Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

D.D. Harriman, phone home. There were 178 successful space launches in 2022. Of these 90 were by companies, barely more than half. 61 were made by one company, SpaceX. So far, private enterprise has not gotten to the Moon, successfully, anyway. In 2019 Beresheet, a private Israeli effort, crashed into the moon. Three private missions are now either on their way or about to be launched. Lunar space is about to get a lot more interesting for private space fans. (Economist, January 21, 2023) Time to re-read victor Koman's inspiring Kings of the High Frontier?

In This Issue

Our correspondents debate Shakespeare in the Letters to the Editor.

L. Neil Smith takes on how the question of how to deal with terrorists.

Charles Curley reviews Larry Correia's new book In Defense of the Second Amendment.

Sean Gangol on the split between libertarians and Objectivists. Oh, sorry. Students of Objectivism.

America Is Safer and More Tolerant than Ever, says Marian L. Tupy. A look at the historical data. So don't let the scaremongers bother you.

Events

February 22: Follow the Science: Lockdowns Go Viral (Premiere) hosted by Tom Woods "Follow the Science: Lockdowns Go Viral is a Netflix-caliber pilot episode of what will be a five-episode docu-series. The pilot is a crucial retrospective of what happened to the world in 2020. It focuses on the issue of lockdowns and explores the critical conversations that should have occurred, but never came to pass: do lockdowns prevent the spread of Covid-19? What is the fallout of these globally-implemented policies?"

One of the people involved in the project is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), who first came to my attention with the Great Barrington Declaration.

Feb 15 – April 1, 2023: Libertarian Solutions 3.0 online learning course: How to Share the Libertarian Message with Just About Anyone.

Links! Have we got Links!

MH17 probe links Putin to missile that brought down plane

Undercover journalism, with some Ron Paul campaign alumnae: UncoverDC.

How Russian fake news paints 'the Germans' and how to see through Russia's war propaganda. And other governments' propaganda, as well.

A ‘Wild Boar’ trained by Yandex: A massive data leak reveals the ascent of artificial intelligence in Internet surveillance and suppressing protest in Russia. But I wonder: if the Russian government's cyber security is such that crackers can get their hands on what should be secret data, how good is the AI they are supposedly training?

I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle.: There are more than 100 pediatric gender clinics across the U.S. I worked at one. What’s happening to children is morally and medically appalling.

The Fraser Institute's Human Freedom Index 2022 "is the most comprehensive freedom index so far created for a globally meaningful set of countries and jurisdictions representing 98.1 percent of the world’s population. The HFI covers 165 jurisdictions for 2020, the most recent year for which sufficient data are available. The index ranks jurisdictions over a span of two decades, beginning in 2000, the earliest year for which a robust enough index could be produced." Other Fraser Institute reports are available.

The left has given up on ordinary Americans: Batya Ungar-Sargon on how the working classes are being sacrificed to elite virtue-signalling.

Jordan Peterson announces alternative to Klaus Schwab’s ‘apocalyptic’ WEF

The state of Russia’s offensive: Wagner Group’s tactics near Bakhmut, destroyed Russian tanks by Vuhledar, and other updates to Meduza’s interactive combat map.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Meduza has adopted a consistent antiwar position, holding Russia responsible for its military aggression and atrocities. As part of this commitment, we regularly update an interactive map that documents combat operations in Ukraine and the damage inflicted by Russia’s invasion forces. Our map is based exclusively on previously published open-source photos and videos, most of them posted by eyewitnesses on social media. We collect reports already available publicly and determine their geolocation markers, adding only the photos and videos that clear this process.

Meduza’s goal is not to track the conflict in real time; the data reflected on the map are typically at least 48 hours old.

Why you don't want the government determining what is "false information": Siberian journalist Maria Ponomarenko sentenced to six years on ‘disinformation’ charges for posts about Russia’s Mariupol theater strike