Libertarian Rants

Never have I felt so proud to be an American!

The empty rhetoric of the right, and the completely misguided path the Republicans have taken us didn’t pan out tonight. This election is an utter rejection of the policies that have gotten us into the economic hell we find ourselves in. No poorly developed policy stands out more than the current Iraq war, a war that has been carried out with the utmost incompetence by the Bush administration. The Iraq war was the single greatest mistake of international foreign policy undertaken by any US president, it has soiled our reputation as a nation worldwide and it has accelerated the downward spiral our economy is in. This war will and, in fact, should always be remembered as a stupid mistake and nothing more. Failure to remember this war as such, for the sake of hubris or any other reason, will doom us to repeat this mistake in an even larger scale.

The Republicans utter failure to protect the American people from the current crisis, and their vile attempts at establishing a theocracy in America have left a bad taste in the mouths of Americans everywhere. No word describes the Bush administration better than ‘incompetence,’ the American people trusted the administration with our taxpayers’ dollars and Bush squandered it in a wasteful and ridiculous war that served only to hurt our national security interests.

Thank you, Mr. Obama!

Congratulations, America!

DC City Council has gone completely mad, and the mayor has put his seal of approval on it! The DC City Council has voted to give 12 million dollars of taxpayer money to a cult called CUM! This clearly violates the principle of the Separation of Church and State which is one of the founding pillars of the Republic. You take that pillar away, the country crumbles. This cult says it’s going to help the homeless, but in fact what it’s going to do, is brainwash the homeless into believing in the cults’ dogma. I wouldn’t be surprised if the mayor isn’t just attempting to create an army of new voters to guarantee his re-election. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit against the city and I think that they will win.I just moved to DC once again, and now I’m paying a huge amount of taxes, and my taxes are being squandered by a corrupt City Council and Mayor’s office.
What a sham! What a shame!
And right here in our nation’s capital! Say no to theocracy and give the taxpayers’ money back!

I ask all DC residents to pressure Mayor Fenty and the DC City Council to return our money!
I ask all my readers to support Americans United, there’s a link below, please help them win the fight for us.

I would just like to call your attention to my most recent link:
http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/

Students for a Free Tibet are always creatively trying to come up with non-violent ways to help Tibet free itself from the shackles of Chinese domination and brutality. The recent events on the ground have prompted me to add their blog. Censorship by the Chinese government keeps the rest of the world from really knowing what is going in Tibet, but the atrocities are becoming too obvious to ignore. China is much like Apartheid-era South Africa, with a layer of Han Chinese at the top and oppressed ethnic minorities underneath. To humanity’s credit we have succeeded in ending Apartheid in South Africa, unfortunately, we have failed in stopping it in China.

Nope, it’s not the name of the latest installment of a South American chapter of Star Wars… In a week of multiple victories for the Uribe administration, Colombia is now entering a new era of peace. Two FARC big fish dead in one week coupled with the arrest of a Russian arms supplier notorious for selling weapons to the FARC,  have culminated into a sweep of blows to the narco-terrorist organization.

Mr. Uribe ordered a raid into Ecuador which created a row with both Ecuador’s Correa and Venezuela’s Chavez almost leading to war. In the end, Colombia’s neighbors backed down after being faced with embarrassing proof of their involvement with the FARC. For some strange reason, Mr. Correa was far angrier that Colombian soldiers did what his army refuses to do, than with the presence of FARC in his nation’s territory. Mr. Uribe was accused of undermining South American unity, when in fact, any blow against the FARC is a strike against the narco-terrorist domination that plagues all of South America.

Ultimately, Colombia’s war is being won, with competence and a little help from the US. Colombia’s military today enjoys the best tactical training in the region. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for this hardy nation that has been under the boot of these terrorists for so long, foreign investment has again started to pour in, and crime is at an all-time low. The fact that leaders like Chavez and Correa harbor these killers in their own territory shows how far these megalomaniacs will go to stay in power.

Faced with ultimate and timely defeat, it took only a matter of days for Chavez and Correa to back down from a possible military escalation. Chavez may have more oil and petro-dollars to throw around, but he lacks Colombia’s well-trained and well-equipped military, and furthermore, he lacks any vision whatsoever.

Congratulations to the people of Kosovo for declaring their independence!

I’m not really sure why they decided to hold on to their three northern-most provinces which are basically home to a Serb majority. I guess they could use it as a bargaining chip in order to gain recognition from Serbia, Russia, and all the other fringe regimes that decided not to recognize Kosovar independence. I hope the EU moves quickly to recognize Kosovar independence, and to also absorb Kosovo into its ranks. I think Kosovo would also prove to be a valuable member of NATO.

If Russia moves to block Kosovo’s entry into the UN, I propose the Security Council should strip Russia of it’s permanent seat and veto power. Russia’s constant bullying of European nations like the Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia should have been grounds for its veto to have been stripped many years ago.

I hope the new Kosovar flag is well designed and I wish them well in their journey. May statehood bring them fortune, freedom from genocide, and many centuries of peace and prosperity.

Congratulations to all those brave Venezuelans that didn’t allow themselves to be intimidated by Chavez’s gun yielding goons. Good job on voting down the referendum, you have done your country and all of Western civilization a great service. Meanwhile, half a world away, Gary Kasparov leaves jail to find himself un-elected. Putin, who left behind a trail of dead journalists, is still in power. It would seem that free markets and democracy are the clearest and quickest path to wealth, then why exactly are so many, so blind to it? My opinion is that they are not blind, they are willing to ignore the facts in order to line their pockets. Those in power sell a ridiculous populist program to their people and then take advantage of their ignorance by further exploiting them. Venezuela has issued a big ‘no’ to this breed of populism, and it’s about time. I wonder when Russia will take the opportunity to turn the page on authoritarianism. 

I’m tired of seeing these movies that attempt to justify and/or glorify crime. Earlier this year a kid was dragged from the back of a car by car-jackers to his death in Rio. Poverty exists all over the world, and in most places in far worse forms then in Rio. My dad’s family drew water from a well and slept 7 to a bed, but not one of them became crooks. It’s downright irresponsible to blame crime on poverty, but it’s obvious that crime continues to keep poverty levels high. Favelas have running water, sewage, schools, electricity, clinics, all amenities that you won’t find in slums in Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of Latin America, yet crime is higher in the favelas of Rio than anywhere else.

It’s time to ask the questions that people are afraid to ask when it comes to crime, and no serious film-maker wants to do that, it doesn’t sell. The mayor of Rio recently quoted study in a book called ‘Freakonomics’ which showed that legalized abortion is the single most effective way to reduce crime. After this book was published, studies were done in India and Finland that showed the same results. There was a huge outcry against him, but there was also a lot of support. As long as religion dictates political Brazilian culture, there’s going to be crime. One of our biggest downfalls as a culture and our society is that we treat the criminal like a victim, and ignore the victim. This comes from the Catholic/socialist trend in thought so prevalent and destructive in our society.

It’s disgusting that these movies “expose” police violence but refuse to show that these criminals specifically target the families of police officers, often killing them or killing and kidnapping their children and spouses. Our problem is cultural, its endemic, but to make it seem like it’s environmental is intellectually dishonest and absurd.

Lula goes to the Congo, calls it democratic and say it’s giving lessons in democracy. Odd for a country that hasn’t had a democratic election since 1992. Maybe this is the kind of democracy Lula wants to spread, one candidate, one result, lather, rinse, repeat. 

Latin Americans (a term I dislike since it usually implies Brazilians who are Portuguese speakers but not the Quebecois who speak French) are in the heat of discussion this week whether Che was a villain or a hero. Once Fidel falls, and those people who had family members executed by Che and his crew go back to Cuba, and erase his face from every town and city there, Che will pass on as an icon to do exactly what he does best: sell t-shirts. Che executed people in cold blood and gave orders to execute at least 180 people by firing squad. Why is there any question whether he is a hero or villain? He is a murderer just like Pinochet, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Franco, etc. Does it really matter what “ideology” you are representing when you pull the trigger? These were defenseless, unarmed civilians! Latin America (ugh!) needs a dose of intellectual and moral honesty, we can start by burying Che in the past of failed ideals and cold-blooded murderers where he belongs. 

I doubt you will find anyone that can argue that Baptista’s dictatorship was better than Fidel’s, but to replace a dictatorship with another is not a revolution, its just mediocre. Unfortunately, mediocrity is running lose in the minds and mouths of the young today, years after the atrocities committed in the name of communism in Asia, Europe, Africa, Cuba, etc. Socially the revolution did bring health and education to the poor. Economically, however, the revolution was a disaster, Cuba went from being the third largest economy in Latin America to being the second poorest, it created vast amounts of poverty. History books across the continent are filled with praise for communism and a generation of ignorant, ill-informed children are being spoon-fed this red nonsense. Why not break the cycle of violence and misery and leave communism behind?