SOLOists arguing about the value of political activism may like to know that according to local bloggers, my blog NOT PC is now the fifth most popular blog in New Zealand.

"Don’t Vote For Any MP, Any Party Or Any Candidate Who Supports The Electoral Finance Bill!"

Think what must be the world's biggest emission of hot air at present. Then type into Google the words "IPCC Bali," and check out the top ranking site.

I'm sure you'll be as amused as I was.

Debate at the IPCC's 'Bali High' global warming talk-fest is being kept down by having dissenters kept out (a process all too familiar to observers of the Electoral Finance Bill, and of the methodology by which the IPCC's "consensus" is produced). Newspapers opposing the party line have been refused press credentials, and distinguished scientists from Africa, Australia, India, New Zealand, the UK and the US have been barred from presenting at panel discussions, side events, and exhibits, and also denied press credentials.

Two comments from two sources this morning for your comparison, one from a politician more braindead than normal, and the other from a very unlikely source showing more sense on the global warming charade than many so called science writers -- and far more sense than is coming out of Bali at present.

Continuing the serialisation of my 'Free Radical' article on 'Environmental Judo' - seven environmental policies that a genuine opposition party could adopt if they were serious about rolling back the state without any new coercion. (Part 1 is here.) This morning, Untaxes:

Now at 75 issues and still going strong, the latest Free Radical magazine has a bold new look, all-new content and it hits the streets running.

Now at 75 issues and still going strong, the latest Free Radical magazine has a bold new look, all-new content and it really hits the streets running.

The kick ass cover (and such a gorgeous ass too) fronts an issue where ass is very seriously kicked. You do not want to miss out!

We often joke that each new Free Radical magazine is the best one yet. This latest issue really is the best one yet. Issue 74 of The Free Rad tackles all the popular delusions that threaten life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and gives you the ammunition to defend yourself against the purveyors of misery who promote them.

[Click image for full-size cover ---> ]

The new Free Radical is out today!! The Free Radical with the free speech cover, and the inside word on the latest threats to free speech and freedom in New Zealand and around the world is out now, and in shops and letterboxes from Monday.

Here's just a wee taster of the outside of the lastest 'Free Radical' to hit the streets and the inside of your letterboxes!

I'll post more shortly about what's inside this exciting new issue , but if you want to be included in the latest mail-out, then now's the time to subscribe.

72 pages (count them, 72 pages!) of pithy, gripping, infuriating, enlightening and downright SHARP reading. Edited by Guest Editor Peter Cresswell, "This is arguably the best and undoubtedly the biggest ever 'Free Radical,'" says Cresswell. "No question."

[From The Free Radical, Issue 67]

Charlie Chaplin was one of first geniuses of cinema and had a career that lasted over 50 years and spanned over 80 movies. During the height of his fame in the 1920s and 30s he was one of the wealthiest and most famous movie icons in the US. And yet after the Second World War Chaplin was to provoke a moral backlash and frenzy over his alleged communist activities that would see him effectively banished. How was it possible that such a man who had become the most universally recognized icon in the world suddenly became persona non grata in his adopted country?

From The Free Radical's special Ayn Rand Centenary issue, March 2005)

I met him when I was twenty-two. My life would never be the same again.

This is the complete table of contents for the 70th Free Radical. Some of the content will be made available online, but to read most of it you'll have to subscribe to the print edition.

• Lindsay Perigo - Death To Islam!
• Ron Smith - Civilisation In The Balance
• George Reisman - Ready To Kill Over Cartoons
• Marcus Bachler - The Root Of All Evil
• Lindsay Perigo - Death To Hate Speech Laws!
• George Reisman - The Anti-Big Oil Backlash
• Bill Belton - Signage SS In Auckland, New Zealand!
• Peter Cresswell - What You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Leaky Homes
• Peter Cresswell - A Fairytale Of A Leaky House Or Two
• Peter Osborne - Leaky Buildings Or Leaky Brains?
• Libertarianz - Activism
• Peter Cresswell - Betraying The Self, Betraying A Heroine
• Philip Nitschke - Whose Death Is It Anyway?
• Tibor Machan - A Brief On Ayn Rand's Philosophical Contributions
• Lindsay Perigo - Dining With The Enemy - Lunch With A Bishop!
• Lindsay Perigo - It's The Integration, Stoopid!
• Horror File
• Jyllands-Posten - Those Cartoons!

When Joe asked me to speak, I was concerned about choosing a topic I would feel comfortable speaking about while standing amidst giants. Given that we are in New York City today, one topic seemed appropriate. It has been burned into my head for almost a year now, and when I heard that our conference would be held here it became clear, as it has personal significance.

I have always been enthralled by the vision of an airplane making its way across the sky. Whether in an office or home, walking on the sidewalk or riding in my car, the flash of sunlight on steel was enough to make me take pause-a moment to dream, to imagine something enormous, as big as the sky itself. This feeling has stayed with me from childhood. Perhaps it has contributed to my love for travel; even the fact that I sometimes fly several times per month for work never diminished my fascination with planes and airports.

EXCLUSIVE to SOLO and The Free Radical. (Subscribe to the print edition and receive a whole lot more.)

"It is clear to me that Ayn Rand was a woman of remarkable integrity, who largely embodied the virtues she espoused. But it is also clear that she had certain other traits often found in great minds who have waged a lonely battle for their ideas: a tendency to surround herself with acolytes from whom she demanded declarations of agreement and loyalty; a growing sense of bitter isolation from the world; a quickness to anger at criticism; a tendency to judge people harshly and in haste. These faults did not outweigh her virtues; I consider them of minor significance in themselves. But they were real, and I thought [Barbara] Branden's book, whatever its other shortcomings, gave a reasonably fair and perceptive account of them.

"All of this is arguable, of course. But it should have been argued, and it wasn't. When the book appeared, I was shocked by the refusal of many prominent Objectivists to discuss the issues it raised, and their tendency to condemn anyone who did."

--David Kelley, PhD, Truth and Toleration (1990, I.O.S.), p. 75

Fifteen years have passed since David Kelley wrote this fateful passage about Barbara Branden’s book, The Passion of Ayn Rand, in an infamous paper that would, after Ayn Rand’s official intellectual heir Leonard Peikoff responded with his paper “Fact and Value,” open a rancorous schism in Objectivist scholarship. Kelley and the Ayn Rand Institute would part ways over this divisive issue and its philosophical implications, with Kelley going on to create The Objectivist Center. The TOC side argued that the biographical portrait of Ayn Rand written by Barbara Branden (eventually extending to the memoir about Rand written by Nathaniel Branden) should be regarded as an objective source of information, while the other side rejected the Brandens’ testimony outright as arbitrary assertions made without regard for the truth.

This is the complete table of contents for the 69th Free Radical. Some of the content will be made available online, but to read most of it you'll have to subscribe to the print edition.

• Lindsay Perigo - Confessions Of A Political Editor
• Lindsay Perigo / Wayne Mapp, MP - Confessions Of A Political Correctness Exterminator
• Julian Pistorius / Paul McIntyre - Confessions Of A Self-Defender
• Peter Cresswell - Unintelligent Design
• Lindsay Perigo - Idol Musings
• Lindsay Perigo - Fundamental Stuff
• Casey Fahy - The Silence Of Ayn Rand’s Critics
• Lindsay Perigo - The Passion Of The Critics Of Ayn Rand’s Critics
• Marcus Bachler - State Of Fear
• Libertarianz Press releases
• Horror File
• The Funny, The Freaky And The Flaky