Starvin Larry

h/t David Codrea

The “go-to PR firm” for “progressive groups,” FitzGibbon media, has shut it doors and canned all its employees so that its founder and president can fight a barrage of sexual harassment and sexual assault charges. Daily Variety, the Hollyweird trade paper:

FitzGibbon Media, a Washington public relations firm that represented progressive groups like MoveOn, Everytown and NARAL, closed its doors on Thursday after allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Trevor FitzGibbon, its president.

A group of the firm’s former employees issued a statement in which they said that “the team that comprised FitzGibbon Media is incredibly sad and disappointed to confirm that allegations against Trevor FitzGibbon, FitzGibbon Media founder and president , for sexual assault and harassment of multiple female staffers. Staffers reported over a half dozen incidents of sexual harassment and at least two involving sexual assault committed by Trevor FitzGibbon against his own employees.”

FitzGibbon Media was the publicist for Shannon Watts and various Bloomberg anti-gun fronts, including Everytown and Illegal Mayors Against Guns. At least, until it folded amid revelations that all-purpose prog hero Trevor Fitzgibbon was trying to fitz his gibbon into enough unwilling women — mostly subordinates, eeewww — that it finally lashed back on him.

Read the rest @ WeaponsMan here

Via NC Renegade

The German daily newspaper Die Welt recently produced a video report about Germany’s surge in sales of self-defense weapons, which was titled “The Weapons Business is Profiting from the Refugee Crisis.” (Image source: Die Welt video screenshot)

Germans, facing an influx of more than one million asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, are rushing to arm themselves.

All across Germany, a country with some of the most stringent gun-control laws in Europe, demand is skyrocketing for non-lethal self-defense weapons, including pepper sprays, gas pistols, flare guns, electroshock weapons and animal repellants. Germans are also applying for weapons permits in record numbers.

The scramble to acquire weapons comes amid a migrant-driven surge in violent crimes — including rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults — in cities and towns throughout the country.

German authorities, however, are going to great lengths to argue that the German citizenry’s sudden interest in self-defense has nothing whatsoever to do with mass migration into the country, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

In recent weeks, German newspapers have published dozens of stories with headlines such as: “Germany is Afraid — And Grabs for the Weapon,” “Germans are Arming Themselves: The Demand for Weapons Explodes,” “More and More People are Buying a Weapon,” “Security: Hands Up!” “The Need for Security Increases,” “Boom in Weapons Stores,” and “Bavarians are Arming Themselves— Afraid of Refugees?”

More…

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

– George W. Bush

The younger Bushevik did not recognize the irony of his statement but there it is: “and neither do we.”

People often mistake my scribbling for politics and it is a rejection of the same, categorically. The common argot for the word is the use of compulsion systems to create and grow societies. I chatted up a local Bernie Sanders drone and explained why my opposition to initiated violence locks me out of even considering him (even though as a non-voter, it is a moot point). These woolly-headed collectivists are usually miffed at this notion because they think they have a monopoly on love and peace when in fact they love war with a passion they don’t even realize as long as it’s waged domestically. The Grand Old Politburo loves war on any front. But there is the odd train of consistency that WWi, WWII, Korea and Vietnam were all Democratic enterprises. Go figure.

Politics is nothing more than a polite diversionary word for violence brokerage. A quick thought experiment would solve this fundamentally: if a government could not tax, fine, kidnap, cage, maim and kill with its constabulary forces depending on the level of non-compliance of the Helot, how would it rob any man of liberty much less control vast swaths of geography?

Much like the imbecilic notion of the possibility of good cops is so brilliantly destroyed so adroitly by Higgs below, the existence of the state relies on a powerful yet extraordinarily tenuous proposition. The subject populations under state control greatly outstrip the resources and manpower of the government so the state must resort to various means of co-opting behaviors that showcase compliance and alienate the individual thinker or actor who wish moral autonomy and individual volition.

Why do you think that the leviathan dominates every educational institution in America? Why do you think the quaintly identified government civics classes are nothing more than state obedience courses? Why do you think that so much of the dross Hollywood pumps out is thinly disguised government supremacist gruel?

Robert Higgs:

“The whole good cop/bad cop question can be disposed of much more decisively. We need not enumerate what proportion of cops appears to be good or listen to someone’s anecdote about his Uncle Charlie, an allegedly good cop. We need only consider the following: (1) a cop’s job is to enforce the laws, all of them; (2) many of the laws are manifestly unjust, and some are even cruel and wicked; (3) therefore every cop has agreed to act as an enforcer for laws that are manifestly unjust or even cruel and wicked. There are no good cops.”

One can see where this is simply an explanation of the state in miniature. This is why most moral men are queasy about the notion of politicians in the first place. The very position begs the question of virtue and rectitude. Even the vaunted Ron Paul was part of massive system of theft and coercion. One would be hard to confine your inquiry to American history and not find every “politician” to be a grasping sociopath seeking to expand the government reach to and in human lives and commerce.

Read he rest @ ZeroGov here