Year: 2015

The Sheer Amount of Bullshit on Israeli Radio is Astounding

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I now work once a week in Petach Tikva, aside from my day job from my office a block away from my house. I haven’t commuted in almost 3 years, and thank God for that. Using the government roads at rush hour is a waste of life.

The radio in my car doesn’t work and I have never fixed it. That means I never listen to the radio, but today I took 4 tremps (hitchhike) in total to get to Petach Tikva and back. And I don’t control the radio when I hitchhike.

3 years ago I was leaning more and more libertarian, but it hadn’t quite clicked yet, the way the NAP fits into everything. And I commuted every day, involving tremping and bushwacking to and from work. I refused to take a bus and tried to avoid the train, which I successfully avoided most of the time. So 3 years ago I heard the radio a lot, and since I heard it every day, it sounded normal to me.

What sounded normal exactly?

Being bombarded with the opinions and doings and goings on of politicians everywhere all the time and all the bullshit they drip, everything that they say and do, every intonation that they make, everything their meaningless words imply or don’t imply, and so on. Every hour on the hour being bombarded with updates about what the politicians just said, what they say we can no longer legally do anymore, which ones just died and which ones got to a new level of authority.

And every half hour being bombarded with the same bullshit repeated every hour on the hour, this time in bullet points. And if you’re listening to anything other than repetitive crappy boring music off a mixed tape from hell, talking about all the bullshit that was already said on the hour and the half hour, just in long form.

None of it means anything. All of it is stupid meaningless garbage.

If the garbage I remember hearing today, there was President Rivlin spouting emotional rhetoric about how Israel should excel in this and that, and not compromise on this and that, and lead the world in this and that.

That’s code for spend more government money on this and that, and in order to do that, tax or print more.

And then there was Netanyahu spouting bullshit about how touched he was about the left and right coming together to combat the boycotts that “threaten Israel’s very existence”. This is just more bullshit to get you to put more of your emotional energy into the saving graces of politicians that will rescue you from the sure hellfire of the dreaded “boycotts”, politicians that do nothing but exacerbate the problems that make your life difficult already, like traffic jams every single day on the government roads without fail, that drain the life out of everyone that suffers through them day in day out non stop.

And then there was Bennett spouting bullshit about how no child, whether he is from Jerusalem or [Insert Jewish City] or Rahat or Jizr A-Zarka should have the quality of their education determined by their parents income.

Meaning, everyone’s education should be equally worthless even if you can pay for an actual education, and it should focus on the very bullshit that I’m talking about right now and nothing else.

Well, then why should the house you live in be determined by your income? Or the food you eat? Or the car you drive? Everyone, by that bullshit logic, should drive a pinto, eat gruel, and live in a shanty without plumbing. God forbid we should let anything at all be determined by income, Bennett. What a whacked out concept, you pay for what you can afford. How evil.

And then I figured it out. The government sets the market price of transportation on its roads too low (zero) to create traffic jams every single morning in order to keep you stuck in your car so you can listen to you government-controlled state media bullshit for hours on end about the same meaningless crap and become addicted to it like an MSG soaked Big Mac.

Hours, every day, listening to political bullshit about nothing. On the radio.

Imagine if radio covered actual news. Like technological progress. Or medical innovations. Or the latest news about what we know about the the possibility of life on Europa. Or the latest advances in…ANYTHING?! Anything about human progress anywhere!

Just enough of this political bullshit about absolutely nothing!

Who cares what the hell the Supreme Court said about some kid’s stupid passport!

 

 

My Reaction to the Supreme Court Jerusalem Ruling

rafifarber Foreign Policy, The Jewish Libertarian Blog, Uncategorized ,

I wrote this on Facebook just now, in a comment:

I don’t understand why anybody cares what a bunch of deadbeats on a bench think of what should accepted as the “capital” of another group of deadbeats in the knesset. Well, I understand it. People think the deadbeats’ opinions matter and have some cosmic meaning on something. I just think it’s stupid, and it won’t affect anyone’s life, and people can still (!) amazingly, consider Jerusalem the capital of the universe if they want to, and politicians, whether they are on the bench or in the knesset or in jail or on the moon, don’t matter.

Weekend Music: Never Too Late by Three Days Grace

rafifarber Music, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

I’ve decided to do a weekly music thing now, with a song and my commentary.

This week, Never Too Late, by Three Days Grace.

I’ve also decided to only put the live versions here. If you want the polished recordings, you can easily find them.

Now, I’m not anywhere near suicidal, or at all disappointed with my life. I’m actually a very happy person, content not because I have achieved all my goals for myself and for the world. I definitely have not. But I know what I want and I know what’s right, so I reach for it using whatever I’m best at doing.

That said, I love this song. I don’t dress or act like grunge suicidal metalists, but there’s something I love about people expressing their pain together with such happiness and hope, and such beautiful chords. There’s something Godly about it.

Most Three Days Grace songs have extreme lyrics that describe the tearing emotions of miserable people, and though I am not miserable and some of the lyrics are too much for me, turning pain into beauty like this is just great. It’s why Three Days Grace is one of my favorite bands.

For the Enneagram buffs out there, I’m exercising my 4 wing.

DEFAULT Greece Rejects Take it or Leave it Deal

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

By tomorrow when its June 5 IMF payment comes due, Greece will be in default. That’s it. Game over. Now the dominoes will start to fall.

Watch the bond market.

From the AP:

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — High-ranking members of Greece’s governing radical left Syriza party say they cannot accept a deal proposed by the country’s creditors during a meeting between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the head of the European Union’s executive arm.

Tsipras’ meeting with Commission President Jean Claude Juncker, which ran into the early hours of Thursday, failed to yield a breakthrough in Greece’s protracted negotiations over the release of remaining bailout funds.

FINALLY The Answer on Greek Default and Grexit Coming TODAY

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

We don’t know the details because “the conversations are private”, but the three biggest mafia gangs in the Eurozone – the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary (Government Bail Out) Fund, AKA the Troika, or Institutions, or Mobsters, or Former Student Council Presidents Suddenly In Charge Of A $#!+load Of Stolen Money, have given the Syriza Welfare Whiners a take it or leave it offer.

If Greece rejects it, a full bank run will begin, and the whole system will begin to buckle.

Yesterday we had another gold flag, by the way. Stocks down, dollar way down, bonds down, gold up.

Three Things I’m Sick of in the Greek Debt Drama: “Experts”, “Save the Country”, and “Talks are Private”

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Anyone who reads TJL will know I follow the Greek situation very closely. But there are three things, specifically, that I’m really sick of reading out of the main stream media.

The first is referring to the schmucks involved in negotiating this mess as “experts”. An expert is someone who can demonstrate that he actually knows something with predictive value. Like the guy who discovered General Relativity. Albert Something. Or whatever his name was. He can say that the light of a star next to a solar eclipse would bend a certain amount of degrees which proves that gravity bends light and therefore spacetime and be correct. He’s an expert. QED.

But the pure idiots negotiating a “deal” for a bankrupt government are experts in nothing. Have demonstrated nothing. They are experts in vomiting bullshit that is absolutely nonsensical but sounds like it may mean something profound.

Look, you don’t have to understand General Relativity to understand the concept of the light of a star moving to the left or to the right around a solar eclipse. You can see the before and after pictures and compare them, even if you’re a stupid person. But nobody understands what these negotiations, that are deliberately hidden from view as to their details, because they are inherently nonsense, and there are no experts for God’s sake. There is a congress of average people good at sophistry that are saying nothing and making it sound like general relativity.

Here’s General Relativity: Big things bend space. So if light goes around one of these bends, it will curve, and you’ll see it in a different place. That’s it.

Can ANYONE explain to me what these “experts” are “discussing” for so long that it requires months and months and months of nothing?

No, because of the second thing that pisses me off, “The conversations are private.” My ass they’re private. They’re dealing with public debt, with people’s money they were forced to pay, with future taxes, how much they will be forced to pay in the future, and everything else that has to do with the public’s money, discussed by publicly elected idiots, who ask the public for votes. These conversations should NOT be private. They should be on the air, C-SPAN like, with private backdoor talks absolutely prohibited on pain of a public whipping. Everything these “experts” do should be videotaped and recorded, from when they wake up in the morning to when they go to sleep, and continuing while they snore in their beds. 24-7, recording recording recording. Any minute missed leads to a public whipping by the people who pay their salaries.

“Public” servants, if they are indeed servants and not thieves (they are of course thieves and not servants) should have ZERO right to do ANYTHING private, AT ALL. Not even conversations with their spouses about their sex lives. Yes, the public servants can and should have the option of pushing a button on their mandatory recorders that will alert listeners that they are about to talk about or do something that would normally be considered private like go to the bathroom, warning viewers to stop tuning in to C-SPAN. But this would only be to accommodate the sensibilities of viewers and listeners, so as not to gross them out if they want to tune out, NOT for the “public servants'” rights to have a private life. They have no right to have a private life if they live off of tax money. Zero right, none at all.

But public viewers, who they serve and who pay them for EVERYTHING they do, should still have the right to tune in, to anything whatsoever that they do at any time in any situation with ZERO exceptions.

Third, and the thing that pisses me off the most, is this whole garbage about “saving greece” and “Greece will collapse.” Greece will not collapse. The GOVERNMENT will collapse. They will run out of money. And their only power will be to force the people to accept a new currency which they will have exclusive rights to print, thereby stealing from them even more.

If the government collapses, the Greek people will be free. They won’t all suddenly die. But the government, if it is forced out of the Euro, will then print drachmas and force people to use them. If they refuse, there will be hyperinflation and a black market money. Then the government, which produces zero value, will starve from lack of funds.

IRONIC Stanley Fischer Says Bankers Should be Punished for Financial Crimes

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Zerohedge alerted me to this today, but I should have seen it myself because I read Bloomberg quite often. Stanley Fischer Says Bankers Should Be Punished

In a world where destroying the wealth of the public through monopolizing the entire money supply and printing it so your cronies and buddies in the government can use the new supply first. Well. As somebody says. Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

What he means is that anyone not appointed by government to create money who creates money should be arrested.

Or in other words, Fischer Says Other Bankers Excluding Fischer Should Be Punished for Doing What He Does. 

John Kerry Falls off Bike, Breaks Leg after Nuclear Talks with Iran

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Ha ha.

Those who are against doing anything but bombing Iran will like this one.

(GENEVA) — Secretary of State John Kerry was helicoptered to a Swiss hospital Sunday after a bike crash outside of Geneva, where he had been holding nuclear talks with Iran’s foreign minister.

I don’t mind talking with Iran. I just don’t like John Kerry. May he live a long life, far away from any sphere of power.

Fire Rabbi Riskin, and All the Rest of Them, and whoever the Chief Rabbi is, Too

rafifarber Libertarian Halacha, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

I learned at HaMivtar for a few months. I was in the same general circles that Riskin is involved with. Chovevei Torah, Hartman, all institutions I like. All private.

I’m not a big fan of Riskin’s pandering to Christians, but he can do what he wants.

I’m not even following why Riskin is being attacked now, and have no idea why particularly now, Bennett the Saint is calling Riskin for a “hearing”. Because the field-goal-mouthed pansy wants to sound cool I guess.

You know, this stuff used to matter to me, but I don’t care anymore. A bunch of legalists arguing about who is stretching halachic reasoning by how far and whether it’s legitimate or not…interests me about as much as the mating habits of microbes that reproduce by binary fission.

You have a state-funded Rabbi like Riskin who says things some people love, and some people hate, and because he’s funded by everybody’s taxes, the people who don’t like him think he’s the worst thing since the cambrian extinction. And the people who love him think that the other people are crazy wacknut zealots.

Just fire him and let private people who like him pay for his services if they feel like it.

And then fire every other state funded rabbi and the entire state rabbinate and let them all duke it out as to who makes a living Rabbi-ing and who doesn’t. Then make sure none of them can get any state stipends for learning or writing or doing anything “religious”. Those Rabbis that don’t make it can pick fruit. Or sweep gutters for all I care.

The back and forth over how you justify getting around the Agunah problem, what halachic logic you use, and if you use the wrong one you’ll create a bunch of mamzers and the Jewish people will be doomed forever…it’s the religious equivalent of the War on Terror fearmongering nonsensical drivel.

Everyone is stealing from everyone and we’re worried about what? The dangers of Riskin’s halachic justifications for whatever?

I’ll go out on a limb and say God doesn’t care. The discussion is important in and of itself as a continuation of halachic discourse. But the end result is just an accident of history. It doesn’t matter who wins. Privatize the whole thing, and women who want to get a get from recalcitrant husbands through some loophole will get it. And those who think the loophole is invalid won’t marry them. And those that think it’s fine will. And then everyone will forget about it and move on. The system always survives, so everyone chill out.

Ariel Ronis, the Suicidal Non Racist, and Yigal Amir

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

I have just been informed that Ariel Ronis, the guy that committed suicide after being called a racist on Facebook, is the same Shabak agent who interrogated Yigal Amir. One of many I’m sure.

Needless to say, I am not a fan of Shabak and I think it’s a total myth that they protect anybody from anything. All they do is stir hornets nests and torture people, both Arabs and Jews.

I do not know if Ronis ever personally tortured anybody, but it wouldn’t surprise me. That kind of thing would lead to the emotional instability required to kill yourself over a Facebook post.

As for Yigal Amir and Yitzhak Rabin, I am completely against violence directed against the State for practical reasons, especially killing a Head of State. Let whatever justice is coming to them be handled by the Beis Din Shel Ma’alah as they say, and let man stay completely out of it.

That said, Rabin was a murderer of Holocaust survivors and I do not mourn his death. Among many other obvious sins, that was the worst one.

I was a kid when Yigal Amir pulled the trigger and I remember the whole blitz of statist propaganda that followed. How Jews should all love one another unconditionally, how killing the leader of a State was the worst thing to ever happen to the Jewish people since Hitler, but even worse because Hitler at least wasn’t a Jew. And how the State of Israel is basically god, and how Yigal Amir is the devil incarnate and Rabin is an angel with wings and a cigarette preaching peace and love and garbage.

Yeah, well, tell that to the Altalena Holocaust survivors who jumped off the ship after Ben Gurion bombed it, and then Rabin personally shot the helpless survivors as they were swimming to shore.

“דפקנו אותם על האוניה ודפקנו אותם שוחים במים”

“We shot them on the boat and we shot them while they were swimming in the water.”

Anyway, I don’t know what Ronis is guilty of, if anything, so who knows if this was coming to him or not.

Conclusion: Against violence, but I don’t mourn either Ronis’s death or Rabin’s. I do not support what Yigal Amir did, but I do not consider Yigal Amir evil because of what he did. Stupid, yes. Killing Rabin only served to strengthen the Rabin mythos and Oslo propaganda machine. In terms of value judgements though, I abstain.

Is that legal? I guess if it’s not, I’ll just say Rabin was awesome and Amir is evil, Kol Od BaLevav Pnima, Oslo Oslo Peace Peace Peace, and killing holocaust survivors was necessary because if Rabin hadn’t killed them while swimming on shore, there would be two armies now and we’d be in constant civil war all the time hell on Earth etc. thank God for the State monopoly on violence.