Author: rafifarber

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.

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?