We all know John Gilmore’s famous dictum: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” True, but with governments doing what they do (and with more bandwidth being centralized in the hands of fewer, larger ISPs), routing around damage isn’t necessarily an automatic thing. From C^2 comes word of a new book (available free in HTML, pdf, and epub, available for purchase in dead tree format): How to Bypass Internet Censorship. Forgive it for opening with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights; to some people in the world, that’s an improvement over what they’ve got locally. I haven’t…
4 CommentsMonth: May 2011
It’s been a bad-news couple of weeks. Developments in the world have sucked — from those multiple anti-Fourth Amendment court decisions through the re-inflicting of UnPatriot Act provisions to individual horrors like the sadistic abuse of Star, “the dog who lived.” In fact, it’s been a bad month starting with the jingoistic blood-lust over the assassination of bin Laden and the murder-followed-by-ever-changing-sheriff-blame-the-victim stories of Jose Guerena. But then (as I’ve been reminded lately reading histories of the Middle Ages), developments in the world mostly suck, and always have. At least when they involve governments or conscienceless sociopathic sadists (but I…
21 CommentsIf you scroll down and look to the right just below the archives, you’ll see a “real” blogroll. Until now, there’s been only a redundant set of links to other BHM blogs that Oliver put in that spot. My blogroll isn’t strictly a blogroll because not everything on it is a blog. What I’m aiming to do over time is list the top two to 10 sites, blog or otherwise, in some of the most important liberty categories. This is just a beginning. While a blogroll is no big deal, I know (like a certain something else, everybody has one),…
11 CommentsIf you want to commemorate the honorable dead this weekend, you might join (in spirit or in fact) the OathKeepers muster for Jose Guerena, the young ex-Marine murdered by cops while trying to protect his family from vicious home invaders. The muster will take place in Tucson on Monday. When the SWATting of non-violent drug offenders (which Guerna was not) and gun owners (which he was) ceases, OathKeepers (both the members of the organization and those cops who finally recognize the unlawfulness of what they’ve been doing and stand by their oaths) will deserve everyone’s honor — hopefully not only…
8 CommentsDirt-Cheap Survival Retreat: One Man’s Solution By M.D. Creekmore Available from Paladin Press Available from Amazon.com $12.00, 79 pages, 2011 While many would-be survivalists were waiting to win the lottery or planning to discreetly bump off a rich uncle to build their Ultimate Survival Retreat in Idaho (complete with underground bunkers, escape tunnels, a decade’s supply of dried lentils, and customized Super Whizz-Whacker 3000 rifles at every lead-shuttered portal) … a handful of authors have been telling us how to do it another way: cheap. First came Brian Kelling with his Travel-Trailer Homesteading Under $5,000 Then along came Phil Garlington…
12 CommentsAmid all the sorrows and horrors of this year’s record-crushing (and human-crushing, and house-crushing, and pet-crushing) tornadoes, this is awe inspiring. Written version for the video challenged.
9 CommentsIn case you missed this … I usually take these things with a grain of salt. We’ve just seen a lovely example of how embarrassingly fallible predictions of doom can be. But John Williams of Shadowstats is the very definition of credibility, so it’s worth taking a new look at his most recently updated predictions for hyperinflation. In a word, he says: SOON. Within the year. Here’s Silver’s take on Williams’ report. And Williams’ report in full. —– Have you also noticed that we’re hearing the term “stagflation” again — meaning an economy that’s going nowhere while prices soar? Well,…
7 CommentsThere’s a new blog in town. Or rather, about as far out of town as it can get. In any case, it’s a charmer for everybody who’s interested in things like off-grid technology, permaculture, DIY homebuilding, and independent living in general. It’s The Independent Spirit. TIS is the work of three people you sort of know if you regularly visit Living Freedom: Joel of The Ultimate Answer to Kings, Ian, and Debra. The latter two you may have seen as “M.” and “landlady” on Joel’s blog. I suspect The Independent Spirit blog was born from the clamor of Get Rich…
7 CommentsO. sent this to me with the comment, “If this is true, it does not portend good things for freedom, in general, or firearms, given Facebook’s reach on the net.” Facebookâs managers are deploying a new software upgrade that will dismantle myriad groups of like-minded political activists unless they get a special software-key from the company. But Facebook managers are providing very limited information about which groups are being favored with the new key, prompting some activists to complain about possible political favoritism among Facebook managers, and many other activists to experiment with techniques and tricks to get the needed…
29 CommentsHarold Camping speaks. One could be charitable and say the man’s getting senile. But does senility bring such arrogance, narcissism, and complete disregard for what he wrought on those who were foolish enough to believe him? And yes, of course. He wasn’t wrong. Didn’t even make a “math error” this time. (In fact, he now says he never made a math error in the first place, not in his 1994 Doomsday prediction, nor anywhere else.) Judgment Day came exactly as he predicted. We simply didn’t notice. Three times now, apparently. Presumably we will notice — albeit briefly — when the…
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