Category Archives: Libertarian

Two years ago this month, as the COVID-19 virus spread uncontrollably through large swaths of the country, much of our society shut down. Church services were suspended. We all learned about "spiritual communion" and how to attend Mass via Zoom. We Catholics also learned that we have not done a very good job explaining what the church teaches about conscience.

No one is better at turning church teaching into gibberish than Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas. He repeatedly encouraged people to not get vaccinated and that a well-formed Catholic conscience was grounds for anexemption from any vaccine mandates. Poor thing, now he is posting dumb tweets about the convoys of fake truckers protesting in Canada and the U.S.: "The freedom convoy is deeply rooted in the basic values that have built the world we take for granted,"he tweeted. "We must be free to make choices for our own lives." Where is the balance? Where is the "both/and" that has always characterized the Catholic intellectual tradition?

Strickland was not alone. Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services argued that soldiers who are Catholic could refuse the vaccine.In a statementthat noted the Vatican said the vaccines were morally permissible, yet some soldiers still claimed a conscientious objection to receiving the vaccine, Broglio said, "This circumstance raises the question of whether the vaccine's moral permissibility precludes an individual from forming a sincerely held religious belief that receiving the vaccine would violate his conscience. It does not."

The bishops of Coloradoissued a statementthat sounded like it had been written with help from the libertarian Acton Institute, or maybe from the Republican National Committee. "We always remain vigilant when any bureaucracy seeks to impose uniform and sweeping requirements on a group of people in areas of personal conscience," they wrote, without explaining how public health measures during a pandemic can be anything but "uniform and sweeping" or whether their sweeping claim about bureaucracies applies to, say, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Let's be clear. Conscience is not the right to do whatever you want. Conscience is the opposite of self-will. Conscience is the voice of God in our hearts, helping us to apply the divine law to the moral choices we make. The caricature of conscience as a person with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other is just that, a caricature, but it is closer to the mark than the three statements cited above. Conscience is God's voice telling us to follow his law in a specific situation, thereby creating or strengthening the disposition to make virtuous choices.

No Catholic is more associated with the idea of conscience than St. John Henry Newman, and no comment of his about conscience is more famous than the quip with which he ended the fifth section of his famous "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk": "Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards." Indeed, it is black letter Catholic theology that a person is always bound to follow their conscience, even if it is in error. Just so, the obligation to form one's conscience is grave indeed.

It is an earlier passage in the famous letter of Newman's that almost seems to reach through the ages and speak to us today:

The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor expedience, nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor State convenience, nor fitness, order, and thepulchrum. Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and, even though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have a sway.

If the great Newman had written nothing else, if he had not written the sermon "The Second Spring," nor the poem "The Dream of Gerontius," nor his "Apologia Pro Vita Sua," the phrase "Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ" would have earned him a place in the pantheon of great English writers.

The divine law contains many dictates, and during a pandemic, none have greater claim upon our decisions than the common good. It is the nature of a public health emergency that bad decisions by any one individual can have disastrous consequences on others, often people they do not even know. As we discovered, overburdened hospitals had to postpone important and needed surgeries for others becausethere was no room for non-COVID patients. As San Diego Bishop Robert McElroytold U.S. Catholic last year, "[People] do not have a right to go against the common good. That's not Catholic teaching."

It is astonishing to me that the anti-vaxxers used the exact same logic and language as the supporters of abortion rights "My body, my choice" yet, so far as I know, no prominent personage in either camp found in this strange commonality a reason to reconsider their position. Libertarian ideologues prate on about conscience but they are allergic to moral scruples. There is nothing liberal or Catholic about libertarianism. I repeat: There is nothing liberal or Catholic about libertarianism.

Conscience is not something lightly asserted. One wrestles with one's conscience. Conscience challenges us to act in ways that go against our interest. Conscience often exacts a high price for following it. I submit that no one in this great free country of ours should be tied to a gurney and vaccinated against their will, to be sure. The right to bodily integrity, a right that is foundational to so many legal and moral maxims, demands as much. But, the refusal to get vaccinated allows society to protect itself and demand that the unvaccinated no longer participate in, say, a church service or the military or any communal activity at which they risk spreading the virus to others.

One of the worst abuses of the idea of conscience in recent years came in 2015 when Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan, the papal nuncio in Washington, introduced Pope Francis to Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses and went to jail after she refused to let another clerk issue the licenses. The now-disgraced former nuncio told the pope that Davis was a conscientious objector. But, as I observed at the time:

If the pope wanted to show support for the right of conscientious objection, it would have been better to have him meet with a conscientious objector. Davis lost her right to consider herself a conscientious objector when she forbade other people from issuing the marriage licenses she did not wish to issue herself. Davis was not jailed for practicing her religion. She was jailed for forcing others to practice her religion. She is a public official with a sworn duty. If she cannot carry out that duty, she should seek a work-around or an accommodation, which is what she ended up accepting, or she could have done what a real person of conscience would do: quit.

Conscience, like faith, makes demands and there is nothing that is more damaging to both than people who try and invoke it on the cheap. As we heard this week in the Gospels, people who wish to follow Jesus must take up their cross, not wave it in other people's faces.

We have learned a great deal about our society during this pandemic. The Holy Father addressed many of the challenges the pandemic highlighted in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti. The fact that the church in America has been unable to articulate a Catholic understanding of conscience in our hyper-individualistic society is one of the challenges we knew existed before the pandemic but which has been shown to be even worse than feared because of COVID-19. Especially as the bishops begin to rewrite their quadrennial document on voting, "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," it is vital that the bishops, with the assistance of theologians, search for better ways to teach what the church believes about conscience.

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What two years of COVID-19 have taught us about the abuse of conscience - National Catholic Reporter

Along with millions across the globe, I have watched with horror as the Russian military invaded Ukraine. Its clear that Russias intervention in Syria on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, with its lack of restraint against civilians and bombing of medical facilities, was a dry run for the Ukraine operation. The difference is that in Syria, Russian troops act at the invitation of Assad, so their presence there is not considered illegal under international law, even if some of their actions have been.

Ukraine, however, is a sovereign country, and with this invasion, Vladimir Putin is now directly contesting the legitimacy of any post-WWII rules-based international order. When the U.S. launched its illegal invasion of Iraq, it recognized that its infringement of Iraqi domestic sovereignty would at least require some semblance of international legitimacy; thats what brought us Colin Powells shameful appearance at the U.N. falsely claiming evidence of Saddam Husseins possession of weapons of mass destruction. This was a pretense for imperialist invasion, one accompanied by a worldwide program of secret detentions, torture, massive civilian casualties, and immense war-profiteering. Putin has certainly recognized American hypocrisy when it comes to the defense of human rights and the rule of law, and so no amount of moral outrage or argument is likely to have any effect upon his actions in Ukraine, even if the principle of sovereignty is constantly invoked.

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It also clearly underscores the present limitations of sovereignty, too, when it comes to protecting people. Imposing sanctions on the wealth of Russias so-called oligarchs, presumably in order that they might exert pressure on Putin to back down, is symptomatic of a very serious weakness within the present international order: the increasing sovereignty of private wealth and private interests at the expense of people everywhere. If such wealth is effectively sovereign, operating at the root of decisions about states domestic and foreign policies, then most people are left without real representation.

In the U.S., neither political party has done anything about the immense influence of private money upon our domestic affairs. We have nurtured an anti-democratic oligarchic class of our own, one that now has far more influence over the conditions of citizens lives than those citizens themselves.

In the U.K., private finance dedicated around two-thirds of its political spending in support of Brexit. Within the alternative investment industry like private equity and hedge fundsa strong presence in Boris Johnsons governmentsupport was even higher, as much as 94 percent. Marlne Benquet and Tho Bourgeron have written that these Brexiteer financiers sought to transform the City [of London] into a kind of offshore investment platform, free from EU rules and operating as a fiscal asylum zone, akin to Singapore-on-Thames.

Thanks to our current global financial system, heads of state and their close associates can easily operate like private, for-profit corporations.

Within this widely shared libertarian vision, unregulated wealth generation is the highest value against which all others shrink. Freedom is for markets, not people; in classic Friedmanesque neoliberal fashion, the citizen is a mere consumer, and all are subordinate to the hierarchical governance of private corporate power.

But protests across the world against Russias brutal incursion, including within Russia itself, are proof of the absurdity of such a view. Ukrainians are not fighting for such a distorted and impoverished view of freedom. And while watching oligarch yachts being seized may be satisfying, it in a sense upholds a separate order that values private wealth and its sovereignty over democracy. Breaking this power and distributing it back to the people will require us to come to terms with the distorting lens of financialization.

THESE DAYS, THE U.S. can hardly be said to export democracy (arguably it does not have one to export). Our chief export is a highly financialized neoliberal ideology. Our culture continues to worship the business acumen of the wealthy even as income inequality has reached unprecedented heights. In practice, this means that the talents of most working Americans are considered inferior to those for whom wealth accumulation is the highest individual moral achievement.

The secretive world of alternative investments like private equity and hedge funds is perhaps the epitome of this worldview. That the head of Blackstone, Steve Schwarzman, can make over a billion dollars in a single year is not proof of his elect status or of some crazed libertarian notion of natural hierarchy; rather, it reflects a dysfunctional, deeply anti-democratic system designed to serve and protect the interests and preferences of its biggest beneficiaries.

Privacy and secrecy are at the center of this ideology of finance, and are an important part of its power.

The scale of Russian oligarchic wealth is similarly astonishing. According to benchmark estimates by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the oligarchs offshore wealth held in assets and private bank accounts abroad is three times larger than Russias net foreign reserves, and roughly equal in size to the total assets of the entire domestic Russian population.

As the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) put it in an important white paper, governments in theory do not operate according to principles of profitability and the maximization of shareholder value. Rather, they ensure the maintenance of public goods for citizens via taxpayer revenues. They must also handle their affairs in a manner that is amenable to public scrutiny and accountability, not least because taxation is a form of involuntary contribution that we cannot simply withdraw at will, as a shareholder in an investment could, except by moving to another local, national, or international jurisdiction. Sovereignty, especially in its liberal democratic and representational forms, has long been understood as something quite different from a private corporation that exists to benefit its investors.

And yet, thanks to our current global financial system, heads of state and their close associates can easily operate far more like private, for-profit corporations. The recent Credit Suisse leaks along with ICIJ investigations like the Pandora Papers, Luxembourg Leaks, Paradise Papers, the FinCEN Files, and the Panama Papers have exposed how many government leaders and their associates have stashed away enormous wealth outside of public scrutiny and often at the expense of their own citizens. The secrecy and lack of regulations both at home and abroad have made it nearly impossible to follow the money. Even the FBI has trouble obtaining information from the secretive private investment fund industry when investigating global money-laundering schemes. This does not bode well for the confiscation of Russian assets.

With the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has confronted the world with a clear vision of privatized, unapologetic sovereignty, one that is not conjured into being via constitutions, but rather emanates from the royalist control central to his personalized, neo-monarchical conception of power. In Syria, he helped Assad brutally maintain power as if the Syrian state and its people were merely a private company. With Ukraine, which he seems to view as his personal property, hes taken that model of governance global.

With the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has confronted the world with a clear vision of privatized, unapologetic sovereignty.

In this context, sanctions against oligarchs have emerged as a key avenue for pressuring Putin to reverse course and stop his illegal invasion. As Sen. Bernie Sanders put it, Incredibly, the 500 richest people in Russia with a net worth of at least $100 million now own more wealth than the bottom 99.8% of Russias population145 million people. This is the type of inequality that exists not just in Russia, but throughout the world. He is correct. This is an enormous global problem, no less relevant in the U.S. than in Russia.

Offshore vehicles used by corporations and the wealthy have (often quite legally) siphoned billions in revenue from jurisdictions all across the globe, rendering the matter of taxation as an involuntary contribution moot. The Tax Justice Network estimated in 2014 that the amount stashed abroad could easily total between $21 trillion and $32 trillion. Banks, financiers, accounting and consulting firms, and lawyers have been and remain complicit in these efforts, operating with a transnational ease and efficacy that youd think would be the envy of the U.N., which has been largely ineffective in resolving global conflicts because of continual clashes within the Security Council.

Sovereignty remains important for the agents of our financialized global system, but not chiefly as protection from outside interferences and the rights of citizens. Rather, sovereignty carries significance chiefly as a means of tax evasion and regulatory arbitrage. Should a global tycoon park assets in a U.S. jurisdiction, like Delaware, Wyoming, or South Dakota, or one offshore, like Cayman, Jersey, or Cyprus? At which countrys banks and financial institutions can the most secrecy and the most advantageous terms be found, and which armies of lawyers, accountants and consultants can best help keep money out of sight, or launder criminally gotten gains?

Contrast this with Ukraine today, where it is clear that sovereignty is something many of its citizens are willing to risk death to preserve. It could well be that the invasion has potentially disrupted the mystique of private finance and the hold it has on us.

Perhaps putting pressure and sanctions on Russias oligarchs will provide a path forward for de-escalation of Putins war. It sounds like a good idea, certainly in comparison with a third world war, and it also has a populist appeal. But without acknowledging and dealing with the underlying problems presented by financialization and its entrenched regimes of secrecy all across the world, I fear that the model of power now presented by Putin will continue to hold peace hostage, something especially dangerous because of the global need for cooperation in confronting climate change. Factually speaking, power today rests disproportionately upon the side of anti-democratic, oligarchically concentrated money and power, aided and abetted by the secretive world of finance. Do we have the will to stand with Ukraine and change course?

Original post:

Putin's Invasion and the Privatization of Political Power - The American Prospect

Speculation surrounds a trio of Republican lawmakers who were the only House members to vote against a resolution to support Ukraine's sovereignty.

The final tally on Wednesday was a near-unanimous vote of 426-3, with the House passing the resolution despite three "no" votes from Representatives Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). The trio have not released official statements on their votes, however, heavy criticism was quickly aimed at all three, with some politicians chastising them for voting against a resolution that received nearly complete bipartisan support.

Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of the most outspoken critics of the current state of his party, tweeted that the trio of no votes was "unreal," adding that "the bright side is over 400 voted yes."

"Dear Gosar, Rosendale, and Massie, you are not anti-war," Kinzinger said in a follow-up tweet.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) tweeted a response to the resolution, calling the no votes from the Republican congressmen "truly despicable behavior."

"Last night, the president spoke of America standing with the wall of strength that is the Ukrainian people," the DCCC said. "Just now, three House Republicans voted NO on a resolution in support of Ukraine."

Amidst the continuing criticism from both sides of the aisle, Massie and Rosendale do not appear to have released any responses to their votes. However, Gosar did reply to Kinzinger's tweet following the vote, saying: "Talk to me when our border is secure."

As the news of the vote made the rounds on social media, some accused the trio of congressmen of aligning with Russia, with one account calling them "pro-Putin MAGA traitors."

In particular, eyes shifted toward Massie and his past sentiments regarding foreign policy and the invasion of Ukraine. This includes his expected Democratic opponent in the upcoming midterms, Matthew Lehman, who tweeted that Massie was "an anarchist hellbent on dismantling a secure and prosperous world order" after he signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to seek congressional approval before engaging in military action.

"Your childish stunts endanger millions of Ukrainians and free people around the world," Lehman added.

Others on social media pointed toward Massie's alleged ties with Russia. In particular, a 2019 article from liberal think tank Think Progress said: "Massie's recent votes in Congress...see the congressman consistently siding with Russia's interests."

The article added that "Massie attended a lavish February 2017 dinner alongside Maria Butina, the Russian agent who...is potentially facing years in prison for serving as an unregistered foreign agent."

Massie has denied having any connections or ties to Russia, and his votes in Congress have been cited as being a result of his libertarian viewpoint.

The motion, H. Res 956, was titled "Supporting the people of Ukraine" and was sponsored by Representative Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. H. Res 956 stressed that "it is the right of all countries to decide their own future, foreign policy, and security arrangements free from outside interference or coercion."

"The House of Representatives demands an immediate cease-fire and the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory," the resolution said, adding that the U.S. "supports, unequivocally, Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

"[The House] states unambiguously that it will never recognize or support any illegitimate Russian-controlled leader or government installed through the use of force, and that only the people of Ukraine can choose their leadership through free and fair democratic elections without foreign interference, intervention, or coercion," the resolution continued. "[The House] stands steadfastly, staunchly, proudly, and fervently behind the Ukrainian people in their fight against the authoritarian Putin regime."

Newsweek has reached out to Massie, Gosar and Rosendale for comment.

Continue reading here:

Why Three Republicans Voted Against House Resolution Standing With Ukraine - Newsweek

Thomas L. Knapp| Reno Gazette Journal

This opinion column was submitted by Thomas L. Knapp,director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

As part of the Westernresponse to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, several regimes acted on Feb.26 to exclude certain Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT)network. As of March 1, Reuters reports, SWIFT says it's awaiting a list of the sanctioned banks so that it can cut them off.

SWIFT is a messaging service that connects banks worldwide. It's not a bank itself. It's not even, strictly speaking, a payment network. It carries instructions for transfers, but the transfers take place via other networks. It's just one moving part in the world's complex finance and trade system.

As with most such measures, giving Russian banks the boot from SWIFTis certain to hurt the sanctioners along with the sanctioned. In this case, the potential victims with the most to lose arethe issuers and holders of U.S. dollars.

The dollar isn'tthe only currency that gets moved using SWIFT, but it's the de facto "global reserve currency" and thus the most affected by such moves. Nearly everyone accepts the dollar. Nearly everyone wants to have a fat stack of dollars on hand. In particular, global trade in oil has been powered by the "petrodollar" for nearly 50 years.

More: Could sanctions against Russia boomerang back on Americans?

If you want to buy a barrel of Brent crude from most sellers, you need to be able to plunk down (as I write this) 105.46 U.S. dollars. Not 395.72 Saudi riyals. Not 7,983.35 Indian rupees. Not 665.78 Chinese yuan. It's $105.46 or no sale.

What happens when one of the world's largest oil producers is 1) cut off from SWIFT; 2) doesn't want U.S. dollars as much as it used to because other sanctions make those dollarsdifficult to spend; and 3) has trading partners who are watching these sanctions and fear they could be the next victims? Well, this:

A "rupee-rouble trade arrangement may get a push now that Russia is out of SWIFT," reportsThe Times of India.China will presumably likewise increase its yuan-ruble trade with Russia.

The Times of India article reveals that this isn't a sudden development: "India had entered into a rupee-rouble trade arrangement with Russia earlier to shield the two nations from unilateral sanctions from the United States."

What makes the dollar valuable? The same thing that makes anything valuable: People wanting it. Between China and India, more than a quarter of the world's population are in the process of wanting the dollar less than they used to. That, in turn, makes every dollar in your pocket worth less than it once was.

In the short term, the SWIFT kick and other sanctions may hurt Russia more than they hurt you. But the uncontested reign of the U.S. dollar among global currencies seems to be nearing its end, in part because the U.S. government is driving the world away from it with the constant threat of sanctions.

The smart move for Americans? Hold as few dollars as you can get by on. Trade your dollars for gold, silverand cryptocurrency while they're still worth something, to someone, somewhere.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Opinion: SWIFT kick aimed at Russia, but it also will hit the US dollar | Thomas L. Knapp - Reno Gazette Journal

Former U.S intelligence consultant Edward Snowden,on Sunday, laid out the cause of his silence over Russias invasion of Ukraine.

What Happened: Snowden said he has lost confidence that sharing his thinking on this particular topic continues to be useful because he "called it wrong."

Snowden also took aim at people he described as "concern-trolling ghouls" in his tweet.

Why It Matters: On Feb. 19, Snowden had tweeted that the possibility of an attack on Kyiv was difficult for him to contemplate. Snowdens comments were made in response to President Joe Biden saying that an attack on the Ukrainian capital was days away.

At the time, he pointed out that Kyiv is bigger than Sarajevo, Grozny and Fallujah all cities that have experienced war in the preceding years.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced a Special Military Operation in Ukraine on Feb. 23, shortly after which explosions were heard in Kyiv.

Some commentators on Twitter called out Snowden for misreading the situationbut he receive word of support from the Libertarian Party of Tennessee.

Despite the relative silence of some like Snowdenon the Russia-Ukraine war, companies like Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: FB), and Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) have been responding to Russias aggression against its neighbor.

Several Russian-born personalities like Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) co-creator Vitalik Buterin and Chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov have also voiced their opposition against the ongoing conflict.

Read Next: As Ukraine's Wealthy Scrambled To Buy Crypto Ahead Of Russian Invasion, Tether Became More Valuable Than Dollar

Photo: Courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia

2022 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Edward Snowden Sends Out First Tweet Since Russia's Ukraine Invasion Says This Is Why He Has Been Silent - Benzinga

In 2015, the libertarian Czech politician Vt Jedlicka founded the Free Republic of Liberland on three square miles of uninhabited and disputed land between Croatia and Serbia. The micronation lacks infrastructure, diplomatic recognition, and entry from its neighboring countries, but is quickly taking shape in the metaverse thanks to a dramatic virtual scheme by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) principal Patrik Schumacher. In his eyes, the would-be country is a futuristic oasis sporting a buzzy NFT trading room and sweeping office towers, all rendered in Hadids trademark style of parametricism. It was time to turn ideas into something more concrete, Jedlicka tells Quartz. Its important to show to the world that were serious about starting development in Liberland.

Jedlicka and Schumacher both intend for Liberlands ambitious virtual architecture to become a template for the micronations eventual physical presence. It will also serve as a testing ground for ZHAs ongoing exploration of parametricism, uninhibited by budgets, physics, or safety codes. For this reason, Schumacher insists that architecture firmsespecially younger onesshould take the metaverse seriously in its nascent stages. (The firm recently presented NFTism, a virtual gallery during Art Basel Miami Beach that explored social interaction and architecture in the metaverse.) Speculated to be a multitrillion-dollar opportunity and one of the biggest disruptions to humanity, the network of virtual worlds has been criticized as overhyped and a nightmare to regulate.

Regardless, Liberlands promise of a digital paradise seems to be catching onmore than 7,000 e-citizens have signed up on the platform Mytaverse with 780,000 applications in the backlog. While the end goal of achieving international recognition from most of the UNs member states still seems far off, Jedlika recently cut a deal with Haiti and was recognized by Somaliland a few years ago.

Surface Says: Micronations have been a trivial curiosity since they first emerged in the 1970s. Will the virtual version finally gain real traction? Were not sure what Liberlands prospects are for the future, but recreating it in the physical world with Zaha Hadid Architects seems like a pipe dreamnot unlike the widely mocked Cryptoland cartoon that portrayed a private Fijian island as a crypto-utopia. (Though its definitely worth a hate watch!)

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A Micronation by Zaha Hadid Architects Is Forming in the Metaverse - Surface Magazine

The beauty of being a card-carrying libertarian is that you can justify anything so long as it benefits numero uno.

For example, take Tiny Tim Wilson MP. The self-described libertarian that has spent much of his career fastened to the taxpayer tit.

For years, Mr Wilson bent over backward to discredit climate science at the IPA which elevated his status in the LNP while it set the species on course for extinction. A few years ago, Mr Wilson was a prominent proponent for same-sex marriage and he duly tied the knot. Yet he was recently conspicuously missing in action when five Coalition MPs crossed the floor to kill the Morrison Governments attempt to legalise the persecution of gay and trans kids by sleaze cults misrepresenting themselves as houses of worship.

Today the media reports another of Tiny Tims libertarian escapades:

[in] an email to constituents in support of local residents spying on each other at a potentially eye-watering cost.

You will now be seeing visible signs through the letterbox, he wrote to Goldstein residents about supporters of the prominent former ABC reporter and The New Daily columnist Zoe Daniel, an independent candidate who is challenging Mr Wilson in Goldstein at the upcoming election.

It is unlawful to erect signs until after the election has been called.

They are ignoring Council. They dont care if they break the law.

Mr Wilson ended his letter by inviting Goldstein residents to report those exercising their rights to freedom of political communication in, he said, contravention to local by-laws directly to him on a Parliament-provided email address.

That is despite the fact that not far from Mr Wilsons electorate, paid billboards featuring Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and announcing he is delivering for Kooyong are difficult to miss.

Contacted for comment, Mr Wilson denied he was betraying the laissez faire philosophy he has advocated so sincerely, but admitted to working with local government authorities to enforce regulations on signage.

Council has advised candidates that planning law does not permit election signage on peoples homes outside the formal campaign period, he told The New Daily.

We are complying with the law.

I feel sorry for those households about to be fined nearly $1000 each in involuntary campaign expenses because their candidate is knowingly encouraging them to break the law, but after Zali Steggall deliberately split donations to subvert electoral law no one should be surprised.

It doesnt sound like Mr Wilson feels sorry for them. It sounds like Mr Wilson is gleefully aiming to unleash Big Brother upon the front lawns of his neighbours because their views, protected by Wilsons heart-felt libertarianism, disagree with his.

Thats his right. There is no rule saying that one gay dude needs to prevent another gay dude from being burned at the stake. Nor that one citizen has to defend anothers right to freely express his political viewpoint. Nor that science should play a role in saving the species from extinction. Nor that a libertarian should be standing on his own two feet rather than sucking voraciously at the taxpayer tit.

However, what we can observe, is that none of these views anti-science climate change paranoia; the persecution of those deemed sexually deviant by sleaze cultists masquerading as clergymen, the summoning of Big Brother to crush freedom of political expression and plundering public monies are very modern, nor very liberal nor very libertarian!

So, in the name of clarity, I suggest a few slight alterations to Mr Wilsons campaign collateral for May this year:

He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.

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Libertarian, Tiny Tim Wilson, turns Big Brother to save job - MacroBusiness

Imagine a country that promised young people exciting careers in a multi-billion-dollar industry in exchange for physical protection services, and where the marketable degrees and high-paid jobs were for becoming mercenaries to escort fellow citizens as they commuted and shopped, or else to guard the premises of big banks and corporations. Does this country have a government, you might ask? This is Somalia, right? No, this is the United States. And the industry is cybersecurity.

Securing U.S. interests in the 21st century will mean adapting to the reality of cyberspaces evolution from its brief age of innocence in the 1990s. The United States back then promoted the internet with a policy to advance Western visions of societal openness, civil transparency, and global commerce. In the last decade, however, U.S. adversaries have wielded cyberspace as an instrument of statecraft to contest that vision. Headline after headline proves cyberspace to be a fifth domain of competition and conflict (after land, sea, air, and space), differing from the other domains only in that it is manmade and thus inherently political.

Improving national cyber defenses requires American policymakers to reshape the nations relationship with the internet. For that to happen, Americans must admit that wholesale and uncritical adoption of digital connectivity entailed unforeseen and unacceptably risky cyber dependencies in every dimension of public and private life. There is a tradeoff between digital openness and cyber security, and we must understand that the nation allowed strategic vulnerabilities to emerge because we opted for openness in a domain ripe for weaponization.

How we should pivot to better footing in this fifth domain of competition and conflict is the fundamental problem of American cyber statecraft. Three scenarios, pursued as industrial and technology policy individually or orchestrated across overlapping time frames, suggest approaches to this problem: 1) The government defends critical national assets by taking the lead in insulating or decoupling them from the internet; 2) The United States becomes the angel investor for a more secure internet architecture; 3) Private software developers of American information and communications technology (ICT) companies meet stretch goals set by the government for designing, producing, and selling more secure software.

Bolstering U.S. cyber defenses entails a political choice to realign the internet to American interests in national security. We have been here before. The United States created the internet to advance national security and only later promoted it with a vision of digital openness and globalization. The predecessor to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) built the internets foundation in an effort by the Pentagon to ensure continuity of operations in the event of nuclear attack. Following U.S. victory in the Cold War, policymakers in the 1990s pivoted to a peacetime application of the internet by creating a legal framework to encourage private competition and openness in a domestic market of telecommunications and ICT companies that became internet service providers (ISPs).

Thus, what began as a U.S. shield against nuclear decapitation became an American tool for shaping the world in its image of openness, transparency, and commerce. For example, the Federal Communications Commission exempted ISPs from costs associated with long-distance telephone carriers and interpreted the Telecommunications Act of 1996 such that broadband networks rivaled regional phone companies. Congress also passed the Communications Decency Act in 1996 with a stipulation that exempted ISPs from liability for third-party content posted on their platforms, effectively licensing a digital commons for the free exchange of ideas. Finally, the United States in 1997 used diplomacy to spur the reach of the internet worldwide when it negotiated commitments from 67 countries through the World Trade Organization to ensure commercial competition in burgeoning telecommunications markets. These policies opened the world to a globalized internet offered by American ISPs and ICT companies.

Most debates about the future of the internet neglect this political origin story of cyberspace, biasing U.S. policymakers and private stakeholders away from conceivable (albeit radical) options to improve national cyber security. A universalist, techno-optimist myth about the internets emergence and nonpolitical naturecentered in a libertarian imagination about Silicon Valley entrepreneursnaively ignores the underlying national security interests implicated by a U.S.-fostered cyberspace. As told by technology enthusiasts and big ICT companies and ISPs, this myth omits the presence and parentage of U.S. industrial and technology policy and consequently is silent about the internets inherent political nature.

Digital natives such as Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, who were raised in the 1990s era of a U.S.-directed internet and now head important American tech companies, assumed that liberalizationsocietal openness, civil transparency, globalized commerceare nonpolitical givens or enduring universals of the digital age. They resist renegotiation of the internets regulation or governance by the United States as unnecessary or harmful because anything that impedes worldwide connectivity and opennessas they define itis bad. Meanwhile, every innovative use of the internet as a political warfare weapon or measure of internal population control by states like Russia or China is a shock to them.

This techno-optimist myth, and the commercial interests it serves, is delaying the United States from adjusting to the reality that the liberal digital order it fostered leveled the playing field of cyber warfare. It keeps American statesmen spellbound from conceiving how the internet could be otherwise and from thinking in terms of cyber statecraft. How could our experience of the internet be otherwise?

Because cyberspace grew from a U.S. public-private partnership that reflected American interests at the time in openness, updating that partnerships terms to acknowledge new interests in security is surely legitimate. Of course, the U.S. does not have the same shaping power over the internet as it did in the 1990s, because the internet now is a complex global system in which foreign companies and governments participate. Therefore, improving the nations cyber security requires thinking harder about what it would really take to make the U.S. public and private sectors more secure. A renegotiated public-private partnership between government and American industry would be necessary for any strategy to achieve this.

The first area to improve is the cyber security of critical infrastructure connected to the internet. Specifically, the government could assert itself as the primus inter pares defender of American cyberspace for a designated subset of assets among our 16 critical infrastructure sectors. In this area, the government might go beyond its current voluntary and cooperative head coach role to be the team lead network defender.

As a start, the government could supervise the detachment of critical national infrastructure from the internet and subsidize the creation of air-gapped intranet systems to ensure separation of their operational technology (e.g. programmable logic controllers) from the worldwide internet. To patrol the internal cyber borders of these intranet systems, a Cyber National Guardwhich is developing alreadycould deploy or deputize federal watch operators in control rooms of designated national assets. Many companies fail to report breaches to the authorities out of fear of market loss or because they misrepresented their cybersecurity standards to the government. Thus, relieving companies operating critical infrastructure from the cost of employing elite cybersecurity professionals, whose jobs do not add to the quarterly bottom line, makes common sense.

The second area to improve is the cyber architecture upholding public internet traffic. Better digital forensics and proactive scanning of network traffic for botnets and malware attacks are needed, for example through methods that scale up deep packet inspection. If the United States were to be the angel investor for a more secure internet architecture, it could shift the balance of cyber power to network defenders. Although no device examining cyberattacks and identifying the attackers intrusion set in real time is likely to be available before a breakthrough in artificial intelligence-assisted computer network operations, innovations on fundamental data transmission processes could boost the quality of digital forensics. Perhaps DARPA, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation, could intensify the provision of seed capital for research and development to improve digital transmissions into data packets containing traceable signatures.

An internet architecture that shifts the balance of cyber power is vital because critical national functions depend on ICT companies and their network defenders, who often have better insight than the government into hostile hacking operations. Most government agencies outside the military and intelligence community connect to the internet, and are regularly attacked by cyber-intruders from around the world. Even air-gapped intranet systems such as classified government networks protect computers reliant on private vendors with global supply chains for updates, patches, and next generation operating systems (e.g. Windows 11), which creates attack vectors from the outside. For example, the 2020 cyber-intrusion into the SolarWinds company that gained Russias foreign intelligence service access to sensitive U.S. government unclassified systems, and which forced the Pentagon to shut down its classified communications that were running SolarWinds software, demonstrated the threat to state agencies from a digital supply chain attack on a private company.

In the third area, the government could challenge and incentivize private sector software developers and ISPs to make a generational improvement in the integrity of their software code. Malicious cyber activity is currently so easy because private sector software engineers do not prioritize information security when building software and computer network systems. If computer engineerings quality and security controls were applied to civil engineering, the everyday collapse of bridges and tunnels would spark a national uproar. Yet, American users of digital infrastructure simply accept as normal the crashes and breaches of faulty software design.

Edward Amoroso, a former senior vice president and chief information security officer at AT&T,stated that the most valuable contribution government can make to cyber security involves providing incentives for software makers to create more correct code. One way to achieve that is to award grants and accolades to software developers that program with secure development coding standards and practices and design with zero trust architecture. For instance, the National Institute of Standards and Technology could sponsor a market challenge to the first software developer to use artificial intelligence or machine learning to reproduce an operating system with more secure code.

Shifting the nations footing in cyberspace from uncritical connectivity toward determined security means accepting the political nature of the internet. Cyberspace is the fifth domain of geopolitical competition and conflict, not merely a virtual marketplace for private commerce. Serious proposals that would make the American public and private sectors secure demand that statesmen accept geopolitical realism about international relations and reject the techno-optimist myth of the Internet. To resolve the fundamental problem of American cyber statecraft, industrial and technology policy for a more secure future is the only choice we have left.

Nathan Hitchenis a writer living in Virginia. He is a graduate of the Institute of World Politics, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Rutgers University.

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Digital Libertarians and the Problem of Cyber Statecraft - The American Conservative

The American appetite for a third political party is greater than ever, but getting a third-party candidate on the ballot in Georgia is nearly impossible. With the exception of the Libertarian Party, candidates from parties beyond the Democrats and Republicans rarely make it on statewide or local ballots.

Our ballot access laws are some of the most draconian in the country, Jason Pye explained to Atlanta Civic Circle. Until earlier this month, he served on the Libertarian Party of Georgias executive committee, and hes also been its legislative director.

Gaining a foothold on a Georgia ballot is an arduous and expensive process, if youre not a Democrat or Republican. For prospective third-party candidates, it starts with collecting thousands of signatures to a ballot access petition. For statewide races, candidates must garner signatures from at least 1% of active Georgia voters. That can mean tens of thousands of signatures. The petition then must be validated by the Secretary of States office before the candidate gets to see their name on a ballot.

Its so extraordinarily difficult to do those petition drives, Pye said. This is why the Green Party, the Constitution Party, and other third parties dont have ballot access in Georgia.

However, the Libertarian Party is fielding a slate of candidates for the upcoming midterm races, after holding its nominating convention in January. They are vying for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, as well as seats in Congress and the Georgia legislature.

The Libertarian Party has been able to garner the support it needs statewide to continue to get on ballots, Pye explained, by winning over 1% of the vote in many statewide races. They still have to do petition drives when running for federal office such as U.S. Congress.

After bouncing back and forth between the Libertarian and Republican parties for years,

Pye said the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year prompted him to rejoin the Libertarians.

It also led the 41-year old public policy lobbyist to move to Washington, D.C. for a new job as director of rule of law initiatives for Due Process Institute, a bi-partisan, criminal justice reform nonprofit. Thats a bit of a shift from his old job as vice president of legislative affairs for FreedomWorks, a conservative-libertarian advocacy group with the slogan of lower taxes, less government, more freedom.

Pye talked to Atlanta Civic Circle about the two-party system (It sucks.), why third parties cant gain ballot access, and how to change that. .

The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Tammy Joyner: A recent Gallup poll said 62% of Americans think our traditional two-party system is functioning so poorly that we need a third party. How difficult is it to get on the ballot in Georgia if youre not a Democrat or Republican?

Jason Pye: Most people are looking for another viable option for a political party. Its extraordinarily difficult to get on the ballot though, particularly in Georgia. You have to get, I think, 1% of all registered voters in Georgia to sign petitions, and then the Secretary of State has to validate the signatures.

It can be a very hard and very time-consuming thing to do. Not to mention expensive.

So to get on a ballot, youd have to spend a lot of money?

I would say several thousand [dollars] and thats if you want to pay. If you rely on volunteers, youre completely at the behest of people who show up to collect signatures. Ive done petition signature gathering. It is not a fun process.

So thats kind of what youre up against when youre getting signatures or trying to get on the ballot as a candidate for the Libertarian Party or any third partyor even as a political independent, who doesnt want to run with a party next to their name.

How many third-party candidates have succeeded at getting on the Georgia ballot in the past few years?

The first political campaign I worked on was in 2004. I was 23 years old and it was for a guy running for the statehouse in Henry County. He paid people to get signatures for him, and he got on the ballot as a Libertarian. He got like 4% of the vote.

But it hasnt been easy to do in the last several years. I dont know of a third-party candidate in Georgia who has gotten on the ballot in the last decade who was not running in a special election. In special elections, signature requirements do not apply.

So even though most Americans are dissatisfied with the two-party system, youre saying we have to jump through hoops to get a third-party candidate on the ballot in Georgia. What can people do to change that? Would you have to go to the legislature?

Thats right. As Ive noted, Georgia has some of the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country, if not the most restrictive.

Oddly enough, Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives David Ralston -before he became speaker carried one of those [ballot access] bills, but [the Republicans] are not interested in pursuing that now, especially now that he is in power. Youre in a situation where the legislature is not willing to move on something like that, simply because of whos in power.

Is there a future for third parties? There would have to be some pretty significant changes to election law for that to happen, to address ballot access laws in Georgia and elsewhere.

How likely is that to happen?

Its really tough to say. The courts can get involved. Unfortunately, the 11th Circuit shut down one particular case in Georgia [challenging ballot access laws]. So its almost certainly going to have to be done legislatively and thats probably not going to happen anytime soon.

So this really has never been about what voters want, has it?

To a large degree, it is. But its really hard to sort of parse through that because its a lot more complicated. I didnt vote for Biden or Trump because they both sucked. Same with [2016 presidential candidate Hillary] Clinton. I voted third-party for Gary Johnson in 2016. I actually wrote in someone in 2020. I have no problem voting third party or writing someone in.

Whats the main problem with the two-party electoral system?

There are two problems. First, Republicans and Democrats waste too much time going for the margins. They seek out the blind partisans who are going to vote for the R or the D, no matter whos on the ballot.

Number two is the way we create our congressional districts. They carve the districts out to guarantee a partisan outcome. Whether Republican or Democrat, if whoevers running is in a district that was created for them, or for their partythey dont need my vote to win.

That creates frustration for the voters. So, in some respects, for the two major parties, its not about the voters.

What have you learned from all of this?

The two-party system doesnt work. It is intended to ensure certain outcomes.

Ranked-choice voting is a way to go. You allow people to vote their conscience. They put their choices in order. We are in the middle of a political realignment right now and we have been for several years. The question is, when is the realignment complete?

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What Ive Learned: Jason Pye on creating viable third parties - Atlanta Civic Circle

It was supposed to be a chance to hear candidates running for various state and regional offices, sign petitions to get them on the ballot in the spring or in at least one case in the fall and have a slice of pizza.

There was pizza, but because the petitioning window for the spring primary had been moved, the only petitions available were for a seat on the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Student Co-ops board of directors.

There still were candidates who showed up anyway Wednesday, two for state House and two for governor, to address some 20 people taking part in IUP Votes second annual Pizza and Petitions event.

Three political parties were represented, including Republicans John Ventre for governor and incumbent Jim Struzzi for state House, Democrat Brian Doyle for state House and Libertarian Joe Soloski for governor.

We need to turn government in Pennsylvania on its ear, said Soloski, who was a certified public accountant in Kittanning for 30 years before moving seven years ago to State College.

I want to fundamentally change Pennsylvania government, Soloski said, pledging on day one in office to take a 65 percent pay cut, cut the state budget by 5 percent and press for term limits of eight years in any state office.

It would change Pennsylvanias top office from having the third highest salary among governors in the 50 states, to being the lowest paid in the country, even at barely under $70,000, Soloski told the IUP Votes audience.

Hed also cut the pay, per diem rates and benefits for the highest paid legislature in the nation, the General Assembly.

Also from nearby is Hempfield Township, Westmoreland County, resident Ventre, who calls himself a Tea Party Patriot, wants to cut state spending by 5 percent, cut business taxes from 10 to 5 percent, and reduce the size of the General Assembly from 253 members to 78 (67 representatives, 11 senators).

There are clear differences between Soloski and Ventre, one of a long list of Republicans in the hunt.

Soloski said his party has supported LGBTQ rights since its formation 50 years ago, calling it a matter of personal liberty, and told the audience, we want to stay out of your lives.

Ventre recalled the traditional national motto of From Many, One, or E Pluribus Unum, and said race and gender would be removed from all applications from day one.

Both stressed the Second Amendment to the Constitution, with Soloski saying, I want to see Pennsylvania become a constitutional carry state, without any restrictions.

Ventre also had clear differences with some in the audience, who laughed when he referred to Marxism. Ventre said he opposes the progressive movement, and told the audience, this is not the America I grew up in.

Why are you even here? Democratic 62nd District state House candidate Doyle asked. Stop wasting our time.

Ventre also said he was the only candidate to say during recent gubernatorial debates that Joe Biden did not win the (2020 presidential) election. He also said Donald Trump had the right policies as president.

(Russian President Vladimir) Putin would not be doing what he is doing if Trump was still in office, Ventre said.

The Hempfield Township Republican also questioned why others in the GOP championed a Democratic talking point in Act 77 of 2019, a voting rights law declared unconstitutional by Commonwealth Court last month.

He also said his comments have been censored on social media, and from replays of at least one televised debate.

As for the state House candidates in the 62nd District, the man Doyle may face in the fall, incumbent Struzzi, said he has been doing whats right for the people of Indiana County, fighting to protect jobs, including those that could be lost because of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

However, Struzzi said, I know we have to do everything we can regarding protection of the environment, but not at the cost of jobs in coal and power industries.

Struzzi also said he was working on behalf of IUP and the other state-owned universities, but he also agreed with Ventre that I believe in school choice.

Doyle, who heads the IUP student Democratic organization, said he believes in common sense policies, including a $15 an hour minimum wage, legalized marijuana (saying 70 percent of Pennsylvanians favor it), and caps on prescription prices.

Doyle also disagreed with the two gubernatorial candidates in that reform should be from the bottom up, not the top down. He said he wants to build a Pennsylvania that works for everyone, and that hed donate portions of his salary to such venues as the NAACP bail fund and local scholarships.

Organizers said they had hoped for other candidates, for governor, lieutenant governor, U.S. Senate and state House.

The two gubernatorial candidates offered more details of their campaigns on websites, Vote4Ventre.com and JoeSoloski.com. Struzzi also has RepStruzzi.com and a campaign page on Facebook while Doyle has pages on Instagram and Twitter.

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Four candidates share 'politics and pizza' with IUP students - Longview News-Journal