Top-of-the-week links

It’s been a while! Between a heavier workload at my internship last week and a weekend trip to Canada, I’ve been keeping busy. Enjoy some links and look forward to a few longer posts, hopefully tomorrow.

• Via Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic: profile of troops in Afghanistan. Pretty unremarkable except for this: “All our family and friends are home right now eating hamburgers and shooting fireworks,” he told me. “And that’s good. I’m happy for them. But they need to understand the price of that freedom.” What price does freedom have, you goon? Destroyed civil liberties? Tons of dead, innocent Iraqis and Afghans? Thousands of maimed and killed Western soldiers? Two horribly stupid wars? Do you really think this is about freedom? Do you really think I asked you to fight for me? People like this buzzcutted-drone need to put down their guns and get a real job for a turn.
• Via Lew Rockwell, Bloomberg: Transportation parasite secretary Ray LaHood wants to ban cell phones, even the hands free ones, in cars. Can’t you just sit still and leave us alone, you freak? Stop making laws, especially gross federal laws that piss all over any notion of local government this country might still have.
• Via Radley Balko at Reason, WBTV.com: 11-year-old D.A.R.E. participant brings his parents’ pot to school to rat them out. They now face charges. D.A.R.E. is a sick little brainwashing outfit that exists to create the next generation of drug warriors and encourage Pavlik Morozov-type stories like this one.
• Via Lew Rockwell, HuffPo: new military memoir says Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright asked a top general to fly a U.S. spy plane low enough and slow enough over Baghdad that it would be shot down and give us a casus belli against Saddam. The general refused out of respect for the pilot’s life…not out of respect for the lives of thousands of other troops and millions of Iraqi civilians. Gross all around. The U.S. military is clearly not up to the moral level of the power it has.
• National Post: Canada’s Supreme Court rules 5-4 that suspects in Canada do not have Miranda-style rights to an attorney. Yuck. It’s not often that Canada runs to the right of the U.S. Apparently such rights “would not strike the proper balance between the public interest in the investigation of crimes and the suspect’s interest in being left alone.” Hello, slippery slope. So much nastiness here.
• The AP: CVS gets down on its knees to lick the boots of Leviathan, but not before leaving a check for $75  million in fines on the table. Why? For selling too much pseudoephedrine, an ingredient essential to cough medicine and meth. They shouldn’t have paid. If I work for CVS, I tell the government, “If you want us to restrict the sale of this product, then you pay for the enforcement.” Better yet, just refuse to follow this law.
• Via Jacob Sullum at Reason, CTV Montreal: Remy Couture pleads not guilty to “moral corruption and distributing obscene material” for uploading some amateur horror films he made to YouTube. It may sound like a joke, but this is dead serious. How does this drivel even end up in court?
• Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason: the teacher cartel and their vote-hungry lackeys in government gang up against the last frontier, uncredentialed teachers for online coursework.  Is there anyone who still thinks licensing isn’t just a way for people with licenses to lock out competition thanks to the intervention of government goons only too happy to have more powers?
• NYT: British woman held captive by the Taliban was likely killed not by the Talibs but a stray U.S. grenade. The blood on our hands just got a bit stickier. Stop putting our soldiers in these situations and end this horrible war!
• The Globe & Mail: Interesting article on U.S.-Canadian border security since 9/11. You know how I feel about the bullies at the border. Just check out this article, though, and see how sad it is that wonderful cross-border relationships have been ruined by life-hating securicrats in Ottawa and Washington.
• Via Nick Gillespie at Reason, Veronique de Rugy: pretty horrifying graphical comparison of job growth under Bush and Obama. Federal employment grew under both. So much for the Republicans being conservative, eh? The big difference is how much private employment fell under both.  All hail the criminals-in-chief.
• Libertas Post: Mark your calendars for the first-annual free thought and liberty film festival in Ottawa. Did it have to be in Ottawa, the center of Leviathan’s lair?
• The Globe & Mail: Sarah Palin visits Vancouver and says nothing. Stop paying to see this vile woman speak. “There were very few specifics, however, on what Ms. Palin would cut to reduce government debt.” That’s because there are no specifics. She was a crappy governor and she’d be a still-worse president, the sort of insane fool who welcomes war with Iran and would never cut defense spending. Please just go away.
• NYT: Meet Xi Jinping, likely China’s president-in-waiting. Remember his face because he, too, will be a butcher who will one day need to be punished.
• National Post: Canadian activists work to help American war deserters in an increasingly hostile Canada. God bless these people.
• Glenn Greenwald: Case-by-case comparison of (fireable) offenses against Jewish Americans versus (non-fireable) offenses against Muslim Americans. Food for thought. Quite damning.

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End-of-the-week links

• Glenn Greenwald: doing vital reporting on an issue entirely neglected by the U.S. media–the release of findings from the UN’s inquiry into Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara. Included in the findings: 19-year-old U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan was shot execution-style as he lay on the deck in a semi-conscious state. The only UN Human Rights Council member to vote against endorsing the report was the U.S. American-Israeli relations: where you execute an innocent citizen of ours and we help you cover it up!
• NYT: Norway says that three terrorist plotters arrested in July were planning an attack on the Danish hero-newspaper Jyllands-Posten–the paper that published the Muhammad cartoons. The best part is that all three plotters were permanent residents who arrived as asylum seekers. You came to the West seeking so asylum…so that you could violate the rights of others and make them seek asylum? Here’s hoping these three rot for a very, very long time.
• New Humanist: around 20 U.S. newspaper spike a cartoon for a perceived slight to Muhammad. This is when they’ve won, when we start self-censoring. Ugh.
• Carlos Miller: Michigan authorities bully a man and threaten to refer him to the Department of Homeland Security…for taking pictures of the town water tower. Similar photos are displayed on the town’s own website. Snap those shutters, people. We have to keep shaming these jerks into respecting our rights.
• Reason: their entire October issue is available for free online now!
• Free Keene: video of Pete and Adam from Liberty on Tour having a very well-handled, funny encounter with U.S. Border Patrol. Best part: the checkpoint is comfortably inside U.S. territory. And I used to think it was odd that Russians had to carry their papers everywhere.
• National Post: updating information on the conscientious objector safehaven bill being walked through the Canadian parliament by Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy. It’s too bad they are trying to make him limit it to U.S. objectors only, but at least this would be an improvement over the current system.
• Radley Balko at Reason: updating a police brutality case. The DEA gave a big, fat settlement to the innocent man who was brutalized. But now the only disciplinary action taken has been against the Kansas City (KS)  cop who blew the whistle. It’s their country, we just live in it.
• Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason: LA teachers union sickos blame the suicide of an LA teacher on the LA Times teacher effectiveness rankings. Vile. What other profession gets away with this sort of evidence-averse bullying yet still gets sympathy from the public?
• Armin Rosen at Reason: highlighting the stomach-churning hypocrisy of Obama on DC schools. First Obama listened to the evidence-averse, child-hating crazies teachers there and helped kill the popular voucher program. Now he stood by and let the pro-school reform mayor lose his reelection race. In the meantime, his kids attend the super-elite Sidwell Friends. Do you think of the lives you’ve ruined before you go to bed at night, Barack? What are a few schoolkids condemned to failing schools when you run Guantanamo Bay and oversee two bloody wars, I guess.
• The Globe & Mail: U.S. prepares to lock up a Canadian pot smuggler. 8 months for harming no one, for initiating no force, for respecting consent. Proud to be an American!
• Pat Buchanan: making the case that China overplayed its hand in the recent fishing boat face-off with Japan. By Buchanan’s logic, China has now proven itself a ruthless foe willing to use economic warfare to achieve its goals. I don’t see this as a revelation.
• The Globe & Mail: British Columbia’s political-administrative classes gang up on anti-harmonized sales tax (HST) leader Bill Vander Zalm because there happen to be some crazy people in his movement. What a load of spew. This is like that insane Google v. Viacom lawsuit, where Viacom tried to hold Google liable for individual users uploading licensed content, even if Google removed it. Vander Zalm is not responsible for the actions of individuals who support his cause. You’re getting desperate, guys.
• The Globe & Mail: French prosecutors were nice and helpful, gladly turning over information on 1,800 secret Swiss accounts held by Canadians to the Canadian Revenue Agency. How dare you hide your wealth from Leviathan! Leviathan is hungry!
• NYT: an Israeli publishes the country’s first pork cookbook. It doesn’t sound like a big deal until you read this part: “Pork sellers routinely face protesters, and in recent years, arsonists have attacked shops in cities like Netanya and Safed, where Orthodox Jews live near secular immigrant communities.” Yes, burn down a store because someone inside is selling a product you don’t have to use.
• Glenn Greenwald: ridiculing Obama for his hypocrisy in talking tough on Iranian torturers whilst filing state secrecy claims to dismiss investigation of torture at home. It feels so refreshing to lose our moral credibility, doesn’t it?
• The Globe & Mail: Vancouver politicos can’t understand why food carts aren’t taking off there like they have in Portland. Well, they have some inkling that it was because they limited the number of licenses. But hey, let’s just set a new, arbitrarily-low number of licenses and tell people to put their carts in clusters and it will be ok! You’re doing it wrong, you imbeciles. Get rid of the licenses. Let people do what they want. Then the trucks will come.

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Sunday links

I’ll have some real posts coming up later today, but I wanted to throw out links to some of the more interesting stories I’ve read lately in the meantime.

NYT: Russian parliament discussing Soviet throwback law that would allow security services to warn people of future crimes. Hello, Minority Report.

The Globe & Mail: the future of the European dream. Interesting piece on European expectations for post-university careers vs. the North American system.

NYT: European gay pride parade in Warsaw. Poland is now the Catholic heartland of Europe and the parade was not without difficulties and protests, but still, it is good to see Poland succeed where Russia has so badly failed.

South China Morning Post: Hong Kong tourism board chairman calls for government to take over licensing of tour guides from independent, industry-led organizations. Hmm, a bureaucrat calling for more powers to be placed at his discretion? Never! When will people realize state licensing programs are just a racket to give the state more power and freeze competition out of the marketplace for those already in it?

NYT: The conscientious objector hotline for the U.S. military. Features the story of a guy claiming C.O. status because he doesn’t want to serve in a post-Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell military and have to shower with out gays. Because showering with forcibly closeted gays is so different.

The Globe & Mail: Gary Webber, the guy who wants to test Canada’s marijuana laws by creating a 250-strong chain of franchised pot dispensaries. Vive la revolution!

AlterNet: A decade on, assessing the effects of the U.S.’s Plan Colombia offensive in the drug war. Spoiler: it’s been expensive and bloody!

The Independent: Document leaked from British government indicating full withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2014. More U.S. allies need to do this–if our leaders won’t recognize the stupidity and unfairness of the war in Afghanistan, then other leaders need to hold their feet to the flames by withdrawing their troops and making our burden unsustainable.

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