Chomsky’s Lectern: The Cuban Embargo and ‘Democracy Promotion’

Prof. Chomsky cuts past Sen. Lugar’s Newspeak against the US embargo on Cuba.

‘American Recovery and Reinvestment’ Act is the New ‘Patriot’ Act (Video)

Libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano’s internet show “Freedom Watch” from FNC’s Strategy Room interviews Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), WSJ’s Steve Moore, and anarchist president of the Mises Institute Lew Rockwell, Jr. with Peter Schiff Tracy Byrnes, and Cody Willard in studio.

Two Men From Capitol Hill — One a Libertarian, the Other a Socialist, Both in the Minority Against US Corporatocracy — on the Current State of Affairs

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) take questions from the People on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.

UN Special Rapporteur: US Required to Prosecute Bush/Rumsfeld for War Crimes

UN Special Rapporteur and Special Investigator on Torture Manfred Nowak said on CNN the US has an “obligation” to investigate the Bush administration for war crimes and that there is already enough evidence to prosecute former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Krugman’s Counters to Obama Stimulus Naysayers Ignores the Most Obvious ‘Nays’

A State with nothing to spend can’t spend to stimulate the economy, no matter what the Third Way fascists say.

Lincoln v. The Constitution (Video)

Austrian economist and Lincoln historian Thomas DiLorenzo discusses Abe Lincoln’s horrid record on civil liberties during his unjust war, recorded at the Mises Institute, 06-06-2006.

When Your God’s Will Includes Imperfect Men Executing His Innocent Children, You Have No God

Zionist rally with NY Dem Attendees full of hate and Godlessness among people who think they love God.

International Banking and the US War Machine

Ron Paul reveals why he was so outraged at the recent House vote condemning Gaza. Here’s one more reason he should be outraged.

Dissenting HR 34

Congress votes (again) 390-5 to wholeheartedly condemn Hamas and support Israeli military aggression. Ron Paul voices resolution “is not in the interest of the United States; it’s not in the interests of Israel either.”

Rothbard: The State is a Counterfeiter

Murray Rothbard on central planning, the market, the national debt., and the role of the State.

US House Overwhelmingly Passes Resolution Supporting Israel’s War on Gaza; Paul, Kucinich Dissent

Obama, Gaza and the Hypocrisy of American ‘Liberals’

The Elctronic Intifada (ei) co-founder, Ali Abunimah:

“I would like to ask President-elect Obama to say something please about the humanitarian crisis that is being experienced right now by the people of Gaza.” Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney made her plea after disembarking from the badly damaged SS Dignity that had limped to the Lebanese port of Tyre while taking on water.

The small boat, carrying McKinney, the Green Party’s recent presidential candidate, other volunteers, and several tons of donated medical supplies, had been trying to reach the coast of Gaza when it was rammed by an Israeli gunboat in international waters.

But as more than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed or injured – the majority civilians – since Israel began its savage bombardment of Gaza on 27 December, Obama has maintained his silence. “There is only one president at a time,” his spokesmen tell the media. This convenient excuse has not applied, say, to Obama’s detailed interventions on the economy, or his condemnation of the “coordinated attacks on innocent civilians” in Mumbai in November.

The Mumbai attacks were a clear-cut case of innocent people being slaughtered. The situation in the Middle East however is seen as more “complicated” and so polite opinion accepts Obama’s silence not as the approval for Israel’s actions that it certainly is, but as responsible statesmanship.… [read the full article]

(more of Ali Abunimah on Little Alex in Wonderland)

The president-elect remains silent as the White House gives tacit consent to an Israel ground invasion:

The United States gave Israel free rein Friday on whether to send troops into the Gaza Strip, insisting that the key to a ceasefire is an Israeli demand for Hamas to permanently halt rocket fire….

“We’ve been in regular contact with the Israelis,” White House deputy press secretary Gordon Johndroe told reporters when asked if US officials were trying to prevent a possible ground offensive.

US officials have urged the Israelis “to be mindful that any of the actions that they’re taking in Gaza avoid unnecessary civilian casualties and also to help continue with the flow of humanitarian goods,” he said.

“So I think any steps they are taking, whether it’s from the air or on the ground or anything of that nature, are part and parcel of the same operation,” Johndroe said.

“Those will be decisions made by the Israelis,” he said.

What the deputy press secretary conveniently leaves out of the Newspeak is that Israel would do so supplied by the US.

Sharpton and McGovern: Employee Anti-Free Anti-Choice Act=Bad

The free market can never truly be free without the workers free to assemble and organize to demand and negotiate the price of their labor supply. But, compulsory assembly is coercive. It’s tyrannical when it comes from the unions and a gross abuse of power when it comes from the State.

I’m about as pro-union as it gets, but more importantly, I’m a voluntaryist. No one who stands for liberty can stand for the absolute authority of 50+1 tyranny of the majority and no one for liberty can not stand against the Employee Free Choice [sic] Act (EFCA).

The EFCA (or HR 800) is proposed legislation by Democrats which would “amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.”

It sounds like a great idea, right? It sounds as if it expands workers’ rights to unionize.

Nope.

What EFCA does is refuse a corporation to hold secret ballots among their workers. Sounds like it takes the workers’ right to unionize from the hands of the bosses and hands it to the workers, right?

Nope.

The EFCA has what’s called a “card check” policy whereby workers vote to unionize by signing their names. Every union organizer lobbying for a workforce would then have the names of those who voted against unionizing.

Worse, this puts workers’ fates in the hands of the National Labor Relations Board — a federal agency that gets lobbied and paid off by all sides of the same coins, just like the rest of the federal agencies.

Rev. Al Sharpton has been speaking out against the EFCA on his radio show:

Yeah, well, what I don’t understand about it which is why I’m in the campaign is why wouldn’t those of us who support workers being protected, why would we not want their privacy protected? I mean why would we want them opened up to this kind of possible coercion?…

… clearly I’m for any legislation to give any state the right to organize, but I’m talking about specifically where workers are not protected from coercion, in terms of these card-checks that you talk about, and as arbitration because explain, Charlie King, to me the whole question that you raised, if you have a federal arbitrator who says that this is the deal, even when the union only established out of card-check, is the deal for two years, and there’s nothing you can do about it, I mean, a lot of the business that we afford for the African American community to get contracts and sub contracts and all. They could face some very serious problems here.

and Fmr. Sen. and 1972 Democratic Party presidential candidate George McGovern spoke powerfully against the EFCA in an ad released a month before the election:

Surely, the president-elect wouldn’t sign a such a coercive bill against workers?

Yup.

Mr. Obama told the AFL-CIO last April that he will “make it the law of the land when [he’s] president of the United States.”

What gets caught up in the Newspeak is the assumption that if you’re pro-EFCA, you’re pro-Big Labor, making you pro-worker. This is false, as no one in the MSM wishes to discuss what hinders workers from having more freedom to choose and dispose of their representation and their methods of non-violent, non-coercive negotiating: the Taft-Hartley Act, which was called the “slave labor bill” when it was passed in 1947 and is still a part of American law.

The government shouldn’t have agencies picking winners and losers between bosses, union organizers, and individual workers. For one, government’s nothing more than a window breaker when it enters the marketplace, but more importantly, the individual workers don’t have the big Beltway lobbying firms representing them. The worker is forced to depend on the union they have and if they don’t like their representation, the difficulties of unionizing make forming new unions not worth the effort because (remember) the Big Labor that already exists has a primary objective of keeping their power over the industry of organized labor with the lobbies (that have politicians in their pockets) to maintain that power.

When the State has no power to empower, it has no power to destroy. Favoring either side of a coin by an institution with the authority to seize, confine, and kill is the very definition of fascism — the “third solution between socialism and capitalism.” We know far too well that when government butts its nose into the marketplace, bosses or union representation wins and workers lose.

What also gets left out of the Newspeak for the sheep is that organized workers and their bosses sign contracts, voluntarily. Gridlock in the negotiation process before contract signing can be resolved by more voluntary negotiating or mutually voluntary third party mediation in the private sector. A breach in a contract should be handled in the courts.

Keyword: “voluntary.” Anything else would be coercive. Coercive wages are theft. Coercive paid labor is wage slavery.

Founder of the Libertarian Party Calls for the Party to be Radical or Remain Irrelevant

Lew Rockwell interviews David Nolan — fellow Skull, founder of the Libertarian Party, and inventor of the Nolan Chart (where “The Political Compass Test” derives):