleration of Mr. Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution in Argentina, as it was in Bolivia. They also want to know if the money was destined for the political campaign of Mr. Kirchner's wife, Cristina Fernández Kirchner, who is the Peronist candidate in next month's presidential elections. [Mary Anastasia o'Grady, Wall Street Journal]

" (...) The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America.

Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American."

While Code Pink activists condemn President Bush for his "fear-based politics that justify violence," they applaud brutal dictators like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Three of their top leaders, Cindy Sheehan, Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, took a trip to Venezuela last year to meet and socialize with Dictator Chavez. He endorsed their efforts to subvert American authority and denounce the President of the United States as imperialistic. Jodie Evans reported after the meeting, "He called Cindy (Sheehan) 'Mrs. Hope.'"

Miss Evans' approval of Mr. Chavez was gushing: "He was a doll. Generous, open, passionate, excited, stimulated by the requests and happy to be planning with us. He was realistic but willing to stretch." Miss Benjamin touted Chavez' policies and stated that "George Bush -- and John Kerry for that matter -- could learn a thing or two from Hugo Chavez about winning the hearts and minds of the people." She failed to mention on her blog that these policies include the slaughter of landowners and farmers, government seizure of private companies, a fraudulent election and the forced redistribution of wealth. Apparently, killing innocents in the name of communism is acceptable to some anti-war activists.

Miss Benjamin continues to support communism, even after she has experienced its pitfalls firsthand. She was deported from Cuba for writing an article for a communist newspaper that ran contrary to the government's policies. Despite this set-back, she claims that Cuban life "made it seem like I died and went to heaven." Although Cuba banned Miss Benjamin's nonsense, the United States of America will continue to uphold her freedom of speech, and the U.S. military will continue to fight for the right of every American to be wrong (and right.) [Sarah Rode: "Code Pink: The Castro and Chavez Fan Club" (via HACER)]

Suddenly, the economic outlook has turned a bit stormy for Argentina?s president, Néstor Kirchner. Rationing of gas and electricity has become routine. Investors have lost confidence in the officially-massaged inflation numbers and credit markets are queasy. While yields on Brazil?s bonds rose by only 53 basis points in the month to August 6th, those of Argentine bonds rose by 166 points?just when the government must roll over $3 billion in maturing debt.

But Mr Kirchner seems to reckon he has a saviour in his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chávez, a man whose government has both energy and money. Visiting Buenos Aires this week, on yet another South American tour, Mr Chávez offered to buy $500m in Argentine bonds (and another $500m later). ?He?s always been there when we?ve needed him,? said Alberto Fernández, Mr Kirchner?s chief of staff. In return, Argentina has given diplomatic support to Mr Chávez. [The Economist, via Korrupcion.com]

...most troubling of all, according to the UN report in 2005, is that "the largest public health problem created by the accident" is the "damaging psychological impact [due] to a lack of accurate information?[manifesting] as negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance from the state."

In other words, the greatest damage to the people of Chernobyl was caused by bad information. These people weren?t blighted by radiation so much as by terrifying but false information. We ought to ponder, for a minute, exactly what that implies. We demand strict controls on radiation because it is such a health hazard. But Chernobyl suggests that false information can be a health hazard as damaging as radiation. I am not saying radiation is not a threat. I am not saying Chernobyl was not a genuinely serious event.

But thousands of Ukrainians who didn?t die were made invalids out of fear. They were told to be afraid. They were told they were going to die when they weren?t. They were told their children would be deformed when they weren?t. They were told they couldn?t have children when they could. They were authoritatively promised a future of cancer, deformities, pain and decay. It?s no wonder they responded as they did.

In fact, we need to recognize that this kind of human response is well-documented. Authoritatively telling people they are going to die can in itself be fatal.

[Michael Crichton: Complexity Theory and Environmental Management]

The government's populist energy policies are beginning to cause chaos

Last year, as the southern hemisphere's winter stretched Argentina's vulnerable energy infrastructure to near breaking-point, the internal commerce minister sought to assure the public that the fuel shortages would be only temporary. ?It will rain diesel,? he vowed. Now, as the country faces its worst energy shortage in nearly 20 years, even a sprinkle of diesel would be a relief.

The end of May brought an unseasonably early cold snap, leading homes to turn up their heaters. This, coupled with the failure of a power plant, caused the collapse of both the power grid and the fuel supply system. In Buenos Aires, two of the wealthiest districts were plunged into darkness. Across Argentina, electricity supplies to industrial users were severely curtailed, causing temporary workers to be laid off. Service stations ran out of the compressed natural gas that powers many Argentine cars, including 90% of the capital's taxis. At least this meant fewer jams, the official news agency noted brightly.
[The Economist]

Mine Your Own Business, a film produced by New Bera Media in association with the Moving Picture Institute, looks at the dark side of environmentalism. It talks to some of the world's poorest people about how western environmentalists are campaigning to keep them in poverty because they think their way of life is quaint. It is the first documentary to ask hard questions of the environmental movement.