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Any people who can’t handle jokes has more serious issues.

Article 301 is a controversial article of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish ethnicity, or Turkish government institutions. It took effect on June 1, 2005, and was introduced as part of a package of penal-law reform in the process preceding the opening of negotiations for Turkish membership of the European Union (EU), in order to bring Turkey up to the Union standards.

Source: Insulting Turkishness

On Thursday we should take the opportunity to remind our governments and ourselves where their power comes from. It was given to them by their citizens, the common people, by us. They should never forget that the only ones they are truly accountable to is their people. It’s not lobbyist groups, other governments and its most certainly no god.

They try to get our support by convincing us that being part of a single subgroup, tribe or country is more important than being part of humanity. This feeling of shared identity is usually created by using all kinds of semi-religious ceremonies. Just think of the national holiday or sports events. The laziest couch potatoes will tell you that “we” won the soccer championship and that “we” produce the best cars. When was the last time this guy played soccer or assembled a car? They call it patriotism. I call it indoctrination.

I don’t believe in “my” government anymore, once it starts to treat me like a small child or a criminal suspect. They try to tell you what’s best for you, what you can do with your body and what morals you are allowed to have. Yes, I’m referring to things like abortion laws, smoking bans, drug laws, same sex marriages, censorship on state television or the internet and – only recently acquired – communications surveillance laws.

As a government is moving further away from what its people want, it feels the resistance. In recent years this resistance got stronger. They are afraid of us. They better should be. The natural response is to use every opportunity (NYC, London, Madrid) to take away civil liberties, we might use against them. Remember that we got these rights for a reason. They were introduced after devastating wars and revolutions. The United States Bill of Rights was introduced after the American Revolution, the European Convention on Human Rights after World War II. Millions had to give their life for a few who led them into disaster.

Today we see these liberties being undermined or suspended in the name of the greater good, sometimes described as public security and anti-terrorism. I’m not saying that the situation is hopeless. I just want you to be vigilant and watchful. Keep reminding yourself AND them that revolution is a part of our heritage and culture. Make Wednesday a special day! Throw a party! Discuss these issues with your friends. Let everyone know that you are proud to be part of this tradition and everything it stands for!

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

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Credit for the great picture goes to donnaidh_sidhe.

This is an excerpt from Taking Liberties, a movie about the decay of civil liberties in Great Britain. I invite you to watch it and draw your own conclusions.

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Here is another video by Stefan Molynuex.

I spent the afternoon watching videos by Stefan Molyneux. A former software entrepreneur from Canada. He has a massive number of videos on economics, anarchy and liberty.

One of my favorites is his comparison of an irrational belief in a government and an irrational belief in a superstitious higher being. Here is an extract from one of his videos: A definition of anarchy.

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This has been on my mind for a long time. The current financial crisis makes it even more urgent. Once again we have seen that big government is not – and probably will never be mature enough to handle the money supply and therewith our most important medium of exchange.

This ability to tinker with our money at will (think Iraq war or bail outs for banks) gives government the power to spend money it doesn’t hae and never earned through taxes. Its people pay for it by less favorable exchange rates, less purchasing power, a lower standard of living and higher inflation. Since most of our fellow citizens don’t have the necessary education to see the connections, government can channel their anger to more obvious “outside” enemies. Some popular examples include foreign governments (usually emerging market countries), greedy managers, immoral capitalists and investors, minority groups, immigrants, you name it.

A de facto gold-standard would force governments to raise the money for their useless wars, useless subsidies to dying industries and useless civil servants by taxing people in more obvious ways. That way the public may realize how much money “their” country actually burns. In 1966 Ludwig Von Mises wrote in his book “Human Action: A Treatise on Economics“:

The gold standard makes the determination of money’s purchasing power independent of the changing ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence.

You can find the full excerpt in a recent article of the Capitalism Magazine. If you’re interested in how a gold standard might work I can also recommend another excellent episode of Econtalk.

Credit for the pretty picture goes to Swamibu from flickr.com.

Found an rather old, but still very relevant article by computer security expert Bruce Schneier:

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.” The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that’s why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

I picked up this song from the last chaosradio podcast and really felt the need to spread it. The instrumental version was released back in 1995 and was featured on the Mission Impossible soundtrack. Recently it was remixed by a German DJ called Tocadisco. Brilliant tunes, brilliant lyrics. Love it.

No government is a way of life.
No government means to trust your friends.
I know who I am and you know who you are. [...]

There’d be no government,
there’d be no government.
People would do what they wanted,
and there’d be no government. [...]

No government is an easy time.
No government is an exciting life.
We’d work for ourselves,
and we’d love for ourselves,
and for no government.

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It’s been a central plank of George Bush’s social policy: to stop teenagers having sex. More than $1bn of federal money has been spent on promoting abstinence since 1998. The trouble is, new research suggests that it hasn’t worked. At all.read more | digg story