Oct 01

Spanish government shuts down freedom elections in Catalonia; injures hundreds

Governments worldwide try to cast themselves as the voice of the people. They may publicly extol the virtues of democracy even as they do everything in their power to undermine and thwart the will of people to be free.

Governments secretly (and sometimes openly) spend vast portions of their treasuries to propagandize, brag, and publish false claims of their benevolence–even as they seek to ban “money in politics” by the private sector.

Governments hunt, stalk, threaten, and sometimes cage or kill opposition politicians or libertarian statesmen or spokespeople.

Now, the Spanish government has sent thousands of armed troops to Catalonia (a wealthy region of northwestern Spain) to crush today’s vote on Catalonian independence.

Thousands of Catalonians have been injured in brutal government violence. Spanish secret police have surveilled and infiltrated independence groups and shut down dozens of polling stations. See here.

Sep 22

New Mexico health insurance premiums to increase by up to 49% next year

If the power of deregulation, capitalism and freedom was unleashed on health care, prices would quickly decrease while quality would improve dramatically. Innovation would flower. Even the poorest and most desperately ill Americans would be able to afford life-saving treatment.

But for decades, U.S. policymakers have driven Americans toward the stink and stain of slave-plantation healthcare dispensed by the government.

Government laws and programs increase demand while sharply limiting supply of caregivers, facilities and products–causing prices to rise.

Now, health insurers in New Mexico are increasing premiums at the highest rate ever seen.

Insurers will increase premiums next year from a range of 36 to 41 percent for midlevel insurance plans. For all plans, premiums are expected to rise a range of 17 to 49 percent.

See here.

Sep 21

Spanish government seizes 10 million ballots to prevent anti-government vote

Catalonia is a wealthy district of Spain that has suffered under years of Spanish rule. Recently the people of Catalonia have been seeking to hold a vote to determine if Catalonia should separate from the tyrannical government headquartered in Madrid.

Last week, the Spanish government sent police to arrest hundreds of mayors of Catalonian villages who appeared to favor separation.

Now the government is launching further efforts to stop the vote. Hundreds of armed Spanish officers have been sent to Catalonia to spy on Catalonians.

Swarms of cops have raided print shops suspected of printing ballots or other vote materials.

The government has also sent a cruise ship filled with 16,000 cops and docked it at a Barcelonan port. According to the government, the troops are there for “riot control.” See here.

Sep 19

Californians ready to flee socialism

In 1978, courageous Californians circulated and passed a forward-thinking ballot initiative known as Proposition 13. Under Proposition 13, the annual real estate tax on a parcel of property is limited to 1% of its assessed value.

In the years that followed, real estate became something of a tax shelter even as the vampire-like California legislature raised and gorged itself on taxes of every other kind.

Today, California is collapsing under the weight of overregulation, socialistic government, and high taxes across nearly every dimension (other than property taxes). In many California communities, the largest houses belong to mid-level government employees who live like royalty among starving serfs.

And because real estate is seen as a tax haven, property values have steadily increased. Now 60 % of Californians say they are ready to leave. See here.

Sep 18

Are the glaciers in Glacier National Park growing? Lysander Spooner University investigates climate claims

Glacier National Park (GNP) straddles the continental divide along Montana’s border with Canada. Ever since Al Gore’s 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Park has been seen as ground zero in the international battle over manmade global warming. Almost every major figure promoting apocalyptic-manmade-global-warming-by-CO2 hysteria has made a publicized visit to the Park.

Today’s visitors to GNP are met with a steady stream of climate-change messaging. Official Park literature claims that all glaciers in GNP are predicted to melt away by the year 2030. (Some signs even tell visitors that the glaciers may be gone by 2020.)

A recurring trick by climate hysterics is to show an old photograph of one of GNP’s glaciers next to a more recent photo of the same glacier showing a massive decrease in size. Often the pictures do not precisely specify what calendar dates the photos were taken on. This is significant because the melting season is quite short and rapid, and an image from August can be starkly different from an image from just weeks earlier.

The average date of first freeze in East Glacier, Montana is September 13th. It is only then that one can assess whether the glaciers are getting bigger or smaller than in previous years.

In September 2015, Lysander Spooner University launched an annual research project aimed at visiting GNP’s glaciers every year at their lowest points. This year a small group of us opted to hike to the popular Grinnell Glacier and take a few snapshots on September 16. We hiked the 5.5 miles from the Many Glacier Hotel and arrived at glacier’s edge late in the afternoon.

The Grinnell is perhaps the most iconic of two dozen named glaciers in the Park. Untold thousands of people have hiked to it. Millions more have been exposed to government imagery of the Glacier melting away. The nearby Many Glacier Hotel features pictures on its walls showing the Grinnell’s decline from the 1880s to 2008. Numerous blog posts and magazine feature stories have also featured this theme.

Upon our return to the Hotel after visiting the Glacier, we noticed that our brand-new photos appear to show that the Grinnell Glacier has grown slightly from the 2008 images that are displayed on the Hotel walls. There has been no reporting of this in any newspaper or broadcast that we know of. (In fact, all news coverage reports the precise opposite.) The smaller Gem Glacier—which is visible from the valley miles below—also appears to be slightly larger than it is shown in 2008 pictures on display.

We did not have enough people this year to trek to other glaciers. However we will return to GNP in September 2018 for more critical glacier research. Please support our efforts if you can.

Here is a video.
Contact Lysander Spooner University President Dr. Roger I. Roots with any questions or comments. 406-224-3105 or rogerroots [at] msn.com.

Sep 14

Flea abandons dog: former CIA official quits Harvard teaching gig in protest of Chelsea Manning

A win-win for Harvard University today. Former CIA official and deep-state parasite Michael Morell has “abruptly resigned” from a teaching job at Harvard to protest the University’s hiring of recently-released patriot whistleblower Chelsea Manning. See here.

Morell claimed Harvard ‘‘honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information’’ by hiring Manning as a visiting fellow at the Kennedy school’s Institute of Politics.

The heroic Chelsea Manning–formerly a U.S. Army computer tech–courageously leaked damning evidence of U.S. military atrocities and coverups in the “War on Terror” to Wikileaks.

It was only through the intrepid sacrifices of Manning that we know about U.S. military killings of Reuters photographers and other innocent civilians.

In the words of Glenn Greenwald, Manning “revealed a multitude of previously secret crimes and acts of deceit and corruption by the world’s most powerful factions. Journalists and even some government officials have repeatedly concluded that any actual national security harm from his leaks is minimal if it exists at all.” See here.

Manning spent 7 years in prison after being convicted of leaking classified material.

Sep 13

Spanish government threatens to arrest 700 mayors who support Catalonian independence

All governments seek the same powers: total control of all money and property, omnipotent command over subjects, transparency and knowledge of all human activities (while keeping government affairs secret from view), and to kill all who resist.

For years there has been a movement in Catalonia (a wealthy district of northeastern Spain culturally and geographically close to France) for independence from Spain.

Recently, 700 Catalonian mayors voted to hold a referendum on the question of Catalonian separatism. The move enraged the powermad authorities in Madrid.

Now Spain’s public prosecutor has ordered a criminal probe of the 700 Catalan mayors, threatening to arrest them all.

Spanish rulers are seeking to prosecute the mayors for civil disobedience, misfeasance and misappropriation of public funds — the latter carrying jail sentences of up to eight years. See here.

Sep 12

Join us this coming weekend for our 3rd annual Glacier National Park glacier research project!

Lysander Spooner University will again meet at Glacier National Park this coming weekend, Friday September 15 through Sunday September 17, 2017 for our annual glacier research project.

Each year since 2015, we have sought to visit, measure and photograph the glaciers at Glacier National Park at their lowest points.

Government websites associated with the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey present ‘before and after’ pictures of the glaciers at GNP to show the glaciers rapidly melting away.

However, the government websites do not specify precise calendar dates. They simply juxtapose one year (e.g., ‘1945’) against another year (‘2006’).

It appears that some of the glaciers in GNP have grown over the past several years.

Join us on Friday, Sept. 15 at the downtown public library in Kalispell, Montana at 6:00 p.m. for a discussion of this research topic and an overview. Then, the following morning, Saturday, Sept. 16 at 8:30 a.m. we will meet in the lobby of the beautiful East Glacier Lodge in Glacier, Montana. From there we will divide up our ranks to head out to different glacier areas. Strong hikers should be ready to tackle several miles of hiking. Others will go to glaciers that are visible from highways (i.e., the Jackson Glacier).

We will then meet up in the evening of Saturday, Sept. 16 at a suitable restaurant or tavern to compare notes.

(Note that there are forest fire and smoke issues throughout the Park and access is constantly changing. Please contact Roger Roots at his cell phone 406 — 224 —3105 for info and updates).

Sep 12

Government failure: U.S. companies enforce their own rights in the global market

Interesting column by Steve Sherman.

It seems a U.S. company, CoStar, was allegedly the victim of theft by a competitor named Xceligent.

CoStar manages websites with information and photos of real estate properties for sale or rent. The company spends millions annually obtaining information and graphics. CoStar found that Xceligent was stealing its pics and descriptions on an industrial scale. CoStar sought regulatory enforcement of intellectual property laws.

(Note that libertarians argue with themselves over whether intellectual property is actual property. See here.)

The U.S. Justice Department–with all its resources aimed at grazing ranchers and constitutionalists–did nothing.

“So, what is a $6.6 billion company like CoStar supposed to do when the U.S. Government does nothing when a foreign company literally attacks their livelihood? At their own expense, they tracked down the hackers allegedly employed by Xceligent. The hacking operation was based in the Philippines hidden inside a company called Avion.”

CoStar’s lawyers obtained a Philippine court order and “swept through Avion’s sprawling facility — eight hours from Manila and accessible by a single road — and emerged with 262 hard drives containing 35 terabytes of data.” After they secured the data, they found something that disturbed them – evidence that this same firm, Avion, was involved in “child pornography, prostitution, sex trafficking, and links to the dark side of the internet found at Backpage.com, a site known to run a global adult ad sales operation.”

Sherman’s coloumn calls for more U.S. government enforcement of intellectual property laws. But that facts cry out with another reality: companies in the private sector can enforce their own rights more efficiently than government bureaucracies can.

And demands by government trusters that government have more power over the internet so as to protect the web from ‘cybercrime’ are shown to be without merit. Those with rights and interests in the web can protect those interests better on their own.

Sep 12

Police state takes over Florida

Floridians who complied with government orders that they evacuate their homes prior to Hurricane Irma are now finding that government bars them from returning afterward.

The Miami Herald has published some disturbing photos and videos of Americans stopped at police roadblocks simply for trying to return to their homes. See here.

During times of crisis and disaster, governments are always the greatest source of danger to people, property and the environment.