RYAN MCGUIRE

In Pursuit of the Aggressor

I've been feeling pretty good lately, I have a decent job, a wonderful wife, awesome friends, and a new-found purpose in life: liberty activism in New Hampshire. In a world as messed up as ours, its been a profound comfort to have found such peace and purpose. But I've also been a bit startled recently including having feelings of helplessness, distrust, and insecurity.

My truck got broken into.

I had just gotten home from work and not 10 minutes transpired before I heard a loud crash and some rustling outside. As I rushed out the door, I saw someone had broken the window of my truck and was diving inside to grab my video camera. Before I knew it, I was several blocks away from my house, running full speed 10 feet behind the guy who was also running like hell. I kept chasing him, never quite closing the gap between him and myself until I ran out of energy. He turned the corner and I followed a bit more slowly. Knowing he was hiding, I looked closely in the darkness for him and I finally saw the guy dash from his hiding spot and continue running away. I said a few more unkind words in his direction as he fled, but there was nothing more for me to do. Out of breath, dejected, and quite frustrated, I walked back home. Kellie was already outside at this point wondering what had happened, we assessed the damage and confirmed that he had destroyed the passenger side window of my truck and managed to steal my video camera.

My Landlord had already called the cops and they showed up about 10 minutes later. Since they were there anyway, I gave them my take on what happened, although I had never really gotten a good look at the guy. I really didn't have much hope that the police would ever do anything (and in an ideal world we wouldn't have such agents of force). Kellie left to do her own reconnaissance at the corner store and surprised me when she told me that she saw the same cops doing actual detective work, questioning the store manager. Although I'm almost sure that these same men have violated the rights of peaceful individuals before, and will most likely continue to do so in their roles as agents of the state, I'm glad that they take their jobs seriously enough to want to protect peace when they can.

I don't really leave anything that valuable in my truck. The camera is a somewhat cheap Samsung SC-MX10, I had it mounted to my dash with a Modifry camera mount (The mount got ripped out with the camera), this setup was supposed to record the cops if I ever got pulled over. Sadly, I never got to try that out. I'm sure that the way I had it mounted made it stand out as an easy target for a thief.

I called up my insurance rep as well as an auto glass shop and got things taken care of pretty quickly, the auto glass shop was even willing to drive out to my house the next day and repair it right there even while I went to work that day. I love how market competition makes this so easy.

In total, I'm out $200 for the camera, $25 for the mount, and $163.15 for the glass. Yea, $388 is kind of a lot. However I was much more irritated with the inconvenience of it all, as well as the knowledge that there are people right in my neighborhood that have no reservations in actively destroying their society. The reason I'm here in NH is to work towards creating a civil and voluntary society. Its one thing to disagree with my ideas, I'm used to that. Its quite another to find that you live in a community where some percentage of the people do the exact opposite; creating a society of violence and distrust.

I'm left with a renewed sense of the importance of security, including responsible firearms ownership and carrying whenever possible. I don't actually think that a gun would have been useful in this situation, especially after the incident was carried onto the open street at 12 mph, but knowing first hand that desperation has led people to such forceful actions, it makes me much more cautious.

Is Ryan going to jail?

I've come to the realization that I will be going to jail in the near future. Not for hurting anyone, but because the oppressive and unconstitutional powers-that-be see me as an Enemy of the State and an affront to their illegitimate power.

Two friends of mine have recently been thrown in jail. Neither of them have harmed, had any intention of harming, nor even inconvenienced, anyone. Their "crimes" are for having "contempt" for the state-funded thugs that wish to bully them into compliance with their procedures. Their only "crime" is that they had some questions, questions that the state did not want to hear.

Lauren Canario, who was invited to the federal court building to retrieve her camera (that the feds stole from her), walked through a metal detector checkpoint at a time when the guards weren't looking. She was ordered to go back through the checkpoint and was subsequently arrested when she asked why she was required to do so. She'll be in federal prison for 30 days.

Ian Freeman, of Free Talk Live, today was arrested over a couch. You can read the backstory of his case where his tenants have an old couch in his yard that the city of Keene wants removed. Ian is very willing to remove the couch, but simply wants to talk to the person who made the original complaint. Instead of hiding behind the force of government, the original complainant should speak to Ian in a friendly, neighborly way just as civilized communities ought to behave.

Instead, Ian was compelled to go to court today. He went there having every intention of complying with the request to remove the couch. He has also made this very clear to the court on previous occasions. He simply wanted to demand that he be confronted by his accuser, as is his constitutional right. However, within 45 seconds of entering the court room, he was railroaded into being found in contempt of court and was immediately arrested. The court removed the public observers from the room and only allowed them to view Ian on camera (without audio) to monitor the proceedings. The judge found him guilty, despite not being shown his accuser, and he has been sentenced to three days in prison for the matter of the couch and 90 days for being in contempt of the court's proceedings.

The Keene city court has today shown that it is a court that does not recognize the right to be confronted with one's accusers, a court that does not recognize the right to have a public trial, and a court which has gone way beyond simply upholding the "rule of law". What country is this exactly?!? The Keene city court has decided that it has a personal vendetta against all local liberty activists. Accordingly, the prospect of me going to prison is a virtual forgone conclusion. I will refuse to back down from asserting my rights when the time comes. My line in the sand was crossed quite some time ago.

The state thinks it can quell liberty simply by flexing its muscles. On the contrary, an equal, and very much opposite reaction is about to occur.

Why I'm not voting

I've been a registered voter ever since I was 18 and a dues paying member of the Libertarian party for most of that time. I've always felt it was important to vote, especially according to ones conscience. I've always taken voting very seriously and have strived to always choose the best candidate -- the one who would do the least amount of harm -- the one who would stand up in defense of liberty.

Frequent visitors to this site will know that I have talked a lot about politics over the years. I've mentioned names of politicians that I've supported: Michael Badnarik, and Ron Paul. I've even dropped names of politicians I don't support: Mitt Romney. Recently I dropped out of the Libertarian party, but I remained sure that I could find a new political home, one that would respect my desires to have a principled approach to living in this democratic-republic of "ours".

Specifically, I wanted that new political home to be the Free State of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire has the most active group of liberty activists on the planet. There are a multitude of freedom oriented media, powerful voting blocs, as well as free market activists.

When I got here I wanted to get involved with everything. One problem the Free State has ... is that you can't do that. You HAVE to choose what you're going to do, simply because there is so much activism going on here that you cannot be in two places at the same time. The first thing I got involved with was the NH Liberty Alliance delivering literature on the most freedom friendly candidates running in NH. Being very disgruntled with the state of national politics, I sincerely wanted to get involved with NH local politics, believing that I could do two things:

• Keep my principles of the non-initiation of force
• Actually get people, that actually represent my desires, elected

This was a prospect that gave me immense hope. I wanted to come to NH and change things. Instead, NH changed me.

I began helping one of the NHLA endorsed candidates, Jason Bedrick, in his campaign for the state legislature. I asked him, will you sign the small government pledge? I thought this was a very reasonable thing for him to do, I had heard that NH was one of the freest states in the country and has the largest legislature in the country (meaning a low citizen to representative ratio) and that the NHLA was endorsing the best liberty-friendly candidates they could find, to top that off Jason Bedrick was the NHLA top pick with a rating of A++ on their scorecard. Certainly, I had to have been dealing with the most liberty friendly candidate in the country.

He would not sign the pledge. Instead he would continue to vote for increased taxes, albeit minimally, and that he would pledge to limit "the budget increase to inflation plus population growth." In other words, he could not find one single government program that he could cut in order to decrease the states budget. Later, I would find that Jason endorsed Mike Huckabee for president. Is this seriously the best that the NHLA could find?!? Helping Jason was the last political action I've taken in NH.

Instead, I have been involved with alternative forms of activism. I have been to the federal court in support of the peaceful civil disobedience of Kat Kanning and Lauren Canario who were both jailed for peacefully and silently protesting tax funded torture in an IRS office. I have engaged in civil disobedience of breaking curfew laws in Manchester city park. I have participated in open-carry litter pickups. I have sold hot dogs in violation of police orders to vacate a plot of land. I have supported a friend in peaceful protest and burning of the US Flag. Granted, none of this may seem like much, but I feel that I have been able to demonstrate my spirit of liberty with more people than I ever could by shoving junk mail in someones door or by voting.

But why am I not voting? Certainly it wouldn't take much of my time to go mark a check by someones name that could possibly make our society ever-so-slightly more free? Right?

I have been frustrated recently because I cannot find a candidate that I can support, but I didn't understand until very recently why it so hard for me to find such a candidate -- my principle that it is wrong to initiate force against another is antithetical to the very idea of voting. When I vote, I cannot vote for the lesser of evils; a lesser evil is still evil. Even from a purely defensive argument, I cannot vote for the person that will do less harm to me because that vote is seen as a mandate. It is an endorsement from me to the candidate that he should follow his preestablished platform, one that I vehemently oppose, but one that I ultimately voted for. It is a vicious cycle of buck passing. It's also not good enough that I vote for a candidate that actually will increase liberty. Sure, he may promise to decrease government, and he may actually accomplish it. But what about all that he fails to do? There may be a candidate that will abolish 15 different government agencies, but there is no candidate out there that will ever abolish them all. Even if there was, he surely would be unwilling to do it all at once. By voting, I am supporting, and ultimately condemning, everyone in this country to serve the state in the meantime. And here's the rub, while I want liberty, especially from government, I have no right to take what I consider oppression away from someone that actually wants that oppression.

What I have discovered is that it is actually impossible for someone to represent me. Therefore, it is my responsibility to assert my own liberty in my own life. I cannot rely on anyone else to fight for my liberty, nor even if I could, no democratically elected politician could ever do so without violating another persons rights. I pledge to pursue a life full of voluntary interactions with my fellow human beings, never forcing my view point on them, unless they agress against me first.

Ron Paul, you're an admirable man. I sent you hundreds of dollars in hopes that you would inspire this country towards the ideals of liberty. You did not fail me. However, I cannot vote for you ... and I won't.

Voting is the method for obtaining legal power to coerce others. --Robert LeFevre

Wrangling my finances

I've gotten better at thinking about my finances over the years but I've never had anything better than a mental budget. I've never actually written anything down on paper. I've got a brand new job so I figure I've got a clean slate. Starting right now, I pledge to myself to keep a balanced checkbook at all times and to do monthly reviews of my finances looking for things to cut out of my budget.

Fiscal Conscience: Ha! How many times have you said that?
Me: Dozens of times!
Fiscal Conscience: And did you ever actually do it?
Me: No, but this time it will be different!
Fiscal Conscience: You're going to have do to better than that!
Me: Fine, I'll show you.

GnuCash is a wonderful piece of open-source accounting software. I have used it myself, dozens of times. But as it happens I inevitably stop using it. Not because the software is flawed per se, it does everything a good accounting application should do:

• Use Double-Entry accounting
• Support multiple currencies
• OFX import from online banking sites
• etc

The only thing they get wrong is the fundamental design choice they made when developing the application: they made it a GUI. Sure, GUIs are great, but in my opinion GUIs should be interfaces to a service oriented application rather than the application itself. Unless I'm sitting at my desk at home I can't use my application. I don't consider remote desktops a reasonable response to this problem due to the huge network latency issues as well as firewall problems.

I want to be able to record my transactions from anywhere. At home at my desk, at work at my desk, on my N800 when traveling, or on my phone when running around. With an application fundamentally written as a GUI this is essentially an insurmountable problem. An application written as a service can do all of these things quite easily with minimal amounts of programming.

Enter Ledger.

Ledger does not keep track of your accounts. You keep track of your accounts in a plain text file and Ledger helps you understand them better. I can update my checkbook register from any text editor, anywhere I am. Most often this is Emacs through SSH on my home computer. Because of the triviality of the file format (being plain text) I can write a simple application that takes text messages from my phone and adds them to the register automatically.

But what about all my automatic payments?

I have most of my monthly payments automatically debited from my account. This is nice since I don't have to spend the time submitting payments to X number of companies each month, but is a nightmare when it comes time to balancing my checkbook. What I have done in the past is to just import an OFX file from my bank directly into GnuCash. This works great until you realize that something is wrong with the import and your checkbook is no longer balancing correctly. For this reason alone I prefer to record each transaction I make by hand. My money is my responsibility after all.

So, I wanted to be instantly notified of any debit on my checking account as soon as it happens. This gives me the following:

• A text message to my phone describing the time, place and amount of the transaction
• The total balance of my account
• A way to constantly keep an eye on how I'm spending my money without the hassle of (remembering to) signing into my bank account
• A reminder to balance my checkbook. (tells me when my actual checking balance has been out of sync with ledger for over 48 hours.)

The central peice to this process is getting the transaction data from my bank account. My bank offers online banking but it does not offer an easy way to download my transactions. Sure it supports Quicken and MS Money exports, but its all protected behind a password protected javascript-enabled website. I wanted to use the wonderful mechanize library for python. However, it doesn't support javascript.

Enter Selenium RC.

Selenium RC is an application that can remote control a real web browser and submit and receive data. I run selenium which launches Firefox in a headless X-server (Xvfb) and continuously refreshes my online banking site and parses out my account activity. This is probably a bit memory intensive to always keep a browser open for this specific purpose. I may want to experiment with python-spidermonkey in the future and go back to using mechanize, but I think there's a lot of glue missing in that solution whereas Selenium RC works perfectly right now!

No code to share at the moment, it's all a giant hack. If a similar setup appeals to someone out there, let me know and I'll think about releasing something.

Shortened URLs in Emacs using is.gd (like tinyurl)

I've casually been teaching myself emacs lisp lately. Today I wrote a utility that shortens long urls within regions using the http://is.gd URL shortening service. There's plenty of existing code out there that is more lisp like, but this is supposed to be a learning experience for me so I did it myself. I like python and so I used python for most of the heavy lifting.

I created a directory to hold all of my emacs specific python functions: ~/.emacs.d/ryan-pymacs-extensions

I wrote the following python function, shorten_url.py in that directory:

!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

__author__ = "Ryan McGuire (ryan@enigmacurry.com)"
__date__   = "Mon Sep 15 12:27:14 2008"

import doctest
import urllib2
import re

def shorten_with_is_gd(url):
    """Shorten a URL with is.gd

    >>> shorten_with_is_gd('http://www.enigmacurry.com')
    'http://is.gd/FFP'

    """
    u = urllib2.urlopen("http://is.gd/api.php?longurl="+url)
    return u.read()

def shorten_in_text(text):
    """Shorten all the urls found inside some text

    >>> shorten_in_text('Hi from http://www.enigmacurry.com')
    'Hi from http://is.gd/FFP'
    
    """
    replacements = {} #URL -> is.gd URL
    #Only check for urls that start with "http://" for now
    for m in re.finditer("http://[^ \n\r]*", text):
        try:
            replacements[m.group()] = shorten_with_is_gd(m.group())
        except:
            replacements[m.group()] = m.group()
    for url,replacement in replacements.items():
        text = text.replace(url, replacement)
    return text

if __name__ == '__main__':
    doctest.testmod(verbose=True)

and the following lisp makes "M-x shorten-url" do the rest of the replacement work:

;add ~/.emacs.d/ryan-python-extensions to python path
(pymacs-exec "import sys, os")
(pymacs-exec "sys.path.append(os.path.join(os.path.expanduser('~'),'.emacs.d','ryan-pymacs-extensions'))")

;;Shorten URLs with is.gd
(pymacs-exec "import shorten_url")
(defun shorten-url (start end)
  (interactive "r")
  (let ((region (buffer-substring start end)))
    (let ((rt (pymacs-eval (format "shorten_url.shorten_in_text('''%s''')" region))))
      (kill-region start end)
      (insert rt)
      )
  ))