July 05, 2004 Page Two

The following comments are obviously insightful, informed, and interesting, and therefore NOT necessarily reflecting the views of anyone else at all, much less NPR, PRI, or ... opps, wrong shortcut key ---- Anyway, no one will have to claim any of these but the guy writing them. Feedback appreciated, by the way! Really! To get FND, go to: http://free-market.net/news/

1- Ashcroft beats terror warning drum again
The North Dakota farmer was showing his visitor from Texas his farmstead, and behind the barn was this tremendous machine with antennae, wires and pulleys, propellers, and various types of noisemakers. Eyes wide, the visitor asks his host, "What on earth is this?" "Oh," the farmer says proudly, "this is my anti-elephant protective device." "Anti-elephant?" his friend exclaims, "There aren't any elephants in North Dakota!" "See how well it works?"

2- Coca Cola's nosy can prompts security concerns
This reminds me of an incident in Germany, back in the mid-80s, when the US Army hired contractors to provide labor for setting up exercises. (This was pre-Soviet collapse, and when the German economy was booming and people were hard to get.) The contractor's employees had to come into the exercise control center to give information and be "vetted" for any potential security problems. One day, three workers showed up and reported to the NCO at the door to the control center to be processed - they were guest workers (gastarbeiter) as was common - usually Turks, Greeks, or Italians living and working in Germany. Things progressed well until it came to "home address," which the first worker stated was some town in Poland. The NCO wrote it down, and then his eyes bugged out. "Poland? Poland! Are you a Communist?" All three of the men straightened up proudly, and the first said in his broken Polish-accented German-English, "Ja, we sind all GOOD Communists!" Pandemonium! Officers and NCOs threw themselves over the mapboards and status charts, knocking them to the floor to hide them from the suddenly-identified spies. The three men were hustled out in confusion: they were just here to get jobs as "KP" - kitchen help, and didn't know what they had done. MPs raced up, and it was all finally sorted out, with no harm done, and a lesson learned. Too bad no one seems to recall that now.

3- Mixed verdict on just-completed Supreme Court session
Frankly, this session was (as most have been in recent years) an absolute disaster for freedom. If anyone ever believed that it was safe to have one part of the fedgov to act as custodians to protect against the other branches, this session should have convinced them otherwise. For libertarians, including gun-rights and other activists, this should convince us that finally getting the Court to hear a second-amendment (or any other critical case) will likely be a complete disaster.

4- U.S. military commander in Iraq steps down
Fourteen months is a longer time than usual for general officer rotations, but people who do not know the military (most of the press) will continue to see this as a "firing" for what went wrong. Of course, given a situation he should never have been put into (along with his troops), an objective observer would conclude he did pretty well.

5- Muslims' fishing a "suspicious activity" in U.S.
It is just this kind of panicked reaction that can turn life into horror for innocent people.

6- Are inland Border Patrol arrests part of the plan or not?
Buro-rat confusion is not new, but the "confusion" seems to be intentional here - DHS and its folks seem to want to keep everyone uncertain. We pay more attention to these things now, but Border Patrol/INS arrests have been taking place for decades in places like Nebraska and Wyoming, with no international border and no major international airport. Freedom of travel has been gradually disappearing for a long time.

7- Delta Airlines starts RFID tagging of luggage
The problem here is NOT the technology. As the victim of a fair amount of luggage lost and never found in airlines across the US over the years, I'd have welcomed something like RFID several years ago (when I was still flying). The problem is the ready surrender of companies like Delta (and all the airlines, from what I hear) to government demands - especially when it adds to the airline's immediate bottom line. There is no reason why RFID chips couldn't be used in a system to reduce lost luggage (impossible to eliminate) without giving away private information.

8- Americans in favor of higher taxes to ease traffic woes?
Believe this poll as much as you believe presidential campaign polls. Questions are so easily worded to give the desired answer that all this does is fit the perceptions of whoever wrote or paid for the survey. And chalk it up to cynicism - taxes are here, and life is miserable, especially traffic. It is the waste of billions of tax dollars in the first place that has created much of the traffic woes, and wasting billions more won't help.

9- More young people want to become bureaucrats?!
Obviously, GovExec is preaching to the choir here since its market IS government executives. So as Sunni implies, this is a worthless "study" done under conditions that are, frankly, going to skew it just this way. (See above article.)

10- Homeland Security targets special groups for snooping help
DHS is interested in more than just snooping help, and their attempts to enlist groups such as these in "homeland security" issues will make the people labeled in these groups more aware of the dangers of government control, while providing them the tools they need to better protect themselves and their communities and their freedom - i.e., it will backfire in the long run, like many other DHS initiatives.

11- Former congresscritter takes top MPAA spot
More than most revolving door lobbying hires, Glickman surely sees this not only as a meal-ticket, but as a way to push the nanny-government position he's been doing his entire political career. The anti-piracy push is not about profits, but about control.

12- Ohio county's "justice" system continues to tweak the Hunter
This again points out the absurdity of our present judicial system, which does so much harm to the accused long, long before there is an actual trial. There are a lot of people out there trying to reform or replace the system - it is too bad that there isn't more cooperation between them.

13- New York busybodies spout same ol' sports welfare nonsense
But the welfare can proceed now that "due diligence" has been done and the buro-rats and pollutitians can point to the study and say, "see, we did our job."

14- Utah teens charged in consensual sex-play videotaping
Other than saying this entire thing is ridiculous, I don't know what to say.

(Editor's note: Again, government has no business being involved in this kind of thing at all. The parents of these children are the only ones with anything legitimate to say about it. Unfortunately, it appears they abdicated their responsibility a long time ago. This kind of thing used to be considered shameful, not criminal. MamaLiberty)

15- Montana county bureaucrats help themselves to more tax dollars
There are many solutions to this problem, almost all in use in various places. Is there anyone in L&C willing to take up the battle, or is everyone willing to just let the taxes get bigger and bigger?

16- Arizona checkpoint refusenik arrested
Hopefully, there will be more information available on this soon, but this sounds like a guy who has just had enough, and wasn't going to take it anymore.

17- Toledo police carry out dangerous raid on smokers at bar
Presumably, next time the entrances and exits will be blocked so that all the miscreants can be properly rounded up. But with OH going to concealed carry, maybe the police might decide NOT to harass peaceful people, lest a Gerado Lemas (last article) be around.

(Editor's note: The last sentence of the article is very telling. The proprietor said something to the effect that it was "like a drug raid". I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it WAS a "drug raid". Tobacco is now a "controlled substance" and is fast joining marijuana and other "weeds" in the ever tightening drag net of government control over our lives. There are now shoot-outs, and criminal "turfs" for black market cigarettes, just like anything else that is forbidden by government. It's not about health or anything else. It's about power - political power over the citizens. It's unbelievable that we put up with it at all. MamaLiberty)

18- New England rabbit to get protection?
As silly as this is, I think it is poetic justice that New England should have to go through the same goat-rope that the Great Plains is going through for prairie dogs and the Colorado-Wyoming Front Range have gone through for a decade on Preeble's Jumping Mouse.

Editor's note: HMM, now, let's see. How do they plan to get all of the predator animals to stop eating these delicious little morsels? I don't think very many people are still eating them, so the only way to "protect" them is to make the fox and coyote and so forth find something else for lunch. Fat chance... Oh, I almost forgot, it isn't really about "protection" for the bunnies, it's about taking private property from people and giving it to government or "environmental organizations", isn't it. MamaLiberty)

19- Houston moms stage peaceful "nurse-in" protest
An imaginative and effective protest, showing that private action can often accomplish what law and legal action can't.

20- Idahoans get statewide smoking nannying
No doubt, this has gone on for far too long. "Members only?" anyone?

21- Florida judge orders opening of voter list
It is this kind of information that should be available without having to go to court. But this is also something that should be done at the local level. Once, while in Europe, my home precinct was cleaning up its voter rolls (in Colorado) - I'm sure I got singled out because of my (L) registration, but they tried to drop me. Because it was local, I was called within hours by friends, and was able to make sure I wasn't purged. This can't happen at the state level, or even the county level. It needs to be really, really local.

22- Kenyan police ban Nairobi rallies
Self-fulfilling prophecies, of course, always work to the interest of the thugs who all too often are the police force (or their masters).

23- Turkish car bomb attack kills 3, misses apparent target
Terrorism, including assassination, has been a way of life in Turkey since Byzantine times, and almost never is as it appears. Was it really an attack on the governor, or a way for the governor to enhance his resume? Means very little to the innocent people killed by the bomb.

24- Chinese gov gets real-time text-message snooping ability
Probably pirated from western firms already providing this software to western intelligence and police agencies, who unlike the Red Chinese, try to hide their snooping skills at least a little bit.

25- Russian gov "arrests" Yukos bank accounts
The end result of this may very well be further government prosecution of Yukos because the company is failing to meet requirements of its various contracts - and obviously willfully, since if they hadn't done all the bad things to begin with, they'd not have "forced" the government to take such drastic action.

26- Kiwi gov to ask for controversial welfare money returns?
"For the love of money..." Will anyone point out in parliament that if they hadn't created the welfare program in the first place, the scam artists wouldn't have had their world tour?

27- Hong Kong protesters make clear their thirst for freedom
For centuries, China has seen invaders defeated by the seemingly indomitable will of her people, and their patience and ability to thrive under horrific conditions. Now, China has made the mistake of bringing back into the fold a populous city that for most of a century has lived in relative freedom and with a free-market economy, thinking they could purge the "evils" out and still reap the benefits. Now, instead, they appear only to be adding more infection to their country. Are they really sure that they want to regain Taiwan?

Nathan A. Barton is an environmental engineer, currently in South Dakota.