The PRODOS blog

Archive for the ‘Celebrate Capitalism’ Category

List of films the PRODOS Film Society (Melbourne, Australia) will be including in its 2010 programme: HERE (2 MB PDF file)

The PRODOS Film Society is a member of the Federation of Victorian Film Societies. Our constitution is HERE.

Our purpose is to present and study movies that promote and explore free market thinking, capitalist ideals, the history of ideas, the life and work of creative heroes.

Listed @ http://www.meetup.com/prodos/calendar/past_list/

Here it is as a PDF.

EMAIL ME and I’ll send you the answers.

Created for the Melbourne DISCOVER CAPITALISM meeting of December 19, and won by Charles Richardson, pictured below holding his crossword and prize.

And here are some of the delicate souls he crushed asunder …

Click here to download and print out.

Write to me and I’ll email you the answer sheet.
Created for the Melbourne DISCOVER CAPITALISM meeting of December 12 2008 and won by Barboo (Sydney Kendall) pictured below.

Now online at prodos.solidvox.com – An interview I recorded over a year ago with Alan Schaeffer from the Alliance for the Separation of School and State talks about why schools should be privately owned and operated.

Melbourne, Australia.

Monday, November 24, Melbourne Discover Capitalism™, will discuss:

THE MORAL FOUNDATIONS OF CAPITALISM:
Comparing Adam Smith and Ayn Rand

Speakers: Timothy Warner & Prodos

Further details HERE

My interview with Australian free market politician, Sophie (Panopoulos) Mirabella (Liberal Party of Australia) is now online HERE.

Sophie has been presented with the Celebrate Capitalism™ campaign’s Annual International Capitalism Award, Melbourne 2008.

Past recipients of this Award have been:

• Gerard Jackson (BrookesNews.com)
• Ray Evans (H R Nicholls Society & Lavoisier Group)
• Dr Alan Moran (Institute of Public Affairs)
• Frank Penhalluriack (The “Rebel Sunday Trader”)
• Reverend Dr John Williams (Pro free market speaker and activist)
• Pastor Danny Nalliah (Catch The Fire Ministry)
• Timothy Warner (Access Card NO WAY)

“Without property rights there can be no freedom.”

These are the words of Bob Day, whom I had the pleasure of hearing at a recent Australian Adam Smith Club meeting in Melbourne.

A copy of his talk is available HERE.

Bob Day’s talk centered on private land ownership and housing affordability.

As well as presenting many sound economic principles explaining the causes of rising housing prices in Australia, the United States, and elsewhere, Bob Day also made clear the foundational political/philosophical principles underlying the role of private property, and its indispensable role in the development of liberty and democracy.

He quoted the splendid British Historian, Paul Johnson, explaining that:

The connection between political liberty and the individual ownership of property is one of the great certitudes of human society. It is carved in granite where the words “freedom” and “freehold” come from the same root and have interrelated with each other through many centuries.

And here’s another quote from that talk.

This one by William Pitt, The Elder:

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. His cottage may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter. All his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.

Last week Bob Day spoke on Australia’s ABC Radio National with Alan Saunders.

Here’s the mp3 audio file of that interview: CLICK HERE

The Celebrate Capitalism™ campaign’s official position statement, The Bernstein Declaration, is now available in 27 languages.

The latest additions are …

HEBREW translation provided by Dmitry Ostrovsky

LATIN translation provided by Rafael Garcia

DANISH translation provided by Simon Espersen

Also, I’ve uploaded an updated CROATIAN translation by Nikola Novak

Also, thanks to Rosemary Gately, it has been available in
English/Braille for some time now.

To join the campaign and get involved in this year’s Capitalism Day festivities CLICK HERE

Progress on migrating to the new server has been very slow, unfortunately.

Apologies to project leaders for these delays.

The 4 Guidelines of the Celebrate Capitalism ™ campaign are now online at:

CelebrateCapitalism.com/our4guidelines

At the new Celebrate Capitalism ™ website, I’ve added notes on the 3 Broad Goals of the campaign:

http://celebratecapitalism.com/our3broadaims

Over the next few days I’ll be writing about the 4 Guidelines of the campaign.

AynRandLexicon.com

A powerful resource for those interested in studying and checking out what Ayn Rand and Objectivism are really about.

The Ayn Rand Lexicon is not commentary about Ayn Rand or her philosophy, Objectivism. Itconsists ofdirect quotes from Ayn Randand some ofthose works which she directly endorsed.

The debate on Ayn Rand’s ideas will continue.Good! But there’ll be little excuse to misquote or misrepresent those views.

And for those writing from an Objectivist perspective, now you can hypertext link the terminology you use.

But the greatest value of all, and the greatest fun of all is the application of the Lexicon as a study tool.

I’ve had my own hard copy of this publication since it first came out, and it’s gotten plenty of use!

A couple of examples from the Ayn Rand Lexicon …

From one of the entries under “altruism”:

There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one “package-deal”:

(1) What are values?

(2) Who should be the beneficiary of values?

Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

One of the entries under “property rights” ….

The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial.

It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree—and thus keeps the road open to man’s most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.

Even these two examples, I think, highlight both the uniqueness of Ayn Rand’s take on ideas, as well as the Aristotelian/Enlightenment tradition of which she is a part.

Hat tip to Zigory.

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At yesterday’s Discover Capitalism ™ meeting we studied …

… George Reisman’s essay on the Benevolent Nature of Capitalism, and …

… Thomas Sowell’s 3 “Mugged by Reality” essays (#1, #2, #3) about Iraq and the USA.

A few weeks ago I accidentally wiped out my hard drive, thereby losing several years of material and resources plus all the programs installed on my computer (yes, yes, I know: “Didn’t you have a back-up???!!!”)

So, since the conclusion of the Albert Park campaign I’ve been pre-occupied re-installing and re-configuring software.

Also, there seems (yet again) to be some flaw in the mail-server I use for newsletters and bulletins and I’m commissioning an expert to trouble-shoot and, hopefully, get this fixed.

I’ve also been busy putting together a new project which will be part of the Celebrate Capitalism ™ campaign. To be announced soonish.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on further upgrades to …

• The MYprodos system’s administration control panel.
  I need to add several thousand subscribers from various PRODOS projectsto the system and the current system was too awkward. The upgrades have been successfully completed with the assistance of my favorite coder, Davide Villani.
• The SNEWPI system.
  This allowscampaign project leaders and team members to link to NON-endorsed websites without breaching the NON-endorsement guidelines of campaigns such as Celebrate Capitalism ™. There’s still a little bit more to do on this one, but we’re nearly there.

Michael Darby, Liberal Party of Australia

I’m in the USA at present and just received an email from a Liberal Party colleague that my good friend, fellow Liberal Party of Australia member, and SOLID VOX presenter, Michael Darby has just been suspended from the Party for two years!

Presumably for appearing on ABC TV show Four Corners.

It’s been alleged by the Party that this was somehow in breach of the Party’s Constitution. How?

I don’t have more details yet but, other than the fact that Four Corners put a lot of work into trying to portray Michael as some sort of shady behind-the-scenes power-broker, I found nothing in that interview which could be considered a breach of the Party’s Constitution.

I’ve known and worked with Michael on several projects over theyears.

He’s been a guest speaker at the Melbourne-based DISCOVER CAPITALISM meetings which I organise.

He has supported the worldwide Celebrate Capitalism campaign since it began in 2001.

He recently joined my SOLID VOX internet radio network.

He has stood by me through difficult times. He has never hesitated to join or support any cause that might advance liberty in Australia.

Sure there are areas on which we disagree.

But I consider Michael Darbya True Friend and a True Blue Aussie.

And one of this country’s most serious defenders of Liberty.

I stand by Michael Darby.

Click here to email me.

I’ve now completed myanalysis of the issues raised my Mikko Ellilä in his article, Society Consists of People.

My post is titled:

Are Blacks genetically LOWER in intelligence and HIGHER in psychopathy than Whites?

I’ve spent about 100 hours researching and writing for this study and believe it tackles the major issues fairly, objectively, and comprehensively.

My article does not directly refer to Mikko’s post, however it does tackle its main arguments.

As well as reaching a conclusionon the views that Mikko has presented, I’ve alsoprovided my conclusion regarding whether or not Mikko’s post is compatible with the positions and policies of THINKER TO THINKER:

I further conclude that any direct or indirect advocacy of the above racialist positions (please note I do not refer to them as “racist”) is incompatible with Capitalist Ideals such as free markets, individual rights, liberty, equality before the law, creative thinking, volition/free will.

Please note: Myanalysis distinguishes between racism and racialism.I do not treat these two termsas either having the same meaning or having the same moral stature.

- – - – - – - – - -

Update Monday June 18

Clarification:

1. By “advocacy” I mean promoting as public policy.
2. The racialist positions I’m referring to are only those covered in my article “Are Blacks genetically LOWER in intelligence and HIGHER in psychopathy than Whites?”

- – - – - – - – - –

Some of the blogs and forums which have been following the Mikko Ellila issue …

British Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Ulster, Richard Lynn, answers “YES!” to both questions, and he’s conducted and collated a large body of research and data to back up his views.

Does this make Richard Lynn a racist?

Not necessarily.

Does the fact that various White Supremacy and White Separatist groups embrace Richard Lynn’s research and his conclusions make him a racist or a supporter of racism?

Not necessarily.

Is it wrong to investigate these issues?

Not at all.

First I want to discuss the issue of Black versus White intelligence.

All aboard!

Read the rest of this entry »

Responding to recent outrage about”record high”petrol prices in the USA, and the “excessive profits” of Big Oil, John Stossel has written a well-argued, brief article called “Why is Profit a Dirty Word?”

Hat tip to Tim Warner

John Stossel’s article begins by quoting Democrat Senator John Kerry saying “Oil companies in America are reporting record profits. Record profits.”

I couldn’t find this particularquote on the web or on John Kerry’s website, but there’s no shortage of John Kerry railing againstBig Oil’s …”windfall profits” … “price gouging“, and so on.

The Democratic Party has been pushing to end“billions of dollars in oil industry subsidies”. I need to find out more about this, but it appears that many of these so-called”subsidies” are actually just mis-namedtax breaks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Official website: http://celebratecapitalism.org/

Join the worldwide festivities!

This year I’m in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA for Capitalism Day™. We’ve got a fun day of festivities and promotions planned under the leadership of Sydney Kendall. The Capitalism Award™ Cincinnati 2007 will be presented to local activist, Everett DeJager, for his lifelong dedication to fighting against governmentexcess and putting forward the case for the proper role of government.I’ll be giving a brief talk on the

Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, my wife and I are heading off to the United Statesfor 6 weeks.

In Melbourne, registered CPL (Creative Project Leader) Mario Panopoulos, will be running our International Capitalism Day event @ Laikon Restaurant(Sunday June 03).

I’ll be conducting a Capitalism Day event in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Update: Sydney Kendall will be the CPL for Cincinnati.

On our way back to Australia we’ll be stopping for a day or two in California – around July 08.

Love America! Love Americans!

Update: I’ll be without internet connection for a couple of days, while we’re in flight.

Following up on recent discussion concerning an article by Mikko Ellila/Ellilä,Sydney Kendall Says links to 3 excellent articles by Thomas Sowell on Race and IQ.

Last Sunday I wasinterviewed on the Triple J radio show, “Restoring the Balance“.

Click here to listenJUST to the interview with PRODOS

For audio files of complete Restoring the Balance shows click here.

Triple J is an Australian government-owned- i.e.taxpayer funded – national radio networkwhich is part of the ABC.It’s main focus is new music.It’s broadcast nationally and its signalcan reach 95% of Australians.

The show, Restoring the Balance, issupposed to be asend-up of the Conservative Right.

The show’s humorous intro begins like this:

Thanks to the intervention of the ABC board, TripleJ reluctantly presents two hours of unbiased, fair and balanced coverage of the week’s topical issues

The main presenter, “Sterling Addison” (not his real name) – who pretends to be a supporter of conservative, old-world, Liberal Party type ideals – and his faithfulside-kick, “Spencer” – who pretends to be from the “Christian values” basedFamily First party – are very funny mock jocks.

Sterlingpresents himself asa proud,rich, privileged, lazy, narrow-minded, bigoted, pompous, “right wing” (whatever that means) conservative ass. Spencer portrays a righteous Bible-basher.

Their interview with me centered on talking about International Capitalism Day.

The show opened with a short excerpt from my song “Privatize The ABC” (my lyrics, but the melody is based loosely on Irving Berlin’s song, Alexander’s Ragtime Band).

Because Spencer claimed that the Bible and Capitalism go hand-in-hand, I mentioned in the show that my studies of Christianity indicate that Christianity and Capitalismdo seem to be compatible.

However, Islam and Capitalism are not compatible. Why? Because Islam is thoroughly riddled with advocating violence and rejects any separation of Mosque and State.

Click here for more information

I’ve set up a new, free service which provides supporters of capitalism with the tools they needto design, build, and deliver their own email newsletters.

The newsletters don’t have to be about Capitalism – provided the newsletter owner is personally and clearly pro Capitalism.

To register go to: FreeWorldExpress.com

We’ve completed stage one of building the new Celebrate Capitalism websystem and are now working on stage two.

Reporting that I have now commissioned a coder/programer to testthe new system I have in mind for the campaign’s websites.

The first step is to check whether the new server has the ability to run such a system.

I’m looking at rebuilding the Celebrate Capitalism web system – possibly using a Drupal multi-site installation.

The current system, which has been online for a couple of years, has unfortunately always been heavily bug-ridden and therefore time-consuming to administer.

With International Capitalism Day fast approaching, I knowthat this iscutting it close to the wind. However, I feel that the long-term viability of the campaign is too important to stay any longer with the current system.

As the campaign grows, a buggy system will just mean more time wasted trying to work around it.

The SNEWPI site @ http://snewpi.com/ has been completed.

Examples:

http://snewpi.com/8H2M
Links to the autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

http://snewpi.com/Rc0h
Links to a discussion of Leonard Peikoff’s “Dim Hypothesis” on Stephen and Betsy Speichers Forum For Ayn Rand Fans

http://snewpi.com/upEu
Links to Christian activist organisation, The Saltshakers, provides updates on the case of “The Two Dannys” – convicted by VCATT of breaching the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act (Victoria, Australia)

I’m setting up a new service that will allow you tocreate and deliveryour own email newsletters.

It willbe available forFREEtoCelebrate Capitalism project leaders, THINKER TO THINKER bloggers, and supporters of Capitalist Ideals.

Plans are to have it ready over the next 10 days.

The SNEWPI system is now online and functioning but needs a few more administrative functions added to it which Davide Villani and I are now finalising.Also needed aresome minor aesthetic fixes.

This web system @ http://snewpi.com has been set up to allow those working within PRODOS projects which have a strict NON Endorsement policy to create links to NON endorsed websites.

SNEWPI has been integrated with the MYprodos membership management system.

Completed set-up of kaPOWwow! @ http://kaPOWwow.com

This is a moderated chat roomthat will be used to meet online with Celebrate Capitalism ™project leaders, THINKER TO THINKER ™ bloggers, and others involved in various projects and campaigns.

Also, moderated discussions on topics exploring Capitalist Ideals will be scheduled.

Australia Day – January the 26th – is the official launch date each yearfor the worldwide Celebrate Capitalism campaign.

So, it is with great pleasure that I hereby now launch the worldwide campaigning towards Capitalism Day which this year will by on Sunday June 03 2007 and invite the world to stand up for freedom, creativity, and prosperity.

The main focus of the campaign is to help organise educational and festive events for Capitalism Day.

When the campaign first went international, each participating city had a Chief Coordinator, referred to as a C1.

As the Founder and Global Coordinator of the campaign I worked with each C1 to help organize an effective campaign that kept within the (quite strict) Celebrate Capitalism guidelines.

Anyone wanting to participate in a city’s campaign needed to work under that city’s C1. Each city had a single C1.

Recently, this was changed.

There is now no longer a single Coordinator per city. The Chief Coordinator position no longer exist.

Instead, anyone wanting to organize a festive event in their city can apply to become a Creative Project Leader- aCPL.

There are several reasons behind this change.

One is that I felt it was important to keep the campaign de-centralized in order to reduce the likelihood ofany particular group or ideology fromachieving exclusivity or dominancein any city, or across the campaign in general.I want the campaign to remain grassroots. The reality of organizations and movements is that if they’re not careful they can be hijacked by particular groups or factions. We can see how prevalent this is across the anti-capitalist campaigns of the world. But that’s not so surprising since anti-capitalists tend to be mindless twits.

Another equally important reason is to encourage the widest diversity of types of events, including allowing organizations and clubs to organize Capitalism Day events. The earlier approach explicitly excluded any group from flying its own colors alongside Celebrate Capitalism.

With the new approach, a group is able to run a Capitalism Day event just for its members, if it wants. Of course, the Non-Endorsement Guideline (also known as the one-way street principle) still applies. i.e. Although a group may endorse the Celebrate Capitalism campaign, it needs to make it clear that the campaign does not endorse any group.

With the new approach, a city can have any number of CPL’s and they do NOT have to work together. CPLs can run completely independent events. Of course it’s nice when CPLs can work together at some level, but this is neither required nor particularly encouraged.

At last the new PRODOS serverappears to beworking.

Straight after the mail systemwithin the server was fixed, we found a problem in its control panel – a java memory leak – that was causing it to crash, sometimes 3 times per day.

The new server (actually, I’m running two servers now) have more than twice the space and twice the bandwidth of what was available before. That means it’ll be possible to archive a couple of hundred SOLID VOX podcast shows (each show uses about 1 MB per minute) and offer some more free web services and tools for Celebrate Capitalism supporters.

Project update:

This morning I formally started working with Davide Villani on building the new Snewpi system. This will create TinyURL type links to “NON-endorsed” websites.

But rather than linking directly to the destination website, the user will need to jump over 3 linkbuffers to get there.

It’s main use will be on PRODOS campaigns such as Celebrate Capitalism ™ where a wide variety of individuals and groups might cooperate towards a goal, but also have important areas of difference and disagreement.

The MYprodos membership management system is finally completed.

It’s located at MYprodos.com and will allow members of all PRODOS projects to join or leave projects, and to update any of the details (such as email address, city, etc.) which affect their project subscriptions.

I’ve been working on getting this system built for about two years and have worked with 3 different coders/programmers on it.

The chap who finally succeeded in building it with me was a brilliant young Italian coder, Davide Villani. And what a marvellous job he’s done!

Now I’ve got the massive task of adding several thousand subscribers to the new system.

One of the biggest reasons for building this system was to be able to coordinate the expansion of the Celebrate Capitalism™ campaign.

Since 2001, International Capitalism Day™ has been celebrated in over 200 cities in 43 countries.

But my goal is “1,000 festivals in a 1,000 cities”.

Managing a project of such magnitude would be impossible without a system such as MYprodos.com. In fact trying to keep up with “just” the current 200+ cities has proved a nightmare over the last few years.

Background: I created the first, informal Capitalism Day™ in 1984. By 1999 it had crystalized to include the world’s first ever Ayn Rand Film Festival held here in Melbourne, Australia, where I screened We The Living, The Fountainhead, and Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life.

By 2001 Capitalism Day™ was formalised as a worldwide campaign which has been growing steadily year by year, with wonderful, positive Project Leaders working to promote free thinking and free markets across the globe.

We Invite The World!

Associated Press report @ Newsmax that Milton Friedman has died:

Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, died Thursday. He was 94.

Friedman died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death.

In more than a dozen books and in his column in Newsweek magazine, Friedman championed individual freedom in economics and politics.

His theory of monetarism, adopted in part by the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, opposed the traditional Keynesian economics that had dominated U.S. policy since the New Deal. He was a member of Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board.

His theories won him a Nobel in economics in 1976.

“He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision – the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions,” President Bush said in 2002. “That vision has changed America, and it is changing the world.”

The mailing system has been fixed and, according to the tests I’ve run so far, seems to be working normally again.

Over the last few days emails from the following sources have been permanently lost.

Please re-send or re-apply, if you have used any of the following:

• Application for a THINKER TO THINKER(tm) blog
• Messages sent via any of the forms on any PRODOS project site.
• Applications to join Celebrate Capitalism(tm) campaign.
• Applications to join any other PRODOS project or campaign or service.
• Message board notifications.
• Notifications from THINKER TO THINKER(tm) blogs – including request for new passwords, etc.
• Notifications from any PRODOSCOPE.COM mailing lists.
• Emails sent to any PRODOS project email address other than prodos “at” prodos “dot com”.

As you can see, the losses has been extensive.

The problem seems to have been caused by a mass spam attack which may have included a virus attack, which masqueraded as if coming from the PRODOS server.

This resulted in the PRODOS IP address being temporarily blacklisted/blocked. It has now been unblocked.

Thanks to Davide Villani for his assistance with this issue.

I recently received an email from 2 long-time Australian supporters of the Celebrate Capitalism campaign informing me that they are quitting because the Melbourne Capitalism Award ™ 2006 was given to an “anti-capitalist”.

They were referring to Pastor Daniel Nalliah of Catch The Fire Christian Ministry.

I’ve written twice to the former project leaders to provide evidence that proves that Daniel Nalliah is an “anti-capitalist” but have not yet received any response.

To listen to my SOLID VOX interview with Daniel Nalliah and find some helpful links: click here

The Melbourne Celebrate Capitalism™ team had a successful and enjoyable day. We ran a street information table in the afternoon, and then an International Capitalism Day 2006 party in the evening. A full report should be available in the next couple of days @ Sydney Kendall’s blog and on the Melbourne.CelebrateCapitalism.ORG site.

The first Sunday of June each year is International Capitalism Day.

This Sunday, June 04, will be ICD 6, International Capitalism Day 2006.

Australia Day 2006 was the official starting date of preparations for International Capitalism Day 2006 (ICD 6)

I am currently drawing up the specifications for the construction of the “SNEWPI” system which will be used to handle the creation of links to “NON endorsed” websites.

“SNEWPI” is an abbreviation for: “Specificed as a NON Endorsed Webpage, Party, or Ideology.”

I redesigned the way Sprookazooka™ (the mascots which will be introduced to the Celebrate Capitalism™ campaign) will be assigned to participating cities.

Currently, the Celebrate Capitalism™ campaign’s city sites/subdomains are not working (eg. http://NewYork.CelebrateCapitalism.ORG …. http://Bath.CelebrateCapitalism.ORG … http://Melbourne.CelebrateCapitalism.ORG … )

I’m looking into the problem and will report back.

[Later note: System restored to previous status and cities are back online. This has undone the recent update. Will attempt to "re-update" the script once problem is identified.]

215 database vulnerabilities were repaired in the Celebrate Capitalism™ web system.

A serious security flaw has been identified within the Celebrate Capitalism ™ web system.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight at Discover Capitalism™ we studied Bush administration’s
National Strategy for Victory in Iraq

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to a recent donation I am able to fix a problem with the “write article” section of the Celebrate Capitalism™ CPL control panel. I have now commissioned a coder to trouble-shoot and repair this problem. I’m hoping it will only take a few days to fix.

[Later entry: Fix has been completed]

I just received a donation from Motty Perel (thanks Motty!!) which will allow me to carry out some further fixing of the Celebrate Capitalism web system.

There is a problem with the way images are saved in the CPL article writing section.