Author Archives: admin
Schiff! — Endless QE, Ryan budget all hope no change, has the bond bubble burst?
Jury Nullification In New Hampshire Becomes Reality
This is HUGE! I’m tempted to move to New Hampshire.
For those of you who don’t know much about jury nullification, basically it’s when the jury finds a defendant innocent because of their dislike of the law. For example, a jury might refuse to convict a non-violent drug offender because they disagree with the fundamental premise of drug laws themselves.
Throughout the United States, judges have forbidden defense attorneys from informing juries that they have a right to nullify the law based on their dislike of the law. In California for example, jurors are required to inform on other jurors if one of them argues that the law is bad. The judge will then replace that juror with an alternate. A defense attorney who argues on grounds of nullification could face disbarment or other sanctions by the court, even though nullification is a right all U.S. jurors poses under common law.
On June 18, New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed HB 146, which reads:
“[A] Right of Accused. In all criminal proceedings the court shall permit the defense to inform the jury of its right to judge the facts and the application of the law in relation to the facts in controversy.”
I have the feeling this New Hampshire law will end up having a tremendous effect on the American judicial system as a whole.
(Read more)
1892 – Democrats Pro Parenting
“We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental Democratic doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government.” ~ Democratic Party National Platform, 1892.
Shout out to Jeffrey Tucker for finding this.
On Putin’s imprisonment of Pussy Riot
Of all the things to criticize about Russia, I wouldn’t put this high on the list. It seems like they were trespassing in order to ridicule Orthodoxy.
Imagine how little support they’d get if they had desecrated a synagogue. They’d be called Nazis and Western governments would be falling over each other to condemn them most strongly.
Imagine if they’d desecrated a mosque. They’d be called anti-immigration nationalists. Then a story about their murder would probably appear on the back pages of some newspaper.
Instead, they desecrated a church, and the world weeps over their imprisonment.
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Obama spokesman condemns ‘disproportionate’ prison term for Russian punk band membersThe White House on Friday condemned the “disproportionate” two-year prison sentence a Russian judge imposed on members of the punk band Pussy Riot, found guilty of “hooliganism” for an event mocking Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The United States is disappointed by the verdict, including the disproportionate sentences that were granted,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. (Read more)
Anonymous calls for shut-down of TrapWire to start this Saturday
While details of a futuristic and frightening global surveillance network called TrapWire are discovered, members of the Anonymous collective are calling for people everywhere to voice their opposition and help end the system, starting this Saturday.
“As we learn about TrapWire and similar systems in the surveillance industry, it becomes more apparent that we must, at all costs, shut this system down and render it useless,” active members of the loose-knit hacktivist collective Anonymous write in a press release issued early Thursday. Starting with this weekend, the group is asking for anyone that is concerned with TrapWire and the acceleration of the world into a full-fledged surveillance state to make sure their voices are heard — peacefully.
Only one week after RT first broke news of TrapWire, an intricate global intelligence infrastructure discussed in emails claimed to be compromised from Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, activists around the world have denounced the state-of-the-art surveillance system that is believed to be in use at certain locales internationally. (Read more)
‘Not even in Cold War’s darkest days’: International law scrapped in anti-Assange crusade
Ecuador’s move to grant Julian Assange political asylum has shown the true face of the current world order, highlighting more clearly than ever the line between the American Empire and the rest of the world, former CIA officer Ray McGovern told RT. (Read more)
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State Department: The U.S. does not recognize the concept of ‘diplomatic asylum’
the State Department declared today that the United States does not believe in the concept of ‘diplomatic asylum’ as a matter of international law.
Ecuador dragged Britain into an emergency meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States Friday at OAS headquarters in Washington, calling for a foreign ministers’ meeting following the British threat to go into the Ecuadoran embassy in London and get Assange, who is wanted for questioning in connection with sexual assault charges in Sweden.
Ecuador formally granted Assange political asylum Thursday, but today the State Department said the United States doesn’t agree that such a thing exists.
“The United States is not a party to the 1954 OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and does not recognize the concept of diplomatic asylum as a matter of international law,” the office of Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said in a Friday statement. “We believe this is a bilateral issue between Ecuador and the United Kingdom and that the OAS has no role to play in this matter.” (Read more)
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Julian Assange Historic speech @ Ecuador Embassy 19/08/2012
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Ecuador rallies Latin America in Assange battle with UK
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa on Saturday cast the Andean country’s tensions with Britain over asylum for WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange as a menace to Latin America, warning the UK that it should think twice before trampling on the region’s sovereignty.
Incensed by London’s threat to break into the Ecuadorean embassy where the former hacker is taking refuge, Correa’s government has accused Britain of “colonial” bullying and has formally granted the Australian asylum.
Britain says it will not allow the anti-secrecy campaigner from Australia to travel to South America because it is obliged to extradite him to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations.
“They’re out of touch. Who do they think they’re dealing with? Can’t they see that this is a dignified and sovereign government which will not kneel down before anyone?” Correa said in his weekly address on Saturday.
“What a mentality, eh? They have not realized that Latin America is free and sovereign and that we’ll not put up with meddling, colonialism of any kind, at least in this country, small, but with a big heart.” (Read more)
On NASAs Mars Landing
Interesting, but I’d rather keep my tax dollars. I can’t help but think the hype is a desperate attempt to stay relevant.
I encourage curious readers to look at THIS, my favorite TED lecture ever.
Is Radiation not as bad as thought?
These videos make a compelling case. Perhaps the threat of radiation was part of the utter fear our government fed from during the cold war.
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The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion: No Copyright Law
Very interesting read. The case for small states and political division, in addition to no IP:
The entire country seemed to be obsessed with reading. The sudden passion for books struck even booksellers as strange and in 1836 led literary critic Wolfgang Menzel to declare Germans “a people of poets and thinkers.”
“That famous phrase is completely misconstrued,” declares economic historian Eckhard Höffner, 44. “It refers not to literary greats such as Goethe and Schiller,” he explains, “but to the fact that an incomparable mass of reading material was being produced in Germany.”
Höffner has researched that early heyday of printed material in Germany and reached a surprising conclusion — unlike neighboring England and France, Germany experienced an unparalleled explosion of knowledge in the 19th century.
German authors during this period wrote ceaselessly. Around 14,000 new publications appeared in a single year in 1843. Measured against population numbers at the time, this reaches nearly today’s level. And although novels were published as well, the majority of the works were academic papers.
The situation in England was very different. “For the period of the Enlightenment and bourgeois emancipation, we see deplorable progress in Great Britain,” Höffner states.
Equally Developed Industrial Nation
Indeed, only 1,000 new works appeared annually in England at that time — 10 times fewer than in Germany — and this was not without consequences. Höffner believes it was the chronically weak book market that caused England, the colonial power, to fritter away its head start within the span of a century, while the underdeveloped agrarian state of Germany caught up rapidly, becoming an equally developed industrial nation by 1900.
Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development — in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.
Germany, on the other hand, didn’t bother with the concept of copyright for a long time. Prussia, then by far Germany’s biggest state, introduced a copyright law in 1837, but Germany’s continued division into small states meant that it was hardly possible to enforce the law throughout the empire.
Höffner’s diligent research is the first academic work to examine the effects of the copyright over a comparatively long period of time and based on a direct comparison between two countries, and his findings have caused a stir among academics. Until now, copyright was seen as a great achievement and a guarantee for a flourishing book market. Authors are only motivated to write, runs the conventional belief, if they know their rights will be protected.
Yet a historical comparison, at least, reaches a different conclusion. Publishers in England exploited their monopoly shamelessly. New discoveries were generally published in limited editions of at most 750 copies and sold at a price that often exceeded the weekly salary of an educated worker.
London’s most prominent publishers made very good money with this system, some driving around the city in gilt carriages. Their customers were the wealthy and the nobility, and their books regarded as pure luxury goods. In the few libraries that did exist, the valuable volumes were chained to the shelves to protect them from potential thieves.
In Germany during the same period, publishers had plagiarizers — who could reprint each new publication and sell it cheaply without fear of punishment — breathing down their necks. Successful publishers were the ones who took a sophisticated approach in reaction to these copycats and devised a form of publication still common today, issuing fancy editions for their wealthy customers and low-priced paperbacks for the masses.
A Multitude of Treatises
This created a book market very different from the one found in England. Bestsellers and academic works were introduced to the German public in large numbers and at extremely low prices. “So many thousands of people in the most hidden corners of Germany, who could not have thought of buying books due to the expensive prices, have put together, little by little, a small library of reprints,” the historian Heinrich Bensen wrote enthusiastically at the time.
The prospect of a wide readership motivated scientists in particular to publish the results of their research. In Höffner’s analysis, “a completely new form of imparting knowledge established itself.”
Essentially the only method for disseminating new knowledge that people of that period had known was verbal instruction from a master or scholar at a university. Now, suddenly, a multitude of high-level treatises circulated throughout the country. (Read more)
Mises to Friedman: “You’re all a bunch of socialists”
Consumer Product Safety Commission Banning … Toy Magnets?
Buckyballs and Buckycubes are collections of small, powerful, round or cubic rare earth magnets which can be used to form all sorts of shapes or squeezed to relieve stress. Indeed, some children and even a few teens have been injured when they have swallowed multiple balls. However, the desk toys are marketed exclusively to adults and come with labels warning against ingestion and insisting they be kept out of children’s reach.
More than two million sets of these toys have been sold worldwide since they went on the market in 2009; there have been less than two dozen incidents.
After more than two years of working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission — by issuing a voluntary recall, changing the warning labels, and producing a safety video — Maxfield & Oberton has been told the CPSC is banning the product because it is “inherently dangerous” and “serves no useful purpose.”
Why not serving a “useful purpose” is a legitimate criterion, they don’t say. Most desk toys — say, a New York Yankees Mr. Potato Head — serve little useful purpose. As for being “inherently dangerous,” at least 140 children are killed each year riding bicycles, and more than 275,000 end up in the emergency room. (Read more)
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See the company’s funny appeal for help: Save our balls
Man sentenced to jail for collecting rainwater in Oregon
An Oregon man is expected to spend a month in jail after being convicted on nine misdemeanor charges related to his illegal use of…water. Gary Harrington was sentenced after being found guilty of illegally collecting water on his own rural property.
Harrington, of Eagle Point, Oregon, has been fighting for his right to do what he wishes with water since 2002. Now more than a decade after he first defended himself over allegations that the man-made ponds on his 170 acres of land violated local law, Harrington has been sentenced to 30 days behind bars and fined over $1,500.
Authorities say that Harrington broke the law by collecting natural rain water and snow runoff that landed on his property. Officials with the Medford Water Commission contested that the water on Harrington’s property, whether or not it came from the sky, was considered a tributary of nearby Crowfoot Creek and thus subject to a 1925 law that gives the MWC full ownership and rights. Therefore prosecutors were able to argue in court — successfully — that three homemade fishing and boating ponds in Harrington’s backyard violated the law.
For filling “three illegal reservoirs” on his property with runoff water, Harrington has been convicted on nine misdemeanor charges in Circuit Court. He says he will attempt to appeal, but as long as the conviction stands to serve 30 days of imprisonment. He has also been sentenced to an additional three years of probation. (Read more)
London tourism struggles during Olympics
London’s tourism industry is struggling to compete with the impact of the Olympic Games, which has left the host city a “ghost town”, businesses said today.
Many traditional tourist hotspots have reported a fall in ticket sales as visitors flock to Olympic venues across the capital.
Theatre companies said they were seeing a “mixed picture” with many companies struggling due to the lack of footfall in the West End. (Read more)
Perfect example of cowardly, sycophantic, on-message journalism
Sharp Decline in Terror Attacks After Bin Laden Death
The number of worldwide terror attacks fell to 10,283 last year, down from 11,641 in 2010 and the lowest since 2005, the State Department reported today.
What’s made the difference? The State Department cites the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda members killed last year including Atiyah Abd al-Rahman and Anwar al-Awlaki, who was the head of Yemen’s Al Qaeda affiliate and had ties to the underwear bomber plot in 2010.
“The loss of bin Laden and these other key operatives puts the network on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse,” the report stated. (Read more)