WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.
What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. “The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims,” a spokesman said.

Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said.

“They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.” When a trader left the building shortly before 2pm, using a security swipe card, a protester dropped some coins on the floor and, as he bent down to pick them up, put his boot in the door to keep it open.

Two minutes later, three Greenpeace vans pulled up and another 30 protesters leapt out and were let in by the others.

They made their way to the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding fog horns, encountering little resistance from security guards. Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons to float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach. The IPE conducts “open outcry” trading where deals are shouted across the pit. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to paralyse trading.

But they were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. “They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately,” a photographer said. “It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back.”

Mr Beresford said: “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.”

Last night Greenpeace said two protesters were in hospital, one with a suspected broken jaw, the other with concussion. [TimesOnline]

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Now, it won't just be Islamist suicide bombers whose families are limned and paid off for the death of their fighters—American warriors, too, will have a rather similar emolument, which for the economically disadvantaged families so overrepresented in the ranks of the armed forces may bulk quite as large economically as do those received by the survivors of their adversaries. If it works for Islam, maybe it will work for democracy as well. [blog.mises.org, February 11, 2005]

To convince men and women to serve in the military, [y]ou need to impress upon them of the gravity of the threat today and the manner in which it impacts them. You need to convince them of the benefits of the martial lifestyle, and pay them enough so that the cost of their service is not the derailment of every other aspect of their lives. And lastly, you must keep the promise that if they are wounded or fall in battle, they and their loved ones will be cared for by a grateful nation.

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Virginians who wear their pants so low their underwear shows may want to think about investing in a stronger belt.

The state's House of Delegates passed a bill Tuesday authorizing a $50 fine for anyone who displays his or her underpants in a "lewd or indecent manner."

Del. Lionell Spruill Sr., a Democrat who opposed the bill, had pleaded with his colleagues to remember their own youthful fashion follies.

During an extended monologue Monday, he talked about how they dressed or wore their hair in their teens. On Tuesday, he said the measure was an unconstitutional attack on young blacks that would force parents to take off work to accompany their children to court just for making a fashion statement.

"This is a foolish bill, Mr. Speaker, because it will hurt so many," Spruill said before the measure was approved 60-34. It now goes to the state Senate.

The bill's sponsor, Del. Algie T. Howell, has said constituents were offended by the exposed underwear. He did not speak on the floor Tuesday. [AP]

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia lawmakers dropped their droopy-pants bill Thursday after the whole thing became just too embarrassing.

The bill, which would have slapped a $50 fine on people who wear their pants so low that their underwear is visible in "a lewd or indecent manner," passed the state House on Tuesday but was killed by a Senate committee two days later in a unanimous vote.

Republican Sen. Thomas K. Norment said news reports implied that lawmakers were preoccupied with droopy pants.

"I find that an indignation, which dampens my humor," Norment said.

Republican Sen. Kenneth Stolle, the committee chairman, called the bill "a distraction."

The committee hearing drew a standing-room-only crowd that included about 75 government students from Surry County High School.

"If people in Florida can wear bikinis, a little underwear showing isn't going to hurt anybody," 17-year-old Elvyn Shaw said.

The bill's sponsor, Democratic Delegate Algie T. Howell, declined to answer reporters' questions Thursday but issued a statement saying the bill "was in direct response to a number of my constituents who found this to be a very important issue."

He has said the constituents included customers at his barber shop who were offended by exposed underwear. [AP]

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The Virginia House approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage Tuesday, despite a warning from the state's first openly gay legislator that the measure will one day prove as shameful as slavery and segregation.
The House voted 78-18 in favor of a resolution similar to one easily approved in the Senate on Monday.

If negotiators can reconcile the two versions this year, and the measure passes both chambers again next year, it will be put to the voters in November 2006.

"Today is one of those moments for which we shall one day be ashamed," said Democrat Adam P. Ebbin, who is gay.

Supporters of the amendment contend it is vital to warding off court rulings such as one in Massachusetts that made gay marriage legal there.

The Family Foundation's executive director, Victoria Cobb, said Ebbin's remarks about Virginia's racist past were unseemly.

"This is not a case where there are separate drinking fountains. There are no lack of voting rights, no segregated schools," she said. [dailypress.com]

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Fifth, the Decision rejects Microsoft's desire to maintain its intellectual property for its own use, adopting an impressionistic analysis that would enable the Commission to order compulsory licensing in virtually any market and in any case. The Decision pays little regard to the incentives that intellectual property rights create for a company to invest in product improvements and for a company's competitors to invest in their own innovations rather than simply copying from others. Instead, the Decision opts for compulsory licensing on the basis of an assertion that "on balance" innovation in the industry overall would be greater if the technology and IP rights were shared with competitors. (Para. 783.) Such an approach clearly creates new law and economic policy for Europe. By casting aside the exceptional circumstances test of Magill, the Decision obligates dominant firms to license their technology to competitors whenever the Commission determines that reducing a dominant firm's incentive to innovate would nonetheless be good for an industry overall. This unbounded test would have a profoundly negative effect on innovation and investment by market leaders around the world who sell their products in Europe.

• The Commission's decision does not confine the use of the compulsorily licensed intellectual property to a secondary market.
• The intellectual property rights at stake are the essence of Microsoft's business, the development of operating system software.
• There is no basis for concluding that the use of Microsoft's proprietary communications protocols is indispensable to the creation of competing server operating systems.
• The Commission's decision rests on a very narrow product market definition that bears little resemblance to the real world.
• The Commission's decision ignores international treaty obligations designed expressly to prevent this type of broad-based compulsory licensing of intellectual property rights.

So in a list of six key points, the right to property ranks fifth, and only in so much as property creates "incentives [f]or a company to invest in product improvements," i.e., only in so much as the right to property serves the needs of others.

If service to others is Microsoft's best argument to the public in defense of its rights, Microsoft will continue to see those rights eroded. Microsoft's arguments are dishonest; everyone knows Microsoft is a profit-making company that exists for the sake of its shareholders--welcome to capitalism. Yet once again, Microsoft is attempting to prove otherwise. I don't think it can succeed, and in even trying, the firm looks foolish.

Microsoft has already paid out billions in unjustified antitrust claims. We are told that it must take such action in accordance with its fiduciary responsibilities. Yet how many of these responsibilities will be left if Microsoft refuses to defend against those who loot the firm on the moral grounds the looters operate? If Microsoft's looters claim that the firm has an obligation to sacrifice to its competitors, why can't Microsoft, just for once, defend its right to exist for its own selfish sake?

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Bill Gates, chairman of US software giant Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT - news) , said he is 'very responsive' to the European Commission's demands concerning the implementation of the EU's antitrust ruling against the company.
Gates was speaking to reporters after attending a session of the European Parliament. He said: 'Anything they (the commission) want us to do better, I will listen very carefully and make sure we are very responsive.'

The company is under fire for failure to implement sanctions imposed by the EU in March 2004 in a satisfactory way. The company, ruled to be abusing its dominance in the market, was ordered to disclose business secrets and sell its windows operating system and media player separately.

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The evidence of the past two decades is unimpeachable: the political right in America no longer stands for individual rights, limited government and capitalism. The “rightists” now advocate expanding the welfare state, increasing government intrusion into our intimate private affairs, and sacrificing American lives to foreign paupers. They call it “advancing the cause of freedom.”

This is not what the right once stood for. Fifty years ago one could recognize serious problems in their positions, but also that by and large they favored individual liberty, opposed the growth of government beyond necessity, and advocated a strong military defense. In contrast, the left wanted socialism, the welfare state, and, following Vietnam, military humility.

Historically, and in broad terms, the right often tried to uphold the virtues of productiveness, independence, self-reliance, and American self-interest. They opposed the New Deal and the Great Society, as well as foreign wars that were not in America’s interests, as assaults on freedom. It was Democrats such as Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson who brought America into such wars, and who institutionalized massive redistribution of wealth at home. The right co-opted many statist measures of the left—such as anti-trust—but they generally saw America’s proper condition as peaceful production and free enterprise.

When the socialist assault began, the right became the opposition, facing a tide of motivated leftists who claimed that science and history were on their side. But what arguments, and what moral principles, did those on the right have for their own programs? Only vague statements of American ideals and virtues, held as floating ideas rather than with secure understanding. Consequently, “normalcy” in the 1920’s was accompanied by huge increases in foreign aid, and ever larger infringements on domestic, especially economic, affairs.

They called on “Rugged Individualism” as an ideal—but could not say why this was morally right. They said “the business of America is business,” but had no answer when told this was rule by robber barons. They proclaimed that “what is good for GM is good for America,” but could not defend GM’s profits. They spoke up for “capitalism” but wilted when told that it did not make everyone equal. They often maintained that America should pursue its own interests, but could not say why those interests did not include American soldiers dying for foreigners overseas.

Implicitly, they admitted that individualism unredeemed by sacrificial handouts is selfish, and everyone knew that there was no moral goodness in that.

So the right grew shameful of its own principles. In order to be moral they said “me too” to the demands of the left, bickering over methods and degrees. The welfare state grew exponentially under both parties, since the right could not oppose it on principle, and often tried to pre-empt the proposals of the left. All the momentum was on the side of increasing redistribution and foreign sacrifices. Opposition was fleeting, and coalesced only vaguely when the Republicans were forced into opposition.

The twentieth-century marks the Triumph of the Left. Everywhere socialism was tried openly it failed openly—but wherever it was smuggled in, it became the new norm. Those on the right became the most expert smugglers, for they had the most to hide.

The right failed to comprehend fully that by the time of Vietnam, the left—now the New Left—was intellectually and morally bankrupt. Outside of Berkeley and Boston, no one believed in socialism any more, and the New Leftists had only the appeal to altruism (and opposition to the “establishment”) to disarm their opponents. But this was enough, for the right agreed with this basic moral position. In the following decades the ideal of socialism died, exposed as nihilism, but the leftists achieved a Pyrrhic victory, for the right continued to accept the principles established by the left. The Republicans saw no place else to go.

Under the leadership of Ronald Reagan (once a New Deal Democrat), they equated freedom with economics, admitted their obligation to help the oppressed world-wide, and accepted Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms as institutionalized by Johnson’s Great Society. Morally, they accepted the righteousness of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” a corollary of “give unto the poor.” Coming to see the welfare state as an irrevocable fact of nature, they acted pragmatically. Ceasing to oppose it, they set out to manage it. Their gang, they said, could do a better job with the nitty-gritty of running it.

The result has been further decay of political freedom, in thought and in practice. As President Bush said in his second inaugural address, “In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time.” This is an explicit statement that the “broader” idea of freedom is not political, but economic, and that freedom is implemented by extending the scope of coerced redistribution.

Recognizing the need to defend America, they accepted the foreign policy vision of Wilson, and set out to bring freedom and prosperity to overseas peoples. “Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon,” Mr. Bush continued. “In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another.” It means exposing the checkbooks—and the bodies—of individual Americans to foreign strangers in need, while making deals with our enemies. This, we are told, is advancing freedom across the globe.

They differentiated themselves by opposing abortion, defending prayer in government schools, advocating grants to faith-based organizations, upholding censorship of the media, and making a federal case out of personal marriage decisions. These once-marginal issues have become the issues of passion for the right. Their traditional principles—limited government, and defense of American interests—have mutated into alien forms that once gestated in the left. The clarion call of religious altruism as a principle of government policy has become the moral standard by which they now claim political superiority over the old, Marxist altruism.

Accepting the surrender terms dictated by the left, and in search of a moral center to justify them, the right focused tightly on its fundamentalist core, and redefined itself, into the New Right. This moral center is found in what can now be called civic religion: a new infusion of religious faith into American politics as an ideological principle. No longer is one’s faith—or rejection of faith—a personal matter. It is a matter of political principle, a campaign slogan and the sine qua non of a successful election strategy.

This is the New Right.

The tattered remnants of individual liberty still appear in their words—sometimes spoken with passionate eloquence—but always lying in the Procrustean bed of governmental altruism. Calling it “freedom,” they further socialize America from the inside out, under the impetus of “compassionate conservatism.” Calling it the “free market” they rip out the economic heart of capitalism—private property—and replace it with a new fascism: private “ownership” with a government subsidy. Calling it a “strong national defense,” they excise the motive of self-interest, replace it with responsibilities to others, and extend the welfare state globally.

This is the key to the Redefinition of the Right. Their language continues to pay homage to liberty, but the meanings of its concepts are now quite different. The confusion flowing from this redefinition is nothing less than an assault on our cognitive capacity to grasp the meaning of freedom.

With the collapse of the New Left and the rise of the New Right, the political scenario today is the reverse of fifty years ago. Although the Republicans are split on many issues, the New Right is in a leadership position. It has claimed the moral high road, and is setting the agenda for the next decade at least. It is now the left that seeks to co-opt the moral position of the right, and is beginning to “me-too” their mantras. Suddenly Hillary Clinton is a “praying person” who sees support for “faith-based initiatives” as a means to victory.

Looking ahead, as the left struggles to claim the moral ideal of the right—the same altruism by decree, now sold in even older bottles—it may mutate into a form sculpted by the right. If no rational alternative comes to the forefront, the twenty-first-century may mark the triumph of the New Right, wearing the cloak of freedom’s name but meaning something very different.

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Despite its deceptively warm-and-fuzzy public image, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has donated over $150,000 to criminal activists -- including those jailed for arson, burglary, and even attempted murder. In 2001, PETA donated $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front, a criminal organization that the FBI classifies as "domestic terrorists." And since 2000, rank-and-file PETA activists have been arrested over 80 times for breaking various laws during PETA protests. Charges included felony obstruction of government property, criminal mischief, assaulting a cabinet official, felony vandalism, performing obscene acts in public, destruction of federal property, and burglary.

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[W]hat possible moral basis there actually may be for capitalism is badly let down by the author's shambolic arguments. Robert Tracinski rejects the notion that capitalism is a system we must tolerate simply because it's proved the most practical - he wants to make the far stronger claim that, far from being a necessary evil, capitalism is moral. As he does so, he bemoans the intrusions of government into the generous, life-giving projects of the all-healing market.

Simply put (though I don't think I can put it quite as simply as the original article), all the great things of our world are the product of capitalist freedom of thought and action, as Tracinski explains in his gauchely sexist language. Scientists cure us of disease, farmers grow us an abundance of food and business people create jobs and a panoply of terrific products. It's a jolly old world, isn't it?

Even better, less you suspect that this capitalist dream-world involves a nasty, immoral lust for money at any point, Tracinski hastens to point out the overarching moral of the story. Where business and the freedom of capitalism intersect, there blossoms virtue. It is the careful thought each business leader puts into their work, in order to prevent that ever morally watchful capital going elsewhere, that is the essence of this virtue.

Further more, as we learn, "The only way to respect this virtue is to leave the businessman free to act on his own judgment." And so, children, I hope now you can see the godless folly of interventionist government.

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