text:
terça-feira, 30 de novembro de 2004
O 1.º de Dezembro é nosso!
Soberania e Centralização
It would be anti-libertarian, for instance, to appeal to the United Nations to order the breakup of a taxi-monopoly in Houston, or to the U.S. government to order Utah to abolish its state-certification requirement for teachers, because in doing so one would have illegitimately granted these state agencies jurisdiction over property that they plainly do not own (but others do): not only Houston or Utah, but every city in the world and every state in the U.S. And while every state, small or large, violates the rights of private-property owners and must be feared and combated, large central states violate more people's rights and must be feared even more. They do not come into existence ab ooa, but are the outgrowth of a process of eliminative competition among originally numerous independent small local states. Central states, and ultimately a single world state, represent the successful expansion and concentration of state power, i.e., of evil, and must accordingly be regarded as especially dangerous.
Hence, a libertarian, as his second-best solution, must always discriminate in favor of local and against central government, and he must always try to correct injustices at the level and location where they occur rather than empowering some higher (more centralized) level of government to rectify a local injustice."
INTRODUCTION By Hans-Hermann Hoppe to "Ethics of Liberty" Murray N. Rothbard
Rev. Elisha Williams (1744)
segunda-feira, 29 de novembro de 2004
Conservative Libertarianism
"Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of Children: Toward a More Conservative Libertarianism" Edward Feser. Journal of Libertarian Studies - (Summer 2004)
Summary: Libertarians frequently ground their arguments in self-ownership and natural rights. Critics claim that such a starting point leads to a libertine (not merely libertarian) ethos, making any political alliance between libertarians and conservatives philosophically inconsistent. However, Feser claims the opposite: self-ownership is not only not inconsistent with moral conservatism, it actually entails a kind of moral conservatism. Thus, he argues that libertarians who reject moral conservatism are actually violating their own fundamentals.
domingo, 28 de novembro de 2004
Albert Jay Nock
"To follow Nock, what traits must a man of the Right have?
He must be both fiercely independent and believe in the power of social authority; he must love tradition but hate the State and everything it does; he must believe in radical freedom while never doubting the immutability of human nature and natural laws; he must be anti-materialist in his own life while defending economic freedom without compromise; he must be an elitist and anti-democrat yet despise elites who hold illicit power; and he must be realistic about the dim prospects for change while still retaining a strong sense of hope and enthusiasm for life. "
Algumas passagens do seu texto Our Enemy, the State:
* The historical method, moreover, establishes the important fact that, as in the case of tabetic or parasitic diseases, the depletion of social power by the State can not be checked after a certain point of progress is passed. History does not show an instance where, once beyond this point, this depletion has not ended in a complete and permanent collapse.
* The common view of Mr. Jefferson as a doctrinaire believer in the stark principle of "states' rights" is most incompetent and misleading. He believed in states' rights, assuredly, but he went much farther; states' rights were only an incident in his general system of political organization. He believed that the ultimate political unit, the repository and source of political authority and initiative, should be the smallest unit; not the federal unit, state unit or county unit, but the township, or, as he called it, the "ward." The township, and the township only, should determine the delegation of power upwards to the county, the state, and the federal units. His system of extreme decentralization is interesting and perhaps worth a moment's examination, because if the idea of the State is ever displaced by the idea of government, it seems probable that the practical expression of this idea would come out very nearly in that form.23
* The secret of freedom will be found in the individual "making himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so far as he is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond his competence, by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in proportion as the trustees become more and more oligarchical."
* Locke himself, whom we have seen putting the natural rights of property so high above those of life and liberty, was equally discriminating in his view of popular sovereignty. He was no believer in what he called "a numerous democracy," and did not contemplate a political organization that should countenance anything of the kind.27
Eu concordo com CAA quando diz que "rui a. escreveu hoje uma das postas mais importantes do Blasfémias. Conseguiu sintetizar alguns dos princípios essenciais da visão liberal do mundo, fazendo a difícil transversalidade das várias correntes do liberalismo clássico ao pensamento libertário."
Vou comentar apenas: "...parece pouco liberal admitir, ainda que como hipótese, a saída de Portugal da União Europeia, justificada por eventuais «perdas de soberania». Isso representaria um indesejável regresso ao colbertismo, ao mercantilismo, em suma, ao nacionalismo económico."
1. Soberania não significa proteccionismo, mas sim a capacidade de auto-regulamentação e de definir autonomamente Lei.
2. É tão errado defender a soberania para implementar o nacionalismo económico como defender a perda de soberania para supostamente ficarmos protegidos do proteccionismo.
sábado, 27 de novembro de 2004
Utilidade Ordinal II
"Rothbard contributed two major advances beyondthe standards set by Mises's Human Action.
First, Rothbard provided systematic clarification of the theory of marginal utility, and then advanced a new reconstruction of welfare economics and, entirely absent in Mises's system, an economic theory of the state.
Building on the foundations of a strictly ordinalist interpretation of marginal utility laidout by Mises as early as 1912 in his Theory of Money and Credit,6 Rothbard explainedthat the word "marginal" in marginal utility does not refer to increments of utility (which would imply measurability), but rather to the utility of increments of goods (and thus has nothing to do with measurability).
The good to which utility is attached, and theincrements in its size, can be described in physical terms. The good and its incrementextend in space, and thus can be measured and counted as unitary quantitative addition.In distinct contrast, the utility attached to a physical good and its unitary physicalincrements is a purely intensive magnitude. It does not extend in space, and hence isimmeasurable and intractable by unitary counting and the rules of arithmetic.
Allattempts to construct a cardinal measure of utility are in vain. Qua intensive magnitude,utility can be treated only ordinally; that is, as a rank order on a one-dimensional individual preference scale (and every economic phenomenon, in particular monetary calculation and "objective" cost accounting, must ultimately be reducible to and explained as the simple outcome of ordinal individual rank order judgments).
Apart fromtheir placement on one-dimensional individual preference scales, no quantitativerelationship between different goods and different quantities of the same good exists. In particular, no such thing as total utility—conceived of as the addition or integration ofmarginal utilities—exists. Rather, "total" utility is the marginal utility of a larger-sized quantity of a good, and, Rothbard explained,
[t]here are, then two laws of utility, both following from the apodictic conditions ofhuman action: first, that given the size of a unit of a good, the (marginal) utility of eachunit decreases as the supply of units increases; second, that the (marginal) utility of alarger-sized unit is greater than the (marginal) utility of a smaller-sized unit. The first isthe law of diminishing marginal utility. The second has been called the law of increasingtotal utility. The relationship between the two laws and between the items considered inboth is purely one of rank, i.e., ordinal.
Graphically, Rothbard illustrated, the relationship can be represented thus:
Ranks in Value
-3 eggs
-2 eggs
-1 egg
-2nd egg
-3rd egg
The higher the ranking on this individual value scale for eggs, the higher the value. Bythe second law, 3 eggs are valued more highly then 2 eggs and 2 eggs more highly thanone. By the first law, the 2nd egg will be ranked below the first on the value scale, andthe 3rd below the 2nd.
No mathematical relationship exists between, for instance, the marginal utility of 3 eggs and the marginal utility of the 3rd egg except that the former is greater than the latter.
As Lionel Robbins, influenced by Wicksteed and Mises, had first brought home to mainstream economics, from the ordinal character of utility it follows logically that everyinter-personal as well as intra-personal comparison of utility must be regarded asimpossible (unscientific), and hence every social welfare proposal involving any suchcomparison is arbitrary.
While mainstream welfare economics was thrown into disarray upon full realization of this conclusion, Rothbard provided a radically new strictly ordinalist reconstruction of welfare economics based on the twin concepts of individual self-ownership and demonstrated preference."
MURRAY N. ROTHBARD:ECONOMICS, SCIENCE, AND LIBERTY By Hans-Hermann Hoppe
sexta-feira, 26 de novembro de 2004
Utilidade cardinal e ordinal
No pura economia cita-se um texto de William L. Anderson, do Mises Institute:
"...E, mais para o lado teórico: "Os economistas sabem, desde os primeiros dias da revolução marginalista, que é impossível fazer a comparação da utilidade interpessoal. Embora conceitos como "excedente do consumidor" e "perda de bem-estar social" possam ser apresentados na forma de gráficos, como ferramentas de ensino, não passam de ficções uma vez que o seu uso requer a medição da utilidade cardinal, e não apenas ordinal. Naturalmente, o uso da utilidade cardinal permite aos economistas apresentar a teoria económica em termos matemáticos através de cálculo multivariado, razão pela qual continua a ser usada como ferramenta explicativa, apesar de ser uma fraude."
E depois comenta:
"Enfim: teórico, ma non troppo. O Mises Institute está repleto desta tralha ideológica© que pouco adianta para o conhecimento científico mas, seguramente, ajuda à propagação da causa."
Olhe que não, olhe que não. É precisamente nesta questão que reside toda a questão da ciência económica e que faz da Escola Austríaca a única que a percebe e se dá ao trabalho de tirar as devidas consequências.
Se a utilidade é ordinal, o esforço quantitativo-econométrico que acabou por inundar a economia (ao ponto de se afirmar que qualquer outra abordagem no fundo "pouco adianta para o conhecimento científico") é em grande parte inútil.
Re: História da União Europeia em mapas (1138-1254)
A propósito dos franceses, acrescento aqui uma nota de um artigo de Patrick J. Buchanan em Março de 2003 e a propósito de "...Americans are puzzled. Why are they organizing the Security Council against us? Why are they sabotaging the president's plan to bring democracy to Iraq, as we restored democracy to France? Why are they doing this?": Why the French Behave As They Do?
"...To understand what France is about, and perhaps deal with our French problem with more maturity than dumping champagne in the gutter, let us go back five centuries.
In 1500, there was born in Ghent a future king who would come to dominate the world as we do today. At six, the death of his father Philip of Hapsburg gave Charles the crown of the Netherlands.
At 16, the death of his grandfather Ferdinand made him Charles I of Spain and of all its dependencies in Italy and America. At 19, the death of his grandfather Maximilian brought Charles all the hereditary lands of the Hapsburgs and the expectation of being elected Holy Roman Emperor.
In 1519, that title had been in the Hapsburg family four generations. Yet it remained an elective office. And two young and ambitious rulers challenged Charles for that title: Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France. Francis was by far the more formidable.
He set about bribing the electors. But Charles had access to the Medicis and the Fugger bank of Jacob the Rich, the strongest in Europe. Charles bought up more electors and was chosen Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
France was surrounded. Charles ruled almost all of what is today's Spain, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Hungary and Italy, except for the Papal States. What did Francis, seething with resentment, do? Exactly what balance of power politics dictated. He began making alliances with the nations not under Charles' control, and went to war.
In 1525, Charles' armies crushed the French Army at Pavia and captured the French king. "Nothing is left to me," Francis I wrote to his mother, "except honor and life."
By agreeing to humiliating peace terms, Francis won his freedom and returned to France. There, he began preparing at once for a new war, winning the support of the pope and the Italian states that were coming to resent the dominance of the hegemonic Charles.
Defeated again, Francis made alliances with Scotland, Sweden and Denmark, with rebellious princes in Germany, even with the infidel Turks, an unprecedented act for a Christian king. Francis fought Charles until his death in 1547.
Point of this history: For Francis I, read Jacques Chirac; for Charles V, read George W. Bush.
Again, consider the world from the Paris point of view.
French was once the language of every court in Europe. I speak German only to my horses, said Frederick the Great. But now, because the Americans speak English, English is the language of diplomacy, of the Internet and the Global Economy. (...)"
PS: Hoje, a tradicional linguagem de "orgulho americano" (ou será do Estado Federal Americano?) de muitos liberais europeus culpa os Franceses de tudo, sendo certo que são culpados de muita coisa desde que perdeu a sua monarquia, mas foram os franceses que tiveram sempre o ónus de combater os Alemães sem hesitações (para seu próprio mal), ali mesmo ao lado e apesar das fragilidades mais do que óbvias:
Em 1871 contra Bismarck. Na Grande Guerra porque era aliado da Rússia. E na Segunda, em desvantagem mais do que óbvia, por causa da Polónia. No mês seguinte perderam (e só podiam perder, os generais sabiam disso) 100 000 homens a tentar o impossível contra as tropas alemãs.
A posição da Inglaterra sempre foi mais confortável: protegidos na sua ilha, enquanto os europeus continentais combatem, o Império cresce. Os americanos aparecem em ambas as guerras apenas no 4º ano de guerra e na Ásia a guerra acaba com duas WMD sobre civis...porque de outra forma as baixas militares poderiam ser elevadas...
Não é por acaso que nas academias miltares como West Point, o francês permaneceu como a lingua militar até recentemente. Chamarem pacifistas e cobardes aos franceses...e fazem o mesmo com os alemães...até parece que querem vê-los novamente a retomar a sua tradição quase milenária...
"(...)The fact is we do not know and cannot understand the complexities of the civil war in Sudan, which has lasted for 39 of that country's 48 years of existence. Supporters of our intervention in Sudan argue that this is a clear-cut case of Sudan's Christian minority being oppressed and massacred by the Arab majority in the Darfur region. It is interesting that the CIA's World Factbook states that Sudan's Christians, who make up five percent of the population, are concentrated in the south of the country. Darfur is a region in the mid-western part of Sudan. So I wonder about this very simplistic characterization of the conflict.(...)In fact, the promise of US support for one side in the struggle may discourage the progress that has been made recently. What incentive is there to seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict when the US government promises massive assistance to one side? I strongly urge my colleagues to rethink our current dangerous course toward further intervention in Sudan. We may end up hurting most those we are intending to help."
Ron Paul (is a Republican [e libertarian] member of Congress from Texas) before the US House of Representatives, November 19, 2004, regarding House Amendments to Comprehensive Peace in Sudan Act
quinta-feira, 25 de novembro de 2004
Alexander [Bush] the Great
"(...)Both Alexander and President Bush are the most powerful leaders of their day, raised in the shadow of dynamic fathers who also wielded worldwide influence, and defined by an ambitious and ongoing war in a foreign land that is historically difficult to occupy. Both men spent years pursuing a high-profile enemy leader who fled into the hills of the Middle East.
"The film was never made for the purposes of a correlation or to say anything about today's present state," said Colin Farrell, who stars in the title role. "People say history repeats itself, well it does in different ways, shapes and forms. This was kind of a freaky coincidence that our story takes place exactly where all the madness we're all talking about takes place now."
(...) Even though the world has changed dozens of times over since Alexander's days -- which predated Jesus Christ and Mohammed -- lessons in ancient history remain for modern people.
"And what is the lesson?" Stone asked. "Alexander brought the Hellenic way which is, let's say, more freedom for the individual. He abided by the customs of, unlike our administration, of leaving the (opposing) armies intact and used the armies. He always needed more men."
After Saddam Hussein was toppled, the United States disbanded the Iraqi army instead of incorporating those not loyal to Saddam as a police force, a move criticized as making it more difficult to fight anti-U.S. guerrillas.
"(Alexander) was always inclusive, and we were exactly the opposite when we went into Iraq. We were totally exclusive. ... You could argue the policy was malformed from the beginning, misintended."
Stone said he considers that an error in strategy and has no interest in bashing the president.
"I would not put Bush down. We have to move on," Stone said. "The election happened, and there's no point in crying over it. It's a fresh slate for me, personally. I look at him fresh. People change. ...
"Often second-term presidents do become better presidents. They're a little bit wiser and they don't have to run so hard to get elected. So things might change. You hope for that."
If Bush manages to transform Iraq and Afghanistan into secure, democratic states; if he can negotiate with Iran to disband its nuclear weapons program and calm Islamic radicalism; if he continues to work peacefully with Russia, which has its own historic interests in the region ... Stone says the U.S. president may earn the legacy of the ancient hero of "Alexander."
"It's a grand scheme," Stone said. "If he pulled it off ... in 20 years, maybe he would be considered 'Bush the Great."' Via CNN
Permanent War
...for permanent peace
David Frum: "Speaking of free societies: The faking of the election in Ukraine should remind Europeans that they face more serious threats and much closer to home than the reelection of George W. Bush. To borrow an observation of Radek Sikorski's, independent Russia can be a normal country with a democratic future: Russia plus Ukraine is the Russian empire, which can never be a democracy. And it was precisely the issue of Ukrainian independence – and thus Ukrainian democracy – that was at stake this weekend. The integrity of Ukrainian elections is not just an internal Ukrainian matter: It is a portent for the future of all Europe and all the West."
PS: É uma missão assumida pelos Neocons, multiplicarem causas de importância vital para o Ocidente e até a Civilização! Pode ser o Iraque hoje e o Irão amanhã, o Taiwain (contra a China), uns km2 de areia na Palestina ou a Ucrânia. Motivos não podem faltar para cumprir potenciais confrontos em nome de elevados princípios. Creative destruction é o seu lema. O destino de tal caminho é a repetição da Grande Guerra- como todos os assuntos externos são "vitais " e todas as alianças estabelecidas entre estatistas são para se cumprirem, um pequeno acontecimento precipita a destruição em larga escala.
quarta-feira, 24 de novembro de 2004
The Incredibles
The Incredibles is, on the surface, a celebration of resilience, of a family facing adversity and vanquishing it together. Bob, who has always believed he works best alone, finally acknowledges that he couldn't have survived without his wife and kids. But throughout the story, an undercurrent of resentment is felt at the way superheroes have been prevented from using their gifts.
Society disdains the extraordinary, preferring instead to "create new ways to celebrate mediocrity" and keep everyone on the same level. What this film seems to say is that we are not all the same, that some are intrinsically better than others, and that it's wrong to pretend any different. "When everyone is special, then no one is," says Bob, an anti-democratic sentiment that aligns him with Nietzsche - a first for a cartoon character, I fancy.
It is safe to say that Pixar, at least, is the übermensch among studios. The sophistication of its digital know-how, the wit and invention of its scripts, such are the qualities that set it head and shoulders above the competition. Five hits have been its richly deserved reward, and nothing stands in the way of The Incredibles being its sixth. "
The Incredibles (U) The fantastic fourReviewed by Anthony Quinn
PS: Parece que os objectivistas (Ayn Rand cult) estão a gostar muito do filme.
segunda-feira, 22 de novembro de 2004
Unintended Consequences...
...das mudanças de regime
Afghanistan: a nation abandoned to drugs: Country produces 87% of global opium. One in ten Afghans works in opium trade. UN: state is world's second worst to live in.
"Three years after the fall of the Taliban, the United Nations issued a dramatic plea for help yesterday, saying that Afghanistan's opium crop is flourishing as never before and the country is well on the way to becoming a corrupt narco-state.
The UN's annual opium survey reveals that poppy cultivation increased by two-thirds this year, a finding that will come as a deep embarrassment to Tony Blair, who pledged in 2001 to eradicate the scourge of opium along with the Taliban.
Solução?: "So alarmed is the UN that it is suggesting a remedy more radical than any that has been put forward before - bringing in US and British forces to fight a drugs war similar to the war on terror. It wants them to destroy farmers' crops on a massive scale before they can be harvested."
1. Deputada Buitenweg (Verde, Holandesa).:"Senhor Buttiglione: Algumas das suas opiniões estão em directa contradição com a lei europeia. Por exemplo: a discriminação com base na orientação sexual é interdita e o Senhor disse que a homossexualidade é um pecado e é sinal de desordem moral. Gostaria de saber directamente de si, agora, como é que nós poderemos esperar que o Senhor combata por esse direito e se poderia dar-nos um exemplo de como espera alcançar o seu objectivo."
Resposta de Buttiglione. "Posso recordar um filósofo, já antigo, mas talvez não completamente esquecido, de Könisberg - um tal Emmanuel Kant -, que fez uma clara distinção entre moralidade e direito. Muitas coisas, que podem ser consideradas imorais, não devem ser proibidas. Quando fazemos política, não renunciamos ao direito de ter convicções e eu posso pensar que a homossexualidade é um pecado e isso não ter efeito na política, o que só sucederia se eu dissesse que a homossexualidade é um crime. Da mesma maneira, a Senhora é livre de pensar que eu sou um pecador em muitas coisas da vida, e isso não tem nenhum efeito nas nossas relações como cidadãos.
"Direi por isso que considero uma abordagem inadequada do problema pretender que toda a gente concorde em questões de moralidade.
"Nós podemos construir uma comunidade de cidadãos mesmo que em algumas questões de moralidade tenhamos opiniões diferentes. A questão é, isso sim, da não discriminação. O Estado não tem o direito de meter o nariz nessas questões de moralidade e ninguém pode ser discriminado com base na sua orientação sexual ou qualquer orientação de género. É isto o que está na Carta dos Direitos Fundamentais, na Constituição, e eu tenho defendido esta Constituição."
2. Deputado Cashman (socialista, Inglês): "não creio que o devamos julgar pelas suas palavras, mas antes pelas suas acções. Disse-nos hoje que o Estado não tem o direito de se envolver nas questões que têm a ver com a orientação sexual. Como explica então que tenha apresentado, na Convenção para o Futuro da Europa, uma proposta que visava eliminar da Constituição a referência à orientação sexual no combate às discriminações?"
Resposta de Buttiglione:"Quando definimos o princípio da não discriminação, pretendíamos que ele fosse aplicado não apenas a um número limitado de casos que estavam enumerados. O princípio é universal, expansivo. Deve ser aplicado em muitas e variadas áreas e não creio que constituísse um reforço para a sua aplicação referir em especial o caso dos homossexuais. Mas, em qualquer circunstância, esse debate está encerrado. Não tenho dúvidas de que se o Senhor Deputado Cashman a tivesse escrito sozinho, teríamos uma Constituição ou uma Carta dos Direitos Fundamentais diferente. E se fosse eu a fazê-lo, teríamos também uma Carta e uma Constituição diferentes. Mas esta é a Constituição que escrevemos em conjunto e esta é a Constituição que nos liga, sob a qual estou disposto a viver e esta é a Carta dos Direitos que eu quero defender."
3. Deputado Alvaro: "...como é que as suas estreitas relações com os Estados Unidos e o Vaticano vão afectar as suas decisões?"
Buttiglione respondeu: "Eu sou amigo dos Estados Unidos, mas não sou americano. Tenho divergências com os americanos como todos os europeus têm tido. Acredito que a Europa tem de viver numa comunidade transatlântica com dois pilares, sendo a Europa um deles. Temos de estar preparados para trabalhar com os americanos, como parceiros iguais, sobre o futuro do mundo, com responsabilidades conjuntas pelo futuro da humanidade. ...não é segredo que eu sou católico, mas isso não tem a ver com o Vaticano mas com a minha fé, com as minhas pessoais convicções; e penso que se pode ser um bom católico e um bom europeu ao mesmo tempo ... como Adenauer, De Gasperi, Schuman ou Helmut Kohl."
E ao deputado In't Veld, reafirmou: "sou contra a discriminação. Penso que todas as pessoas devem ter os mesmos direitos, homossexuais, heterossexuais ou o que forem. Estou comprometido a defender os direitos de todos os cidadãos europeus, incluindo o direito de não discriminação. O Senhor quer que eu seja pro-activo, mas eu não sei o que entende por isso. Penso que os direitos dos homossexuais devem ser defendidos na mesma base dos demais cidadãos europeus. Se houver específicos problemas para os homossexuais, estou pronto a considerá-los. Se por exemplo me disser que há uma especial violência contra os homossexuais, então eu estou pronto a considerar a hipótese de legislação específica em ordem a protegê-los dessa violência e a dar melhores garantias do direito à igualdade".
via O "Case Study" Buttiglione (2) Por MÁRIO PINTO
domingo, 21 de novembro de 2004
Novo endereço
sexta-feira, 19 de novembro de 2004
Sérgio Figueiredo hoje no Jornal de Negócios: "São os europeus que estão a pagar, com menos crescimento e mais desemprego, a depreciação acentuada do dólar, porque os asiáticos, ou não têm regimes de câmbios flexíveis (caso da China), ou põem os seus bancos centrais a vender dólares no mercado e comprando as respectivas divisas (como o Japão anda a fazer por estes dias)."
1. Um engano de escrita (penso): os Bancos Centrais asiáticos têm estado sim a comprar dólares para travar a sua desvalorização, por pura e simples emissão monetária da sua própria moeda - é uma situação nova, a capacidade de aumentar as reservas de dólares a custo Zero.
2. Se a Europa tem um problema com isso, será então a solução passar a câmbio fixo ou replicar a estratégia asiática de comprar dólares a custo Zero?
3. Se a valorização de uma moeda fosse causa de menos crescimento e desemprego, quer dizer que a desvalorização cria emprego e acelera o crescimento da economia?
PS: Se os Bancos Centrais Asiáticos conseguem comprar enormes quantidades de dólares a custo Zero, isso significa que têm a capacidade de comprar activos americanos a custo Zero? Isso faz sentido? Não, nada faz sentido no actual sistema monetário estatista e um dia vamos perceber isso.
Edmund Burke e John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, recordemos, é o responsável na economia e filosofia política por credibilizar o que não devia merecer qualquer crédito. Ainda hoje, por incrivel que pareça, é aceite universalmente pelo maistream académico e igualmente à esquerda, centro e direita (e posso juntar até a extrema-esquerda e extrema direita). Se hoje vivemos no consenso do centralismo social-democrata, esmagados pelos virtuais e falsos princípios (e falsa ciência) da macro-economia, a ele se deve.
Rothbard fala da passagem de Keynes pelos The Apostles (..."were not simply a social club, in the manner of Ivy League secret fraternities. They were also a self-consciously intellectual elite, especially interested in philosophy and its applications to aesthetics and life. Apostle members were chosen almost exclusively from King's and Trinity, and they met every Saturday evening behind locked doors to deliver and discuss papers.") e da qual diz:
"The extraordinary arrogance of the Apostles is best summed up in the Society's Kantian half- joke: that the Society alone is "real," whereas the rest of the world is only "phenomenal." Maynard himself would refer to non-Apostles as "phenomena." What all this meant was that the world outside was regarded as less substantial, less worthy of attention than the Society's own collective life….It was a joke with a serious twist,"
e ainda
"(...) The Apostolic confrontation with bourgeois values included praise for avant garde aesthetics, holding homosexuality to be morally superior (with bisexuality a distant second 3), and hatred for such traditional family values as thrift or any emphasis on the future or long run, as compared to the present. ("In the long run," as Keynes would later intone in his famous phrase, "we are all dead.")"
Depois fala da fase BLOOMSBURY
"After graduation from Cambridge, Keynes and many of his Apostle colleagues took up lodgings in Bloomsbury, an unfashionable section of north London. There they formed the now- famous Bloomsbury Group, the center of aesthetic and moral avant-gardism that constituted the most influential cultural and intellectual force in England during the 1910s and 1920s.(...)
With a major emphasis on rebellion against Victorian values, it is no wonder that Maynard Keynes was a distinguished Bloomsbury member. One particular emphasis was pursuit of avantgarde and formalistic art—pushed by art critic and Cambridge Apostle Roger Fry (...) Virginia Stephen Woolf would become a prominent exponent of formalistic fiction. And all of them energetically pursued a lifestyle of promiscuous bisexuality, as was brought to light in Michael Holroyd's (1967) biography of Strachey.
Depois temos a descoberta por Keynes da THE MOORITE PHILOSOPHER
The greatest impact on Keynes's life and values, the great conversion experience for him, came not in economics but in philosophy. A few months after Keynes's initiation into the Apostles, G.E. Moore, a professor of philosophy at Trinity who had become an Apostle a decade earlier than Keynes, published his magnum opus, Principia Ethica (1903). Both at the time and in reminiscence three decades later, Keynes attested to the enormous impact that the Principia had had upon him and his fellow Apostles."
O efeito foi: Keynes and his fellow Apostles enthusiastically embraced the idea of a "religion" composed of moments of "passionate contemplation and communion" of and with objects of love or friendship.
Mas já aqui surge uma nuance: They repudiated, however, all social morals or ge neral rules of conduct, totally rejecting Moore's penultimate chapter on "Ethics in Relation to Conduct." As Keynes states in his 1938 paper:
"In our opinion, one of the greatest advantages of his [Moore's] religion was that it made morals unnecessary….We entirely repudiated a personal liability on us to obey general rules. We claimed the right to judge every individual case on its merits, and the wisdom to do so successfully. This was a very important part of our faith, violently and aggressively held, and for the outer world it was our most obvious and dangerous characteristic. We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions and traditional wisdom. We were, that is to say, in the strict sense of the term, immoralists. (Keynes [1951] 1972: 142–43)
E na página 9 (de 35) Rothbard fala do que Keynes dizia admirar em Burke, onde Keynes pega em partes do seu pensamento, acrescenta as suas, e acabar a construir um edificio no qual, Burke nunca iria querer entrar (com a palavra liberal, sucedeu o mesmo).
"If Moore was Keynes's ethical hero, Burke may lay strong claim to be being his political hero," writes Skidelsky (1983: 154).
O que diz Rothbard: "Edmund Burke? What could that conservative worshiper of tradition have in common with Keynes, the statist and rationalist central planner? Once again, as with Moore, Keynes venerated his man with a Keynesian twist, selecting the elements that fitted his own character and temperament.
What Keynes took from Burke is revealing. (Keynes presented his views in a lengthy undergraduate prize-winning English essay on "The Political Doctrines of Edmund Burke.")
There is, first, Burke's militant opposition to general principles in politics and, in particular, his championing of expediency against abstract natural rights.
Secondly, Keynes agreed strongly with Burke's high time preference, his downgrading of the uncertain future versus the existing present. Keynes therefore agreed with Burke's conservatism in the sense that he was hostile to "introducing present evils for the sake of future benefits." There is also the right-wing expression of Keynes's general deprecation of the long run, when "we are all dead." As Keynes put it, "It is the paramount duty of governments and of politicians to secure the well-being of the community under the case in the present, and not to run risks overmuch for the future" (ibid.: 155– 56).
Thirdly, Keynes admired Burke's appreciation of the "organic" ruling elite of Great Britain. There were differences over policy, of course, but Keynes joined Burke in hailing the system of aristocratic rule as sound, so long as governing personnel were chosen from the existing organic elite. Writing of Burke, Keynes noted, "the machine itself [the British state] he held to be sound enough if only the ability and integrity of those in charge of it could be assured." (Ibid., p. 156)
In addition to his neo-Burkean disregard for principle, lack of concern for the future, and admiration for the existing British ruling class, Keynes was also sure that devotion to truth was merely a matter of taste, with little or no place in polities. He wrote: "A preference for truth or for sincerity as a method may be prejudice based on some aesthetic or personal standard, inconsistent, in politics, with practical good" (Johnson, 1978: 24)
Indeed Keynes displayed a positive taste for lying in politics. He habitually made up statistics to suit his political proposals, and he would agitate for world monetary inflation with exaggerated hyperbole while maintaining that "words ought to be a little wild—the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking." But, revealingly enough, once he achieved power, Keynes admitted that such hyperbole would have to be dropped: "When the seats of power and authority have been attained, there should be no more poetic license" (Johnson and Johnson 1978: 19–21)."
O texto continua a análise da vida Keynes e merece ser lido na totalidade.
quinta-feira, 18 de novembro de 2004
Re: Edmund Burke... anarchist?
Edmund Burke...
Nota: "Natural Society" tal como "Natural Order", são termos usados correntemente por aqueles que acreditam que o último dos fins políticos, como dizia Lord Acton é a liberdade - o que só pode ser conferida na sua totalidade quando os nossos direitos naturais (livre contrato e direito de propriedade) são respeitados em pleno - e esse "pleno" é incompatível com qualquer estrutura de poder político (o que não significa que existam sistemas menos incompatíveis que outros) que detenha o poder monopolístico e unilateral sobre a definição de lei e o exercício da coerção (definição de Estado) - no fim, a sociedade deve reger-se exclusivamente por relações de propriedade e contrato (e existem muitas formas colectivas que o respeitam, como as empresas, associações e condomínios, etc) - e é um contrasenso afirmar que a única forma dos nossos direitos naturais ("rule of law") serem respeitados é submetermo-nos a uma estrutura cuja legitimidade não é contratual nem voluntária. Este é o "insight" do termo" natural society" ou "natural order", a sua consequência não é de indole revolucionária nem utópica (não promete nem felicidade nem pão), apenas nos guia como um fim (para quem o aceitar) na nossa reflexão e análise.
De referir ainda que muitos dos que usam o termo "natural order", vêm muitas qualidades, tal como Burke o via, no melhor da tradição monárquica e na realidade europeia pré-grande guerra (Rothbard falava da "the much civilized world", e inda ao anterior nascimento do capitalismo nas cidades comerciais da itália, da Hasneatic League, numa ordem social descentralizada e estável). A repulsa pelo pior da revolução francesa é também comum a Edmund Burke- na verdade, estes autores (como Hoppe), falam do resultado catastrófico da Grande Guerra como o culminar do que Napoleão e o Jacobinismo quis: o fim das monarquias e o nascimento de uma nova ordem - o Estado Moderno.
1) "A Note on Burke's Vindication of Natural Society"
Published in the Journal of the History of Ideas, 19, 1 (January 1958), pp. 114-118. Murray N. Rothbard
In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society. Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival. This work contrasts sharply with Burke's other writings, for it is hardly in keeping with the current image of the Father of the New Conservatism. A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, Burke's Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism.(...)
An Embarrassing Work for Conservatives
The Vindication was published anonymously when Burke was 27 years old. Nine years later, after his authorship had been discovered, Burke found himself about to embark on his famous Parliamentary career. To admit that he had seriously held such views in earlier years would have been politically disastrous. His only way out was to brush it off as a satire, thereby vindicating himself as an eternal enemy of rationalism and subversion.
Burke begins the Vindication by establishing the aim of his inquiry: to investigate with the light of truth the general nature of political institutions or "political society." He rejects at the outset the typically conservative reluctance to tamper with prevalent beliefs and ancient traditions.
He upholds that noble tenet of eighteenth-century rationalism: that happiness, in the long run, rests on truth and truth alone. And that truth is the natural law of human activity and human relations. Positive law imposed by the State injures man whenever it strays from the path that we know to be the law of man's nature. How is the natural law to be discovered? Not by Revelation, but by the use of man's reason.
'All Empires Are Cemented in Blood'
It is characteristic of Burke that he develops his examination of the State through historical inquiry. First, there are the external relations among States. He finds the typical relation is war. War is practically the only external face of the State; and Burke points out that Machiavelli's emphasis on war for the study of his Prince applies to all forms of States and not just to monarchies. Burke, in obvious disgust, goes on to chronicle some of the notable "butcheries" in which States have indulged. "All empires have been cemented in blood" and in mutual attempts at destruction. And Burke wittily deduces that Hobbes' appalling view of mankind in the state of nature was derived, not from Hobbes' observations of ordinary human action, but from his study of the actions of men when banded together into states. (...)
States Violate the Law of Nature
(...) Burke proceeds to a discussion of the famous Aristotelian types of government: despotism, aristocracy, democracy. Each is taken up, examined, and found wanting. Despotism is obviously evil; but aristocracy is not better. In fact, an aristocracy is apt to be worse, since its rule is more permanent and does not depend on the whims of one man.
And what of democracy? Here Burke draws on his store of knowledge of ancient Greece. Democracy is not only tyrannical, but bound to succumb to hatred of superior individuals. The rule of the people tends to be warlike and despotic, and to make heavy use of taxes and subsidies.
(...) Again and again, he emphatically denounces any and all government, and not just specific, forms of government. Summing up his views on government, he declares:
"The several species of government vie with each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you please, they are in effect but a despotism .... ~
Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man proper caution against them all. The monarchist, and aristocratical, and popular partisans have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have in their turns proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! The thing itself is the abuse!3
Was Burke a Private-Property Anarchist?
The anarchism of Burke's Vindication is negative, rather than positive. It consists of an attack on the State rather than a positive blueprint of the type of society which Burke would regard as ideal.(...)On balance, it would be fair, though inconclusive, to place the Vindication in the individualist camp, since there is no sign of enmity to private property as such in this work. (...)"
2) Rothbard and Burke vs. the Cold War Burkeans, Joseph R. Stromberg
" (...)this essay, Rothbard argued that the Vindication, Burke's first important publication, was a serious and rationalistic analysis of the evils of "artificial society" – that is, political government – and was thus perhaps the first statement of modern anarchism. It was an anarchism that grew naturally out of 18th-century liberalism with its commitment to natural rights and natural law. The Vindication was so radical that the young Burke published it anonymously. (...)
If the Vindication was merely a reductio ad absurdum of Bolingbroke's arguments for deism, Rothbard wanted to see a few of the supposed absurda. Burke's text seemed entirely straightforward (non-ironic) with regard to lawyers and Weston maintained that, there, some of Burke's real views leaked out. In those passages the "satire" was not fully sustained.
Rothbard found "this singularly unconvincing, especially when we consider that distrust of lawyers and their alleged vested interest in tyranny, was part-and-parcel of the very libertarian tradition of the eighteenth century that Burke is said to be satirizing."6
There are many such "leakages" in conventional readings of the book. At some point in his research, Rothbard acquired a copy of Joseph Cressman's dissertation, which was dedicated to sustaining the satire theory.7
Rothbard's extensive underlining and marginal comments flag every case where Cressman discussed passages that clashed with the satire theory. Once again, Burke's "real views" were spotted bubbling up through the sham-Bolingbrokeanism. Cressman was especially sure of this in passages where Burke spoke of the plight of the poor. He may well be right – but how many cases of Burke's real views can there be before the whole satire business topples over? Rothbard saw all such weaknesses as evidence for his own reading.8(...)
In volume three of his Conceived in Liberty, Rothbard zeroed in on Burke's appreciation for Americans' near-anarchist state of freedom, as revealed in his famous Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies.
Writes Rothbard: "Burke saluted American achievements and economic development" and "harked back to the crucial distinction he had made in his first work, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), between the benefits of natural voluntary actions in society ('natural government'), and the mischievous effects of the coercive intervention of the state ('artificial government')."
Further: "Burke hailed the 'fierce spirit of liberty' that had grown up among the Americans" and "saw with acute perception the radically new nature of what the Americans had recently been doing.
And here is what Rothbard quotes from Burke himself:
"We thought, Sir, that the utmost which the discontented colonists would do, was to disturb authority; we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it."
As for conditions in Massachusetts, Burke said:
"we were confident that the first feeling, if not the very prospect of anarchy, would instantly enforce a complete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is now found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public council, without judges, without executive magistrates."11"
(...) But even in the 1780s, in his speeches impeaching Warren Hastings for abuses committed in India (and modeled on Cicero's impeachment of Verres), the prescriptive, expedient Burke could still say things of this sort:
"The rights of men – that is to say, the natural rights of mankind – are indeed sacred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it.... Indeed... formal recognition, by the sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be subverted, but by rooting up the holding radical principles of government, and even of society itself."18 "
quarta-feira, 17 de novembro de 2004
Campeonato Nacional de Flip-flopping
Depois de ouvir as intervenções de Pedro Santana Lopes e José Sócrates no debate orçamental, finalmente percebi o meu erro. Julgava que os dois principais partidos tinham mudado de líder.
Afinal foram os líderes que mudaram de partido...
"The provisions concerning recruiting and the length of active military service had to be fixed by the Reichstag; parliamentary consent was required, moreover, for the budgetary allowance for the army. But the Parliament had no influence over the management of military affairs. The army was the army of the King of Prussia, not of the people or the Parliament. The Emperor and King was Supreme War Lord and commander in chief. The chief of the Great General Staff was the Kaiser's first assistant in the conduct of operations. The army was an institution not within but above the apparatus of civil administration. (...)
To the increase of the armed forces financial considerations were a smaller obstacle than the shortage of the supply of men whom the generals considered eligible for commissions on active duty. With the expansion of the armed forces it had long become impossible to give commissions to noblemen only. The number of nonaristocratic officers steadily grew.(...)
The political system of the new German Empire has been called militarism. The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. (...)
Empire did not employ foreign soldiers. It was not preserved by bayonets but by the almost unanimous consent of its subjects. The nation approved of the system, and therefore the soldiers were loyal too. The people acquiesced in the leadership of the "state" because they deemed such a system fair, expedient, and useful for them. There were, of course, some objectors, but they were few and powerless."
"The liberals therefore did not fear that the new electoral system would postpone or seriously imperil their inexorable final victory. The outlook for the immediate future was not very comforting but the ultimate prospects were excellent. One had only to look at France. In that country too an autocrat had founded his despotism upon the loyalty of the army and upon universal and equal franchise. But now the Caesar was crushed and democracy had triumphed.
The liberals did not greatly fear socialism. The socialists had achieved some success. But it could be expected that reasonable workers would soon discover the impracticability of socialist utopias. Why should the wage earners whose standard of living was daily improving be deluded by demagogues who—as rumors whispered—were on the pay roll of Bismarck?
Only later did the liberals become aware of the change taking place in the nation's mentality. For many years they believed that it was only a temporary setback, a short reactionary incident which was doomed to disappear very soon. For them every supporter of the new ideologies was either misguided or a renegade. But the numbers of these apostates increased. The youth no longer joined the liberal party. The old fighters for liberalism grew tired. With every new election campaign their ranks became thinner; with every year the reactionary system which they hated became more powerful.
Some faithful men still clung to the ideas of liberty and democracy, gallantly fighting against the united assaults on liberalism from the Right and from the Left. But they were a forlorn squad. Among those born after the battle of Königgrätz almost nobody joined the party of liberalism. The liberals died out. The new generation did not even know the meaning of the word."
Omnipotent Government The Rise of the Total State and Total War, by Ludwig von Mises(1944)
This remarkable treatise on Nazism and the total state was published by Yale University (New Haven, CT) in 1944 and reprinted by Arlington House (New Rochelle, NY) in 1969. It is now published by the Libertarian Press (Grove City, PA) and available from the Mises Institute's catalog
Ainda os ataques à propriedade privada
Re: Re: os ataques à propriedade privada
De acordo, mas em última análise, devia ter sido o poder judicial a proteger-nos do legislativo e executivo. Por exemplo, o Supremo Tribunal Americano deixou passar a legislação do New Deal, quando não o devia ter permitido. Quanto é que os bancos deixaram de poder cumprir (default) com a troca das notas por moedas de ouro? Quando de alguma forma, o poder judicial permitiu que o legislativo legalizasse um incumprimento. Ou seja, em que momento é que os dois poderes políticos transcenderam o seu papel? Quando também (mas não só) o Judicial se deixou politizar, aparentemente sem resistência.
Claro que em última análise, "nós" temos os direitos porque lutamos e no fim, sim, "somos nós que o fazemos a nós próprios". Mas é por estas e por outras é que só nos resta a ameaça de secessão pacífica ou a exigência da federalização interna (nacional) como "check and balance" último à social-democracia - passando-se a rejeitar localmente/regionalmente legislação centralista e abusiva como esta.
Quanto aos liberais federalistas europeus, esses têm de perceber enquanto é tempo que o federalismo "para cima" (supranacional em vez de intranacional) só pode piorar as coisas.
Novos links
Re: ataques à propriedade privada
Os ataques à propriedade privada...
...vêm de todo o lado.
O tempo passa e a social-democracia (de esquerda, centro e direita) vai mostrando a sua face - como "somos nós que o fazemos a nós próprios" (e portanto a legitimidade é total) e porque quem interpreta e aplica a Lei (o poder judicial) limita-se a aceitar tudo o que o poder legislativo decreta, perdendo toda e qualquer noção da sua obrigação em verificar a sua adequação à luz do direito natural - a de um totalitarismo que se insinua em contínuo e de forma crescente.
O direito de propriedade confere um direito de auto-regulamentação - e aceitar fumadores ou não é algo que seja para ser decidido pelo poder executivo ou legislativo - o poder judicial devia proteger os proprietários mas apenas protege o seu patrão, de quem depende.
terça-feira, 16 de novembro de 2004
A cidade onde, T.E. Lawrence [da Arábia], escreveu no The Sunday Times, August 1920:
"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. Our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities."
"(...)The British sent a renowned explorer and a senior colonial officer who had quelled unrest in the corners of their empire, Lt. Col. Gerald Leachman, to master this unruly corner of Iraq. Leachman was killed in an altercation with a local leader named Shaykh Dhari. His death sparked a war that ended up costing the lives of 10,000 Iraqis and more than 1,000 British and Indian troops. To restore Iraq to their control, the British used massive air power, bombing indiscriminately. That city is now called Fallujah.
Shaykh Dhari's grandson, today a prominent Iraqi cleric, helped to broker the end of the U.S. Marine siege of Fallujah in April of this year. Fallujah thus embodies the interrelated tribal, religious and national aspects of Iraq's history.(...)"
Fallujah 101 - A history lesson about the town we are currently destroying.
Collin Powell
Os mesmos responsáveis por libertarem o génio do mal na civilização com o desastre do fim da Grande Guerra (aquela que era suposto "acabar com todas as guerras" e "fazer o mundo mais seguro para a democracia"): Versailles e a queda das monarquias europeias substituidas pelas repúblicas fascistas e comunistas (em especial o fim do império austro-hungaro que permitiu a hegemonia germânica: Hitler agradeceu), o fim do padrão ouro com a consequência da crise de 1929, a Segunda Guerra, a queda do Império Britânico, o drama das descolonizações enquadradas no meio de 50 anos de Guerra Fria (o preço de ter feito Estaline - um mass murder dos anos 20 e 30 - um "aliado" e a destruição do Japão).
Os problemas do Médio Oriente tem origens ainda na Grande Guerra, e é o mesmo idealismo musculado (revolucionário?) que o pretende solucionar (daí, alguns até exigirem o fim das monarquias, os regimes mais funcionais desta zona, como o Koweit, Dubai, etc): parece que vão ter a sua oportunidade.
Monarchy vs. Republic
The essential purpose of the State, its "content," is rooted in natural law. The State is not an end in itself; it exists for the sake of its citizens. It is therefore not the source of all law (a claim that is still far too widely accepted), nor is it all-powerful. Its authority is circumscribed by the rights of its citizens. It is only free to act in those fields that are outside their free initiative. The State is therefore at all times the servant of natural law. Its task is to give practical effect to this law; nothing more.
If the mission of the State is the practical realization of natural law, the form of government is a means by which the community attempts to achieve this aim. It is not an end in itself. This explains the relatively subordinate importance of this whole question. Undoubtedly a great deal of importance attaches to the choice of the right means, since this choice will determine whether or not the end is attained. But what is lasting in political life is only natural law. The attempt to realize this law in practice will always have to take account of current conditions. To speak of an eternally valid form of government, right under all circumstances, shows ignorance and presumption. From this it would seem to follow that it is fruitless to try to determine -- mostly from the wrong philosophical premises -- the objective value of one or the other form of government.
The discussion will only become fruitful if we keep in mind the end which every such form is intended to serve. It is therefore not a question of investigating what value we are to attach to monarchies or republics as such. What we must ask ourselves is which form offers the best chances of safeguarding natural law under present-day conditions.(...)
Generally speaking, democratic republics represent a regime dominated by the legislature, while authoritarian regimes are dominated by the executive. The judicial power has not had the primacy for a long time, as we have shown above. It found its earlier expression in the Christian monarchies. It is frequently forgotten that the true ruler has always been the guardian of law and justice.
The most ancient monarchs -- the kings of the Bible -- came from the ranks of the judges. St. Louis of France regarded the administration of justice as his noblest task. The same principle can be seen in the many German "Palatinates," since the Count Palatine (Palatinus) was the guardian of law and justice delegated by the King- Emperor.
The history of the great medieval monarchies shows that the legislative power of the king -- even of a king as powerful as Charles V -- was severely limited by local autonomies. (...)
The judge must interpret the meaning of law and justice, and to do this he must be independent. It is essential that he should not owe his position, his function, to any man. The highest judge, at least, must be in this position. This is only possible under a monarchy.
For in a republic, even the highest guardian of the law derives his position from some other source, to which he is responsible and on which he remains dependent to some extent. This is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
His most important task is not to pass judgment in actual legal disputes, but to stand guard over the purpose of the State and natural law. Above all, it is the task of the supreme judge to see that all legislation is in accordance with the State's fundamental principles, that is, with natural law. The monarch's right to veto legislation passed by parliament is a remnant of this ancient function..."
segunda-feira, 15 de novembro de 2004
Re: Edmund Burke - 1793
Revolução Industrial
Europe witnessed an explosion in population from the mid-to-late-eighteenth century through the nineteenth century that was without precedent in world history. Population doubled in England during the eighteenth century. The University of London's T.S. Ashton, among the greatest twentieth-century historians of the Industrial Revolution, observed that the central problem of the first half of the nineteenth century therefore involved "how to feed and clothe and employ generations of children outnumbering by far those of any earlier time." His own work on industrialization, which focused on England, showed that industrialization, far from being a problem, was the solution to the pressing question of how to deal with this population explosion.
Catholics and Capitalism, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
domingo, 14 de novembro de 2004
Novos artigos no site da Causa Liberal
Eleições III
"(...) If majority decisions are 'right', then the largest of all possible majorities, a world majority and a democratic world government, must be considered ultimately 'right' with the consequences predicted at the outset of this article. (...)
Imagine a world government, democratically elected according to the principle of one-man-one-vote on a worldwide scale. What would the probable outcome of an election be? Most likely, we would get a Chinese-Indian coalition government. And what would this government most likely decide to do in order to satisfy its supporters and be reelected? The government would probably find that the so-called Western world had far too much wealth and the rest of the world, in particular China and India, had far too little, and hence, that a systematic wealth and income redistribution would be called for. (...)
The successive expansion of the franchise and finally the establishment of universal adult suffrage did within each country what a world democracy would do for the entire globe: it set in motion a seemingly permanent tendency toward wealth and income redistribution.(...)
The recognition of democracy as a machinery of popular wealth and income redistribution, then, in conjunction with one of the most fundamental principles in all of economics – that one will end up getting more of whatever it is that is being subsidized – provides the key to an understanding of the present age.
(...) as a result of subsidizing individuals because they are poor, there will be more poverty. In subsidizing people because they are unemployed, more unemployment will be created. Supporting single mothers out of tax funds will lead to an increase in single motherhood, 'illegitimacy', and divorce. In outlawing child labor, income is transferred from families with children to childless persons (as a result of the legal restriction on the supply of labor, wage rates will rise).
(...) as a result of the so-called Social Security System, for in subsidizing retirees (the old) out of taxes imposed on current income earners (the young), the institution of a family – the intergenerational bond between parents, grandparents, and children – is systematically weakened. The old need no longer rely on the assistance of their children if they have made no provision for their own old age, and the young (with typically less accumulated wealth) must support the old (with typically more accumulated wealth) rather than the other way around, as is typical within families. (...)
In subsidizing the malingerers, the neurotics, the careless, the alcoholics, the drug addicts, the Aids-infected, and the physically and mentally 'challenged' through insurance regulation and compulsory health insurance, there will be more illness, malingering, neuroticism, carelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction, Aids infection, and physical and mental retardation.
By forcing non-criminals, including the victims of crime, to pay for the imprisonment of criminals (rather than making criminals compensate their victims and pay the full cost of their own apprehension and incarceration), crime will increase.
(...)Accordingly, as a result of the expansion of 'public' sector employment, there will be increasing laziness, carelessness, incompetence, disservice, maltreatment, waste, and even destruction – and at the same time ever more arrogance, demagoguery, and lies ('we work for the public good').
(...)If current trends continue, it is safe to say that the Western welfare state (social democracy) will collapse just as Eastern (Russian-style) socialism collapsed in the late 1980s.
(...) Almost all major thinkers had nothing but contempt for democracy. Even the Founding Fathers of the U.S., nowadays considered the model of a democracy, were strictly opposed to it. Without a single exception, they thought of democracy as nothing but mob-rule. They considered themselves to be members of a 'natural aristocracy', and rather than a democracy they advocated an aristocratic republic. Furthermore, even among the few theoretical defenders of democracy such as Rousseau, for instance, it is almost impossible to find anyone advocating democracy for anything but extremely small communities (villages or towns).
Indeed, in small communities where everyone knows everyone else personally most people cannot but acknowledge that the position of the 'haves' is typically based on their superior personal achievement just as the position of the 'have-nots' finds its typical explanation in their personal deficiencies and inferiority. Under these circumstances, it is far more difficult to get away with trying to loot other people and their personal property to one's advantage. In distinct contrast, in large territories encompassing millions or even hundreds of millions of people, where the potential looters do not know their victims, and vice versa, the human desire to enrich oneself at another's expense is subject to little or no restraints.(...)"
Edmund Burke - 1793
"On the occasion of the death of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Edmund Burke made the following speech in the House of Commons in 1793:
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, --glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor and joy.
Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom;
little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness."
THE EMPTY THRONE, Charles A. Coulombe
But the issue is more complex than this fact alone. Republics, borne of revolutions, are of their nature destructive. They do not create. Every institution we enjoy in the West to-day stems from Monarchical creation or patronage. Parliaments, government ministries, universities, judiciaries, armies and navies, provincial and civic governments, learned societies and academies --- all of them. Moreover, they cling to remaining or resurrected trappings of Monarchy to give themselves legitimacy.
But it is not only a question of governmental structures. The Church, founded by the legitimate heir of the House of David, is a powerful witness to Monarchy, no matter how many churchmen attack it; whatever they may say, the altar is a throne. Turn your attention to the arts: opera, ballet, classical music, theatre --- all developed under royal protection, and their conventions reflect this. Many an American theatre or opera house has a royal box. The rituals of the hunt were similarly developed, and are carefully followed in the States, France, and other republics. Even the rules of simple etiquette come to us, ultimately, from royal court practice.This makes perfect sense, because man is psychologically Monarchist. He longs to give life and loyalty to something or someone over him almost as much as he wants to take all for himself. Thus the battle between republic and Crown takes place in all of our hearts and minds.
As most of my readers will know, The Lord of the Rings is doing quite well at the box office. Like its literary progenitor, it is a Monarchist work. A friend of a friend (here in republican Hollywood) said, after seeing it:
"At first, I was really uncomfortable with all that King stuff. But afterwards, I thought maybe it was me and the modern view that was wrong."
If such a conversion is possible in Tinsel Town, where else may it not occur?For the fact is that as long as the human spirit remains itself, there will always be hope for restoration. The last Monarchist will die when the last human being does. And so, if any of my readers are discouraged, let them take comfort from this short poem, featured in the Lord of the Rings:
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not touched y the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall bee blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
Be assured: some day, the thrones will be filled."
quarta-feira, 10 de novembro de 2004
"Mr. O'Donnell raised the subject of secession on "The McLaughlin Group" during the weekend. "Ninety percent of the red states are welfare-client states of the federal government," said Mr. O'Donnell, who was an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat. In a telephone interview, Mr. O'Donnell said the red states that went to Mr. Bush "collect more from the federal government than they send in. New York and California, Connecticut -- the states that are blue are all the states that are paying for the bulk of everything this government does, from ... Social Security to everything else, and the people in those states don't like what this government is doing." The Internet has exploded with talk of a blue-state confederacy, including one screed circulating by e-mail that features a map of a new country called "American Coastopia" and proposes lopping off the Northeast, the West Coast and the upper Midwest to form a new country, away from the "rednecks in Oklahoma" and the "homophobic knuckle-draggers in Wyoming."
The emergence of a solidly Republican South prompted longtime Democratic activist Bob Beckel to advocate Southern independence the morning after Election Day. "I think now that slavery is taken care of, I'm for letting the South form its own nation. Really, I think they ought to have their own confederacy," Mr. Beckel said on the "Fox and Friends" program. While secession is often thought to be a Southern phenomenon, Northern leaders repeatedly threatened secession in the 19th century, in protest of such provocations as the War of 1812, as well as the admission of Louisiana and Texas to the Union. In 1803, Massachusetts Sen. Timothy Pickering proposed "a new confederacy," naming the New England states members along with New York ("the center of the confederacy"). In 1839, former President John Quincy Adams defended the right of secession in a speech in New York, saying, "Far better will it be ... to part in friendship with each other than to be held together by constraint."
But according to Slate.com -- another liberal Web site that has explored the topic of secession -- there are no provisions in U.S. law for a state or states to opt out of the Union, citing such authorities as Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School and Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School who say that since Appomattox "scholars have agreed that the Constitution grants no right of secession."
Nota: Todos os Estados que chegam ao estatuto de Império do momento, deparam-se mais tarde ou mais cedo com qualquer evento que desencadeia o seu fim (desse estatuto) - as causas estarão sempre na perda de sentido das proporções e achar que nenhum fardo é pesado perante a responsabilidade de gerir e liderar os problemas do mundo. Seguramente a dimensão da divida pública e dos déficits deveria fazer pensar até os mais acérrimos defensores do lógica do " império da liberdade". Sendo para já altamente improvável (mas os 11 meses entre a queda do muro e a reunificação da Alemanha mostrabem como os acontecimentos podem ultrapassar todas as expectativas), é irónico, ou talvez não, que a palavra "secessão" seja pronunciada pelos Democratas que descobrem que são eles que "pagam" o "sistema" e perdem as eleições.
È pouco conhecido que já antes da Guerra da Secessão nos EUA, foram alguns Estados do Norte e não ao Sul, a primeiro levantarem a possibilidade de separação. Depois, Lincoln e após impor um sistema tarifário que prejudicava claramente os Estados do Sul, decidiu assumir a responsabilidade de impôr a União pela força. Sherman, o general nortista era racista (ao contrário de Robert E. Lee, o general confederado a quem Lincoln ofereceu primeiro o comando do Norte mas ao qual respondeu - "I love the Union, I love Virginia more" - Virginia era o Estado de George Wasghinton e Thomas Jeferson) e dedicou-se a dizimar indios após ter feito questão a que no Sul "tudo o vento levasse".
E quanto à questão constitucional em que "since Appomattox "scholars have agreed that the Constitution grants no right of secession." É típico dos juristas (em que apesar de saberem que a assinatura da Constituição Americana e o estabelecimento de um governo federal ser óbviamente um acto voluntário entre os Estados que assim acordam organizar-se e que por isso mesmo é mais do que óbvio o direito de reverter essa decisão) ao observar o exercício do poder central, declarar esse exercício como algo legal.
Pessoalmente, dentro desses eventos inesperados que põem fim ao "overreaching" dos impérios (tal como foi a Grande Guerra para a Europa Central e a Segunda Guerra para o Inpério Britânico), pode ser a própria solidez da "União" a ser o calcanhar de aquiles da América que conhecemos - óbviamente não o tem de ser, mas se o caminho que parece estar traçado, de assumir quase messiânicamente, os custos de levar a felicidade e a paz aos povos (por acções militares , ajudas massivas de reconstrução e ocupação permanente, expansão da presença política para as fronteiras da Rússia e China, etc) , pode produzir os seus anti-corpos não só no exterior mas também no seu interior.


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Jasha Droppo, Alex Acero, and Li Deng
September 2001
This paper describes recent improvements to SPLICE, Stereobased Piecewise Linear Compensation for Environments, which produces an estimate of cepstrum of undistorted speech given the observed cepstrum of distorted speech. For distributed speech recognition applications, SPLICE can be placed at the server, thus limiting the processing that would take place at the client. We evaluated this algorithm on the Aurora2 task, which consists of digit sequences within the TIDigits database that have been digitally corrupted by passing them through a linear filter and/or by adding different types of realistic noises at SNRs ranging from 20dB to -5dB. On set A data, for which matched training data is available, we achieved a 66% decrease in word error rate over the baseline system with clean models. This preliminary result is of practical significance because in a server implementation, new noise conditions can be added as they are identified once the service is running.
|Publication type
|Published in
|Proc. Eurospeech Conference
|Aalbodk, Denmark
|International Speech Communication Association
© 2007 ISCA. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the ISCA and/or the author.

subset: commoncrawl


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There is much debate as to what makes the perfect hot chocolate but this is our head chef Ben Bass's recipe. We think it is rather special so wanted to share it with you. The quantities below will fill a few mugs, or be enough for two people allowing for top-ups! Why not try it out at home? Ingredients 550ml full fat milk 50ml water 100g dark, dark chocolate, broken into small pieces. 28g cocoa powder (100%) 60g sugar Method Warm the […]more »
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Learn more about the five boroughs that make up New York City with our complete guide.
Discover what to do, where to stay and what to see in New York City with our planning tool.
Get ready to take on New York City with Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo.
Enjoy Shakespeare in the Park, the Museum Mile Festival, Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks and more.
Download your free copy or order a guide online today.
Wireless Internet is available at locations throughout NYC—including many parks and libraries.
Get tips, maps and everything else you'll need during your stay.
These NYC-centric mobile apps put the City at your fingertips.
See NYC's iconic sights at discounted rates.
Get the best prices at NYC's bars, clubs and restaurants.
Stay in New York City and save with these offers.
New York City is made up of five boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. Each one has enough attractions—and enough personality—to be a city all its own. Learn more about them with this guide.
It's definitely somebody's idea of a hip urban club: a multilevel warehouse space with a dramatically placed bar. And for a certain cross section of people from the tristate area, the place clearly has appeal. However, the neighborhood harbors so many options that Freight 410 is as easy to miss as its discreet entrance.


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Exercise more. A PSA for stressed creatives.
Everytime we talk about having a healthy body, excuses appear: "I don't have time", "I'm tired", "I'm too old for this"… Stop it.
Creativity needs you to be always in your best shape. Mentally and physically.
Exercise more.
This «PSA for stressed creatives» is brought to you by the collaborative forces of Emiliano Aranguren, Belén Canale, Alejandro Cordara, Maca Hernández, Philippe Intraligi, Nicolás Lescano, Laura Marcello, Lionel Fernández Roca, Verónica Risi, Juliana Rojas and Pablo Zarate. 2013 Art Direction, Copywriting, Graphic Design
Eat slowly, eat healthy. A PSA for stressed creatives.
How many times did you find yourself eating in front of your computer? Or worse, eating and working at the same time.
That isn't right.
The first step to avoid stress is by taking care of yourself… Eat slowly, eat healthy.
This «PSA for stressed creatives» is brought to you by the collaborative forces of Belen Canale, Alejandro Cordara, Belen Fourcade, Philippe Intraligi, Laura Marcello, María Peretti, Verónica Risi, Lionel Fernandez Roca, Juliana Rojas and Pablo Zarate. 2013 Art Direction, Copywriting, Graphic Design
Be optimistic. Be patient. A PSA for stressed creatives
Creativity is hard. It takes time and it can be scary sometimes. But remember: There's nothing that can't be solved through hard work and dedication.
You have to believe in your talent and believe that it'll grow. It's inevitable.
Be optimistic. Be patient.
This «PSA for stressed creatives» is brought to you by the collaborative forces of Belen Canale, Alejandro Cordara, Maca Hernandez (Bonjour), Laura Marcello, Javier Milla, Nathan Pahl, Verónica Risi, Lionel Fernandez Roca, Juliana Rojas and Pablo Zarate. 2013 Art Direction, Copywriting, Graphic Design
Shoot drunk, edit sober.
This came out as a joke on instagram about making a t-shirt with Santiago Perez Grovas' quotes: http://instagram.com/p/b0-c3MwIV9/
Some original icons by Simon Child & Patrick Morrison from The Noun Project. 2013 Art Direction, Graphic Design, Typography
If you don't love it… A PSA for stressed creatives.
How many times do we found ourselves working on some project that we know right from the start we're gonna end up hating? It's pretty stressful, right?
If this has happened to you, keep in mind that "If you don't love it, it's ok to leave it".
This «PSA for stressed creatives» is brought to you by the collaborative forces of Alejandro Cordara, Laura Marcello, Juliana Rojas, Lionel Fernandez Roca and Pablo Zarate. 2013 Art Direction, Copywriting, Graphic Design
Breathe. A PSA for stressed creatives.
Sometimes, creatives are so immersed in their work that they often forget to breathe correctly.
We can fight back stress.
This is where we stand and say "Breathe. It's important".
This «PSA for stressed creatives» is brought to you by the collaborative forces of Juliana Rojas, Lionel Fernandez Roca and Pablo Zarate.
Keep breathing with us. 2013 Art Direction, Copywriting, Graphic Design
11 Twittulares
As we were building TWTM we grew increasingly determined with refining our monitoring process. We wanted to time and time again get a more acurate data mining, weeding out more and more of the 'crappy matches', as I called them (data that didn't have anything to do with what we were monitoring, but came up anyways because it matched a keyword by chance). TWTM was a great engine to measure just about anything that was going on on Twitter, but this strength was also it's greatest downpoint: if it's engine was versatile enough to be able to monitor anything, it would never be able to be monitor one specific topic as flawlessly as the standards we wanted to impose demanded.
We took the knowledge and experience gained while building TWTM and formed a smaller startup team to dedicate ourselves to building a product that could have those standards engraved. We knew we had to get topic-specific, and that topic had to deliver a constant flow of complex data to identify, be challenging enough to serve as a stepping stone for more products to come, and be fun enough to let us be engaged with the users. We went with football.
We threw around a lot of names across the months and 11 Twittulares, a play on words between 'Twitter' and 'Titulares' (starters) stuck.
We were a small group. Everyone would lead their area of expertise and we would have almost equal voice in the big matters. I was the Design Lead but I often found myself feeling as somewhat of a Project Co-Manager, as I regularly gave voice in issues regarding content, development and social media management.
We started by using a clone of the TWTM engine and tweaking it bit by bit as time went by, but eventually I found that we were again and again founding ourselves hitting a wall in our progress because of the original app's limitations. I proposed we threw it all away and start building from scratch: it was never going to be what we wanted it to be if we kept being held back by our past work.
We sat the whole thing up around real football tournaments and matches around the globe, but gave no regard to the 'real' outcome of the match. What mattered was if the people tweeted about you and how much, that would define who won our version of the match. A quote by the great Oscar Wilde kept coming to mind: "If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you".
It was an awesome, extremely hard, challenging and ambitious project, and I loved every minute of it. 2013 Creative Direction, UI/UX, Web Design
a&p The Promotion House
I was commissioned by a Promotion Agency to design their new website. They're one of the biggest in Mexico and had offices all around Central and South America and they really needed to refresh their online presence while making a statement: we're big and we're here to stay.
It was a simple enough brand site, but I decided to take it as a challenge and do the development side of things myself, as I proposed a full Google Maps integration to sort out and show their big international presence and found it interesting to learn how to work with that API. That being said, at the time I hadn't coded a full site in years. It proved to be... challenging, to say the least, but I luckily came out ahead and with a few new tools on my belt. 2013 UI/UX, Web Design, Web Development
What started as a social media feeds management app (NSmetrics) eventually evolved into a more specified product oriented to be able to capture and process the whole conversation on Twitter around a specific subject, event, person or entity. We originally called it "Tweetometro" (Tweetometer), but I quickly came up with the idea of simpifying the brand name to TWTM.
This time we built it from the ground up, using everything we learned from our experience with NSmetrics and taking under consideration everything we were setting out to do with this app. This one was going to be an engine, one that would have a simple enough default front end that we could use it casually for monitoring random events, but at the same time could withstand anything we wanted to throw at it: the backend was the key.
I built an interface with a simple enough UX that you could have only a rudimentary idea of what the thing you wanted to measure entailed and you'd be able to start seeing results, but could also be used in a more complex manner to narrow down the data to get to specific portions of a conversation, and even compare enities with great ease in real time. The more data you'd feed it, the more accurate measurements it gave you, simple as that. It could be (and was) used to measure topics as diverse as one could think of: from concerts, to sports tournaments, to celebrities popularity, to even political elections.
Everything we learned from building and using this tool in just a few months led to us making the choice of building another even more ambitious and specific project that stemmed directly from TWTM: 11.tt 2013 Interaction Design, UI/UX, Web Design
A while back I was commissioned to design an application to manage massive amounts of Twitter identities (i.e. 'bots'). As I was working with Twitter-related apps a lot at the time, this project was a perfect fit and it piqued my interest at once.
The real challenge was that for these identities to be able to 'work', they needed to be:
- Managed and sustained constantly in order to expand their lifespan (i.e. gotta keep'em real so Twitter doesn't kill them)
- Organized and classified in a comprehensive way to maximize their effectiveness (i.e. 'the right tool for the right job')
- Able to execute massive ammounts of content at a given time to push an action into being, and then fade out their involvement to let the real 'organic' content take their place
To top it off, all of this needed to be measured in real time. Needless to say, it was a really fun and challenging project, right up my alley.
Since the identities were all in all 'nameless drones', I geeked out a little and styled the logo as somewhat of a Stormtrooper (with a little Clone Army / Boba Fett mixed in there) and made a point of making the whole look and feel real dark and ominous (my tiny Darth Vader homage, if you will), turning it to my advantage as it gave me great contrast when visualizing hard data. 2013 Interaction Design, UI/UX, Web Design
- Nicestream.com Wireframes As I was working at Nicestream for their metrics apps division, I got asked to pitch some ideas for their new site. These never made it past the wireframing stage, as they decided to go with a simple landing page instead, but I ended up quite liking how they turned out. 2013 Branding, Information Architecture, Web Design
In early 2012 I got hired to work as the Design Lead for a team that was trying to develop a social media feeds management app.
The NSmetrics brand and business unit ended up disolving in it's early stages. As the challenges we met while trying to build a comprehensive app that could hold a huge chunk of a specific SM conversation at it's core made us realize we needed to take a different direction, this specific project was left unfinished, but I still managed to learn a great deal in regards of planning a webapp and designing it's UI, both from scratch.
A lot of what I learned while building this was eventually poured into TWTM, of which this can be considered as somewhat of a 'predecesor'. 2013 Interaction Design, UI/UX, Web Design
- Quoting Time A random quotes series exploring different typographic and composition styles. 2012 Typography, Design, Art Direction
Rapsodia: Winter Collection 2012
Website proposal for clothing brand Rapsodia for it's 2012 Winter Collection.
Designed while working at Camboya Digital Media. 2012 Web Design, Typography, Design
Twitter interactive website for Camboya Digital Media's end-of-year action.
Designed while working at Camboya Digital Media. 2012 Illustration, Typography, Web Design
VANS: Where's my park?
Proposal for a geotagging based website where skateboarders, longboarders and the sort could find and recommend parks and events. For VANS clothing brand.
Photography, art & design by Lionel Fernandez Roca. 2012 Web Design, Typography, Design
Camboya Mobile
Mobile version for Camboya Digital Media's website.
Designed & development counseling while working at Camboya Digital Media. 2012 Web Design, UI/UX, Design
Bienvenidas: Mother's Day
A Facebook action for Editorial Bienvenidas with a Mother's Day motif.
Concept, art, photography & design by Lionel Fernandez Roca.
Designed while working at Camboya Digital Media. 2012 Typography, Design, Art Direction
- lionelfernandezroca.com - Landing page A typographic landing page designed for my website. 2010 Typography, Graphic Design, Web Design
Buscadores de Aventuras
Piece for a BTL campaign developed entirely for the online reality show CreationLA as part of the third challenge.
Typography, Design & Art Direction by Lionel Fernandez Roca. 2011 Typography, Design, Art Direction
Pieces for a digital advertising campaign developed entirely for the online reality show CreationLA as part of the second challenge.
Typography, Design & Art Direction by Lionel Fernandez Roca. 2011 Typography, Design, Art Direction
FIESTA & MUSICA verano 2011
Flyer advertising parties and concerts taking place during the summer of 2011.
Designed while working at íntegroMKT. 2011 Typography, Graphic Design, Art Direction
To design by Milton Glaser
"To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master"
quote by the great Milton Glaser 2010 Graphic Design, Typography, Design
Alquimistas Gráficos
Alquimistas Gráficos (Graphic Alchemists).
Mixed media collab between Pablo Zárate & Lionel Fernández Roca. 2010 Digital Art, Typography, Digital Imaging
Now with air conditioning...
Now with air conditioning...
A pseudo-retro poster to test out my new branding identity. 2010 Typography, Graphic Design, Branding
be better
better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today
A phrase of mine that has become somewhat of a motto. I repeat it to myself every single day. 2010 Typography, Design, Digital Imaging
- Taste of echoes Taste of echoes :: A self-promotion personal project series that finds it's concept behind a selection of music. 2010 Art Direction, Graphic Design, Typography


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Is your body not processing insulin as well as it could? Are your blood sugar levels too high or low? Are you suffering from cardiovascular disease? If any of those situations sound like yours' you may be suffering from metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome can lead to high cholesterol' weight gain' and other health problems.
Scientists have found that a diet low on the glycemic index can help relieve these conditions. In that case' you need a supplement with the ingredients to match. UltraMeal® Plus 360° fits the bill: it's a medical food with the nutrients you need to support your metabolism. All you have to do is mix two scoops with water for a convenient' delicious drink.
One of the main ingredients in UltraMeal® Plus 360° Stevia is PharmaSoy®. PharmaSoy isn't your typical' everyday soy protein. Instead' it combines the highest quality soy with isoflavones and calcium. You don't have to worry if you're lactose intolerant; the calcium in this formula is completely dairy-free! Each serving also includes 2 grams of plant sterols' which is the daily amount recommended by the National Institute of Health (NIH) for healthy cholesterol levels; plant sterols can also reduce your risk of heart disease.
RIAA and acacia extract' both types of selective kinase response modulators (SKRMs)' are included in UltraMeal® Plus 360° due to their ability to improve triglyceride and fasting insulin levels. For this reason' diabetics may find this powder especially helpful. In addition' it provides a type of folate that's identical to the form that naturally occurs in the body—5-MTHF—allowing your body to absorb it easily; 5-methyl tetrahydrofolate supports a healthy cardiovascular system by promoting healthy homocysteine levels. Homocysteine is an amino acid that may contribute to heart attacks and atherosclerosis (hardening and narrowing of the arteries) when there's an excessive amount present in your body.
According to a preliminary study' this supplement (when combined with a healthy diet and regular exercise) has been shown to increase the levels of "good" HDL cholesterol. At the same time' it works to reduce "bad" LDL cholesterol' total cholesterol' and triglycerides in the body. It also serves as a good source of essential vitamins' minerals' and fiber.
This meal replacement gives you creamy vanilla bean taste with the sweetness of natural stevia and eyrthritol. The latter is far less likely to cause uncomfortable gastrointestinal side effects than the other low-calorie sugar alcohol substitutes used in most similar products.
Metagenics creates innovative supplements that help people overcome the symptoms of chronic diseases and maintain their health. Quality and research is paramount' and has been since the company was founded in 1983. All active ingredients in Metagenics products have been demonstrated effective by third-party scientists. Its formulas have been imitated but never duplicated.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These products are not meant to diagnose' treat or cure any disease or medical condition. Please consult your doctor before starting any exercise or nutritional supplement program or before using these or any product during pregnancy or if you have a serious medical condition.
Serving Size: About 2 Scoops (45 Grams)
Servings Per Container: 14 (By weight)
Amount Per Serving / % DV
Calories 110
Fat 3g
Saturated Fat† 1g
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 0mg
Sodium 290mg
Potassium 500mg
Carbohydrate 18g
Dietary Fiber 4g
Sugars 1g
Sugar Alcohol 9g
Protein†† 15g
Vitamin A 1750 IU / 35%
Vitamin C 60mg / 100%
Calcium 600mg / 60%
Iron 2.4mg / 15%
Vitamin D 40 IU / 10%
Vitamin E 11 IU / 35%
Thiamin 0.75mg / 50%
Riboflavin 0.85mg / 50%
Niacin 10mg / 50%
Vitamin B6 25mg / 1250%
Folate (as folic acid and L-5-methyltetrahydrofolate) 400mcg / 100%
Vitamin B12 (as cyanocobalamin) 30mcg / 500%
Biotin 150mcg / 50%
Pantothenic Acid 5mg / 50%
Phosphorus 500mg / 50%
Iodine 75mcg / 50%
Magnesium 150mg / 40%
Zinc 9mg / 60%
Copper 1mg / 50%
Manganese 0.3mg / 15%
Chromium 100mcg / 80%
Chloride 500mg / 15%
Isoflavones 17mg / *
Plant Sterols (including beta-sitosterol and other plant sterols) 2000mg / *
†Saturated Fat is contributed by olive oil' which has recognized health benefits.
††Non-Genetically Engineered' Identity-Preserved Soy protein.
*Daily Value not established.
Other Ingredients: Soy protein isolate†† (soy)' erythritol' soy fiber (soy)' plant sterols (soy)' inulin' dicalcium phosphate' natural flavors' olive oil' magnesium citrate' silica' potassium chloride' proprietary blend of RIAA and Indian gum Arabic tree [magnesium salts of reduced iso-alpha acids (from hops extract' Humulus lupulus L.)' hydrogenated soybean oil encapsulate' and Indian gum Arabic tree (Acacia nilotica) bark and heartwood extract]' lecithin (soy)' sodium chloride' xanthan gum' guar gum' ascorbic acid' zinc gluconate' stevia (Stevia rebaudiana)' pyridoxine HCl' d-alpha tocopheryl acetate' niacinamide' copper gluconate' D-calcium pantothenate' thiamin HCl' riboflavin' chromium polynicotinate' retinyl palmitate' folic acid' L-5-methyltetrahydrofolate' biotin' potassium iodide' cyanocobalamin' and cholecalciferol.
Contains: Soy.
Formulated to Exclude: Wheat' gluten' egg' dairy products' nuts' tree nuts' fish' crustacean shellfish' colors' artificial sweeteners' artificial flavors' and preservatives.
Blend (for no longer than 15 seconds)' shake' or briskly stir 2 level scoops of UltraMeal Plus 360° Stevia into 8 fluid ounces of chilled water twice daily' or as directed by your healthcare practitioner. Consume within 10 minutes of reconstitution.
Excess Vitamin A intake may be toxic and may increase the risk of birth defects. Pregnant women and women who may become pregnant should not exceed 5000 IU of performed Vitamin A (retinyl palmitate) per day. Do not use if pregnant or nursing. Not recommended for individuals taking anticoagulant medications. Do not use if safety seal is missing or broken. Keep tightly closed in a cool' dry place.
Allergen Caution: Contains Soy.
Allergy / Dietary Needs
- Artificial Color Free
- Artificial Flavor Free
- Artificial Sweeteners Free
- Dairy Free
- Egg Free
- Fish Free
- Gluten Free
- No Added Coloring
- Nuts Free
- Shellfish Free
- Tree Nuts Free
- Wheat Free
- Artificial Preservative Free
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Additionally, PureFormulas is unable to directly recommend products in relation to specific health conditions. Please contact your trusted healthcare practitioner for direct product recommendations.
If you have any general questions regarding orders or our policies and programs, please contact our Customer Happiness Team @ 1.800.383.6008
If you are pregnant, nursing, taking any medications or have any medical condition, consult your doctor before use. Your healthcare professional is the best source for guidance before beginning an exercise or nutritional supplement program.