Year: 2015

Racism Saves Lives, the Case of Ariel Ronis

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Everybody discriminates. I would only marry a Jewish girl, and I did. I don’t consider non Jews inferior to Jews, as some Jews do, but I don’t care if some Jews do, as long as they leave the “inferior” people alone. I prefer living around English speaking people, because that is my mother tongue, and I discriminate based on language. A linguist? No, but you get the point. I don’t hang out with Ethiopian Jews, not because I don’t like them, but I just don’t, because most people hang out with people who are similar to them.

There are racists who don’t hate other races at all, like me, and the vast majority of other people on the planet. Then there are racists that do hate other races, but don’t commit violence against other races. I find that objectionable (the hatred part), but it’s no different than Jews thinking non Jews are inferior. Then there are racists who commit violence against other races because they hate other races. Those people are evil.

Some people try to hang out with people who are not similar to them and that’s fine, too. Most people don’t do that though.

I hang around people that are similar to me. Very few people are similar to me in my thinking, but what can you do. I don’t hang out with Arabs either. Or Druze. Or Moroccan Jews. I just don’t. Because I, like almost everyone else on the planet, am a racist.

I never considered marrying a man, because I’m a sexist, and heterosexual. My wife does the laundry. I take out the garbage, because I think that’s the man’s job. I just took out the diaper wipe garbage and the actual garbage. My wife doesn’t do that.

I never considered marrying an old woman, because I’m ageist. I don’t talk to old women very often. Most young people hang out with people their age. Most old people hang out with old people too. They’re just as ageist as I am. Most middle aged people hang out with middle aged people. And singles hang out together because they discriminate against married people. They don’t hate them. They just prefer hanging out with singles. Perhaps they are trying to marry one of them.

And married people don’t hang out with singles much because they discriminate against single people. No, they don’t hate single people. They just discriminate against them. I’m a racist, sexist, ageist guy who discriminates against singles, too. I don’t find old women attractive. I don’t find men attractive. I live in a community of married people, almost no singles.

Got it?

The difference between me and other people who claim not to be ageist, racist, or sexist, and who generally think that not being these things is important, is that I actually advocate against economic violence against these people. I am against the minimum wage that keeps blacks out of work. I am against compulsory government schooling that keeps children of poor black families forcibly unemployed. White families too, but blacks are more hurt by it. I am against welfare the keeps the poor dependent. I am against drug laws enforced mostly against black people.

The people that generally claim to not be racist, sexist, or ageist, these people economically abuse minorities, women, and old people by advocating for forced maternity leave, minimum wages, and a money-printing monopoly that destroys the savings of the aged who can no longer earn a steady income and lose everything to inflation.

So anyway, there was this guy, government worker, Ariel Ronis, who killed himself last week after a black woman accused him of racism for kicking her out of his office after she complained of racism against her because workers at some government office wouldn’t let her go into some line for women with small kids, but allegedly let the white women with small white kids in.

She wrote something on Facebook to that effect, and 6,000 people all concerned about racism shared it. So the guy killed himself. Because he couldn’t bear being thought of as a racist.

(Even though he hung out with white people and didn’t marry a black woman and never lived among Ethiopians. “Not being racist” was so important to him that he killed himself just because people thought he was racist. He was, but not for the reasons people thought he was. He just didn’t hate other races.)

His side of the story is that she wasn’t let in the short line for women with kids because she was being obnoxious and trying to cut in the middle of the line. Then she barged into his office and started yelling racism, so he kicked her out.

The worst part of this story, the absolute worst part is that this woman, after indirectly causing the death of some poor nebuch government worker, hasn’t learned a damn thing. This is what she wrote after she heard Ronis killed himself.

This morning I woke up to one of the worst pieces of news I had ever heard. I am dreadfully sorry for the loss of life. For years I have experienced discrimination in Israel. On the only occasion in which I told my story a man was hurt. There is no one more sorry than me. If I could (go back), I would have remained silent this time as well.

A man was “hurt”? A man was HURT? 

But you crazy sick human being. He wasn’t hurt. He didn’t get a booboo.

He bleeping killed himself.

You’re not legally responsible. God will decide if you are morally responsible. But the least you can do, the least you can do. For the love of God. Is say it.

Your people have made for themselves a god of gold. Say it. 

Ariel Ronis killed himself.  Say it. 

She still claims, after the guy killed himself in shame, that he was racist, by which she meant Ronis hated black people. The sick assertion that she’s “dreadfully sorry” and that she should have remained silent, silent about what? Silent about the hatred that obviously was hurled at her by Ronis because she is black. That’s what she’s saying. Not that she was wrong, that she was not actually being kept out of the line because she was black, but rather because she was obnoxious. She should have remained silent, she says.

The lesson, according to her, isn’t “Don’t assume everyone hates you because you’re black, because that can get people killed.”

The lesson is, “When someone obviously hates you because you’re black, shut up about it, because telling people about it can motivate that hateful person to “be hurt”. And we don’t want to “hurt” people, even if they are white supremacist assholes.

I hate fake apologies. But this one takes the cake.

What a lesson. I’m throwing my hands up.

If anyone accuses me of racism, I will just point them to this post, rather than kill myself. I’m guilty as charged. I’m preemptively saving myself from the shame.

Retroactive Welfare Coming My Way, Considering Burning It

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

The “anti Zionist” “State-hating” State-welfare-enthusiast hypocrites of Shas and UTJ were able to get Netanyahu to not only raise the child stipend welfare back up to its previous high, but forced a retroactive payment covering all the missed welfare payments from when it was reduced.

This is another proof of how and why the State can never, ever shrink. It can only keep growing until the parasite kills the host. Until there is nothing left to steal. Like what’s happening in Greece. It’s about to get much worse there. Default is now 11 days away, and when they start printing Drachmas, every Greek citizen will lose all of his savings.

So even when a government can temporarily shrink itself, not only does it grow again, but the actual shrinking that it undertook is reversed as well.

As a result, I, who am lucky enough to have 3 kids, will be getting 1,680 shekels in retroactive welfare payments from the state.

Already I get 420 a month, which I give to Moshe Feiglin and Zehut. I also get a מענק עבודה of something like 2,000 shekels every three months or so (seemingly, I’ve only gotten it twice) which I never asked for nor filled out a form to get, which I also give to Zehut.

I’ve always wanted to simply burn this money and return the inflation to the people. I’ve physically gone into the Bituach Leumi office here in Karnei Shomron and actually asked them to stop paying me. They said that’s impossible. So I closed my bank account, opened a new one, and didn’t tell them about it, hoping they would stop. But the payments just kept coming.

The main reason I haven’t burned any money yet, but give it away to who I think has the best chance of stopping this, is that the main advantage of destroying the money will be as a public statement. I’d rather give it away than destroy it privately. But with this retroactive payment coming my way, I’m now seriously considering making a video of me destroying 1,680 shekels and putting it on YouTube.

But since that may get me in trouble, I may not do it. I never challenge the State head on like that. It’s too dangerous.

Any suggestions? How illegal is it to burn money?

Top 10 Things We Can All Learn from Amy Lee of Evanescence

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

I’m not sure what inspired me to write this now, but for whatever reason I think it may be important to get down in writing. Amy Lee is the lead singer of Evanescence, a goth-rock-metal band. She is my favorite musician, no qualifiers. (Don’t give me the Kol Isha treatment please.)

Here’s why.

10) She’s a normal person. She’s not a drug addict. She doesn’t come off as if she’s from another planet like Lady Gaga, or “above all of you” like most other famous successful rock stars. She doesn’t try to market herself or bifurcate her personality into public and private beyond what normal people do, or put on some fake persona for her fans. She is who she is, WYSIWYG, as they say in acronymese.

9) She doesn’t have a promiscuous reputation like, say, Madonna. She’s married with a kid and a normal family life, or at least it sounds that way. She took 5 years off of music to be with her family and live a normal life.

8) She plays up the goth thing with satanic imagery and makeup, but it’s only a flavor, not an all-encompassing creepy Marilyn Manson disgusting mess. She dresses modestly on stage and in her music videos, not on a Haredi level of course, but there’s usually a long skirt involved, bushy and really cool that she designs herself.

7) She never has gross provocative dance moves like Britney Spears or Rihanna or that type (first yecch names that came to mind) who gyrate their hips and breasts at you to try and distract you from their boring unoriginal music. In fact, she openly detests fake pop stars.

6) She doesn’t write songs about sex, partying, drugs, or other cliches. She writes songs with deep feeling, emotional complexity, hope, despair, fear, death, exultation, happiness, the extremes of human existence we all have a hard time dealing with from time to time.

5) Even when she seems to be overdoing it, displaying too much emotion on the border of being fake about it, it still seems real. She can title a song “My Heart is Broken” which would sound overly melodramatic for any other musician and be almost too deep into her own performance but she can still pull it off somehow. See after 2:40 in this song:

4) Her voice sometimes cracks on stage when she can’t quite hit the high notes. She almost never performs perfectly when live, and you can tell she’s not trying to. She’s trying to connect with her audience and just enjoy her own music, rather than put on a performance to show you how amazingly awesome she is.

3) She can get a whole audience of troubled-looking goth teenagers to sing their hearts out at a concert in what looks like a cathartic explosion, as if she were their mother teaching them how to deal with their own negative emotions.

2) She’s beautiful, but not perfectly beautiful. She’s still got a bit of a chubby face, and depending on how it’s angled you can make out a small double chin.

That’s it. There is no number one. This isn’t really a top 10. You’ve been fooled. So let’s end it with my favorite Evanescence song and favorite Amy Lee performance: Going Under, this time polished.

Kahlon The Fake Has A Genius Idea for Bringing Down Real Estate Prices: Rent Control!

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

“In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”

Assar Lindbeck, The Political Economy of the New Left (New York: Harper and Row, 1972)

It’s all the same. There is never any change. It’s all the same total bullshit. The only reason people ever though Kahlon was different from all the other disgusting slime was that the media, licensed and directed by the State, decided it would be a good idea to paint a picture as if someone were slightly different in order to get people interested in granting the State more legitimacy.

Kahlon is a genius! He’ll stand up for the middle class! He’ll bring down housing prices! He’ll save everything! This is just Netanyahu’s way of getting 10 more seats in his stupid game. Kahlon is Likud, and he left it to get some more votes from the left for Bibi. That’s all this ever was. There is NO DIFFERENCE between Kahlon and Dov Henin or Bennett or Ahmed Tibi.

So his idea, just like I said it was going to be, is rent control. That’s the greatest idea that comes to any politician’s mind. Don’t let people build houses. Don’t give up your thieving control of the unhomesteaded land supply. Don’t help increase supply by getting out of the freaking way.

Just pass a law saying that higher prices are illegal. Why not pass a law that says everyone needs to have a yacht. Then they can sell it for a house. Why not pass a law that nobody is allowed to die.

We can see how well rent control is doing in Venezuela, where people there can’t even get basic goods while the government prints money to death and forbids prices from rising.

I already wrote a post about Tzipi Livni and Pretty Boy Lapid’s idea for bringing down housing prices. Guess what it was. Rent control. But if Kahlon says the same exact thing, he’s a freaking genius!

You know, when I first got into the whole libertarian crowd, and started seeing claims all over the place discrediting the media and claiming it was all rigged and worthless, I kind of poo-poohed it. These are just tinfoil hat types.

I already wrote about rent control here. What it does is destroy property, as landlords cannot charge enough to maintain the property, so they abandon it, and it becomes unliveable, which exacerbates the housing crisis.

It really is a simple issue. If there’s not enough of something, you MAKE MORE OF IT SO PRICE GOES DOWN.

But the government’s solution is tojust  FORBID THE PRICE FROM GOING UP

What a vicious little nothing creature Moshe Kahlon is.

OH MY GOLD! BitGold a Service so Beautiful I Shed Tears of Joy!

rafifarber Gold and Silver, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

WOW! I go to 321gold.com last week to check the spot price. And I see this article about something called BitGold. To open an account for free, just click on that link or the link in the menu bar above. Apparently, they are a gold-backed Paypal service where you can buy gold with bank transfer, credit card, bitcoin, debit card, whatever you want, and store your gold in one of 6 vaults around the world.

You can redeem your gold physically for a $25 shipping fee. That’s it. The minimum delivery is 10 grams. That’s about $400, which is the smallest redemption minimum I’ve ever heard of.

The only fees are a 1% commission on each transaction, so if you buy $500 worth of gold, they get $5 on the buy, and $5 on the sell.

This is essentially a 100% backed gold standard bank account. That’s what it is. If it catches on, it will be huge.

And it is not open to US residents. (UPDATE: NOW OPEN TO US RESIDENTS) I signed up for an account and uploaded my Israeli driver’s license. Then they asked for my cell phone, and sent me a code by text to make sure I was physically in Israel. I now have a BitGold account and can buy physical gold down to a 10 gram cube and have it sent as payment to anyone else with a BitGold account, or have it physically delivered to me here in Israel.

This is just awesome. I literally shed tears of joy when I saw this.

And their stock, XAU on the Toronto Exchange, is going totally bonkers. Up 45% just today.

I wish them all the luck in the world, and soon I will be one of their competitors!

Default Day for Greece is Now Either June 5 or June 12

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Greece Repayment Schedule

On May 15 Greece has to “roll over” €1.4B in debt, which means sell more debt to pay debt, or borrow money to pay money back. They can do that because the banks keep buying more T-Bills. What they can’t do is pay the IMF anymore. €305M on June 5. €343 a week later. There is no more money left in the IMF monopoly account at the IMF to pay the IMF back with. There’s nothing left.

It looks like it’s June 5th.

To Hell With The Rabanut

rafifarber Israeli Politics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

אהוב את המלאכה
ושנא את הרבנות
ואל תתוודע לרשות

That’s Avos DeRebbi Natan. Love work, hate the Rabanut, and don’t say anything to the authorities.

Or in libertarian language: Love working in the private sector. Hate the Rabanut. And don’t let the government know how much stuff you or anyone else has, because the bastards will take it all.

Recently, there was a big breakthrough for freedom in Israel. Who would have thought? It was somehow ruled legal to issue private kosher certification, not sanctioned by the state. Amazing! Now people can actually choose what kosher certificate they want, which they trust, which they don’t, which they want to picket, which they want to praise, which they love and which they hate. Which certification they consider to be, of their own free will, ultra mega crazy whopping kosher up all the halachic chumra wazoos, and which is basically the same as a bacon cheeseburger on Pesach that also happens to be Yom Kippur.

Choose. What a concept.

Up until now, choosing was illegal. And the Rabanut, the official state sponsored body of piggish control freak “Rabbis”, is really pissed off. Because they will no longer have a monopoly on the Kashrut industry, so they can’t charge as much, because when supply goes up baby, price comes down. The Rabbis don’t like this.

You may ask, how then is there a Badatz kashrut industry, if private certification is illegal? Because, the best thing about Haredim, the so called “ultra orthodox” is that they are not afraid of the State. And that is the best thing about them. Unlike the religious Zionists who are nearly 100% state worshipers, the Haredim will not be pushed around. Yes, they will demand money from the state and leverage their power to get more of it. But so does every single other sector in Israel. I don’t love them for that. But at least they won’t be pushed around.

So when the Rabanut of the State of Israel originally said they control all of the kosher certification industry in Israel, the Haredim basically gave them the finger and continued with their own certification, which was then incorporated into the State kosher certification system because the State knows it cannot fight the Haredim on this. If you can’t destroy them, assimilate them into the system. Give them a piece of the State pie and they’ll shut up.

It’s the same with marriage. When the Rabanut originally said they control all of marriage in the State, the Haredim basically gave them the finger again, said “screw you State, we’ll marry ourselves” and the State couldn’t fight them, so the Haredim have their own Edah Haredit marriage license program where you don’t have to go through any Rabanut bullshit.

I know this because I myself got my state marriage license (which I now regret, it was before I was a libertarian) through Edah Haredit. All I did was pay them 400 shekels and give them a note from Rabbi George Finkelstein that I was Jewish and so was my wife to be. And I said, “What do I have to do now?” And the guy with the big beard said, “Everything kehilchasa.” Everything according to Jewish law.

I said OK. Then we got married. Then I went back there to pick up my license. And that was it. No getting a Rabanut approved Rabbi. No Rabanut agent spying on my wife as she goes to the Mikva before the Chupah and signing off on it. No handing in any kosher certificate to the state spies. No prima nocta to the local “Chief Rabbi”. Nothing. Just 400 shekels and a letter.

Rabbi Seth Farber, no relation, has this whole organization called Itim that is designed to guide people through the disgustingness that is the Rabanut gauntlet to get married. I say to hell with State marraige altogether and do whatever you want, but nobody, absolutely nobody, should ever voluntarily go through that crap when you can just go through Edah Haredit and do nothing.

So anyway…back to Kashrut. The Rabanut is fighting back. Nobody should be allowed to choose. Choosing your own kosher certification is dangerous. It will lead to the end of the Jewish People as we know it. Just like it did for the 2,000 years when there was no official state Kosher monopoly. (I really despise these people.)

I didn’t read the article, I don’t want to, but I read the headline. Bagatz, Israel’s Supreme Court, is allowing the Rabanut to represent itself as they challenge the legality of private kosher certification.

Hate the Rabanut. May you bunch of Hillul Hashems who do nothing but make people hate Judaism and Halacha, lose badly.

Greece Pays IMF Back with IMF Monopoly Money

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

This is great! I love it. It’s so insane even I didn’t think of this. So apparently, all IMF countries have this account of IMF monopoly money, its own IMF currency, that is actually the IMF’s money that I guess can be exchanged for currency at an agreed exchange rate upon joining the loot ball.

The money can be used in emergencies as effectively an IMF loan, and must be replenished within 30 days (June 11) by the IMF rules. I would guess the funds are supposed to be used for emergency defense, or natural disasters or whatever. But Greece drew down €650M in IMF monopoly money to repay…

the IMF itself.

As Zerohedge puts it:

In sum: the IMF paid itself on behalf of Greece and will now be forced to pay itself back for paying itself later this month. Or, put differently, Greece has prepaid the IMF with IMF money it doesnt have.

This isn’t any more crazy, really, than the idea of the IMF bailing out Greece so Greece can pay the IMF.

Here’s a piece out this morning even more instructive of the Klein Bottle of finance that the Greek State just did:

Earlier today, we learned that, contrary to what Greek government officials had been implying for the better part of a week, Athens did not have enough money to make a €750 million payment to the IMF on Tuesday. Instead, Greece borrowed most of the money (€650 million according to unnamed officials) from its IMF SDR reserves. This money must be paid back within 30 days. This effectively means that the IMF paid itself and it sets up a hilariously absurd scenario wherein assuming Greece manages to convince creditors to disburse a €7.2 billion tranche of aid later this month, the IMF will send money to Greece, who will send it right back to the IMF to replenish an IMF fund, which was drawn down by the IMF to pay itself back for money it loaned to Greece a long time ago. Put simply: Greece has taken circular funding schemes to a whole new level.

But that’s it though. Greece has about €50M in cash left, and after that, it’s game over people. The IMF has said it is not going to participate in another Greek bailout just so it can pay itself for even longer. By the end of the month, the first domino, finally, falls, and the chain reaction begins.