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April 30, 2006
Deconstructing the Statist Party’s Take on Immigration
President Bush, the mercantilist classes he represents, the GOP, and some others support de facto open borders. Immigrants take jobs that Americans already here won’t do; or so he says.
“President Bush says”, says Flint Journal columnist Andrew Heller, “there are millions of them. That's why he wants to relabel illegal immigrants as ‘guest workers.’
He must know something we don't. Americans do all sorts of unpleasant jobs. We slaughter hogs, vacuum pit toilets, hold umbrellas to shade Michael Jackson from the sun. We pick up road kill, guard mass murderers, inseminate cows.”
Some very nasty work eh? I suspect what the president means when he says there are all sorts of jobs Americans won't do is that there are jobs that Americans don't want for the pay being offered.
That's the crux of the whole immigration debate. Businesses large and small want immigrants so they don't have to pay people decent wages or benefits. And with a nearly endless supply of abjectly poor potential immigrants that can be imported at will in order to suppress labor shortages for even the most hard to fill positions (and so suppress the natural tendency for “undesirable” or specialized employees to bid up their wages), the natural ebb and flow a free market for labor is distorted in favor of the owners of capital.
“The aim of a guest worker program”, Heller goes on to say, “wouldn't be to fill open jobs. It would be to establish a permanent, low-cost, benefit-free underclass of workers who, through the sweat of their brows, allow business owners to make more money.”
That’s how I see it too.
And so what about the Democrats? Well they think that most immigrants will end up voting for them and so they think the more the merrier.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)
April 29, 2006
The Instinct for Liberty
From former ACLU board member, jazz critic, and Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff about a recent speaking tour:
“[And once,] in Miami, I was asked to speak on the Constitution before a large audience of primarily black and Hispanic high schoolers. Before I went on, a teacher told me not to be disappointed in their indifference because, she said, ‘all they care about are clothes and music.’
After more than an hour of my stories on how we got the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, I got a standing ovation, because they had discovered America.”
Well not really, Nat. What they “discovered” is that they like the idea of living in liberty. But thanks for helping spread the meme though.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2006
“Economic Truth” You Say? You Cant’ Handle the Truth!
One of my anarcho-socialist critics asks (me of all people) why do “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer..” (& etc). Well now I’m no economist Bill, but it works like this: Owners of capital can far more easily move their resources (money) around the country and around the world to take advantage of promising investment opportunities, engage in speculation, wild gambles, or even the occasional swindle. Some of these investments work out very nicely for them and some do not.
However the poor laid-off tool & die maker in Detroit or Cleveland whose “capital” consists of his skill and experience at making tools and dies usually can’t or won’t uproot himself and go over to China, the Pacific Rim or India in order to re-invest their form of capital more profitably.
As I said I am not an econogeek and I could be wrong here. But as the late social critic and comedian Sam Kinison once noted: There’d be no starving people in Africa if they’d just move where the food is.” Which is true enough, but is often harder to do in practice than in economics textbooks. All of which is a conundrum that I fully acknowledge here but offer no solution for.
It is one reason that there is so much economic migration occurring in North America now though. A $2 an hour job plucking chickens, picking tomatoes, or cleaning toilets sure beats no job at all back home Guadalajara, eh? Don’t think of it as illegal immigration but as, to use CNBC/Bloomberg/Wall Street-style biz nomenclature, the migrants are merely “re-deploying their capital more profitably”.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 01:03 PM | Comments (2)
Why We Anarcho-Libertarians Think We’ll Win in the End
“The director of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission abruptly resigned Thursday”, says this AP news story, “after she was charged with drunken driving.”
Yes we sometimes drive drunk too, and have our foibles, follies, fetishes, and weaknesses as well. But then we don’t tell (or force) others to hold their water while we go take a piss either, do we?
Posted by Ali Massoud at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2006
The Gangs of New York
There is an interesting article on the New Yorker’s website about the career of an FBI agent who came to work for the very Mob figures he was suppose to be investigating. No surprise here really.
I mean the FBI and the Mob are simply two parallel gangs of armed men who use force on others for their own benefit, eh? I mean whether the Boss is some grizzled old goon with an Italian or Sicilian ethnic background or a "freely elected" (i.e.- three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner), mayor, governor, or president, the desire to control others for one’s own benefit, status and profit is essentially the same in either case it seems to me. A hierarchy is what it is, regardless of how it comes to be.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2006
The War on Sanity
"The past does not repeat itself,” said novelist Mark Twain,
“but it rhymes." This historical phenomenon must explain why the State continues on with its costly, deadly, and futile “war” against drugs. Eighty years ago during the last major jihad against people’s ability to get high all of the problems faced by today’s drug warriors were abundantly clear too; the heavy handed law enforcement, the pervasive corruption, and the vastly increased levels of criminal violence. About the only good thing that came from the Volstead Act was the smoldering contempt it engendered for busybodies and their influence on the government.
In a political environment such as today’s America, where the politicians at all levels endlessly poll, analyze, focus and pander to every possible niche in society, why is it that this crap continues on? Especially in light of a poll done by Zogby which found that 40% of Americans (and trending upward) want the private personal use of drugs by adults legalized. Period.
So why the deafening silence from the mainstream media and the pols? I would usually add a cynical “cui bono” here along with a rant about the sinister influence of the police-prison industrial complex. But even that doesn’t explain all this. Except for the most militant social conservative drug warriors nearly everyone agrees that what adults do voluntarily and peacefully amongst themselves is nobody else’s business but their own, and that the huge amount of time and money spent on persecuting people for private behavior is immoral. And yet it continues.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2006
Why I Call them "Sheep"Cont'd
Take a look at this graph. It plots the price of gasoline and President Bush's popularity. What it demonstrates is that most of the American public "likes" Mr. Bush as long as he orients the US government toward assuring that plentiful supplies of gasoline are available at low prices. Which is why myself and some others call them sheep; they are slow, gullible, easily led, and readily culled or fleeced by their masters as needed.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2006
Marching Against History...
.. Is about as stupid and uninsightful a thing as conscious beings can do. And yet they do, eh? Commenting on the recent upheavals in France over the liberalization of labor law William Pfaff writes in the New York Review of Books that this party (i.e.- the modern social democratic welfare state) is just about over, ready or not.
"These are people", says Pfaff, "who profited from the growing prosperity and upward social movement that characterized French society from the end of World War II until quite recently, when chronic unemployment became a factor in French life. The marchers included members of the generation that took part in ‘the events’ of 1968 (after which ‘nothing was to be the same again!’). These older people now approach retirement; mostly they have become proper bourgeois (or ‘bourgeois bohemians’—‘bobos’ in current social shorthand), concerned for the future of their children and grandchildren."
Despite the much envied and ballyhooed educational system enjoyed by French schoolchildren (by American educrats anyhow), students there have never heard apparently the fable of King Canute, much less understood its implication for their situation. Oh well, economic reality will teach them what they failed to learn in class. Sad though.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2006
A Herd of Independent Minds
Anarcho-socialist philosopher and linguistics professor Noam Chomsky has written a tepid review for Z of an article in the London Review of Books about the Israel lobby’s influence on the US. Ho-hum, you say? Yeah, me too. However what struck me was the way that Chomsky skewered the herd mentality of the intellectual classes and the mainstream media talking heads and scribblers.
"Take any topic", says Chomsky, "that has risen to the level of Holy Writ among ‘the herd of independent minds’ (to borrow Harold Rosenberg's famous description of intellectuals): for example, anything having to do with the Balkan wars, which played a huge role in the extraordinary campaigns of self-adulation that disfigured intellectual discourse towards the end of the millennium, going well beyond even historical precedents, which are ugly enough. Naturally, it is of extraordinary importance to the herd to protect that self-image; much of it based on deceit and fabrication. Therefore, any attempt even to bring up plain (undisputed, surely relevant) facts is either ignored (M-W can't be ignored), or sets off most impressive tantrums, slanders, fabrications and deceit, and the other standard reactions."
Ouch! That is all quite true however. The media herd that continually bitchs about the screw-ups by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld War Machine is pretty hypocritical and transparently so too, IMHO. If the war were going great, as it was following the initial invasion in 2003, how much criticism in the mainstream media would there be now? Not fookin’ much methinks other than the usual suspects who oppose war and the warfare state as matter of principle in all cases.
Most of the critical response goes along the lines of: "This war was a mistake, and besides we [fill in the blank here] would have done it much better!" Paraphrasing Kerry, Clinton, Lieberman, and the rest here.
Whatever criticisms of Chomsky are to be made, and I have made a few lately myself, he gets this story right.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2006
Parsing Orwellian Newspeak for the Sheep Cont’d
My girlfriend has a fascination with reality TV shows and so I see them all the time. She especially enjoys Animal Cops, the Surreal Life, The Real World, and Cops. I absolutely hate the latter. That show quickly makes my blood boil after less than ten minutes usually. The typical scenario involves officer pig and his pals busting some hapless goof on a traffic stop or a drug/prostitute sting. (Stuff that shouldn’t even be illegal IMHO, but I have digressed here.)
One such episode that enraged me was when some cop in Texas "detained" a kid who smelled of cannabis but had none on him. Nor drug paraphernalia, nor weapons, or any other item that officer pig could charge or ticket him for. But the kid had no picture ID with him. Officer Pig’s last resort was to hope that the kid had a warrant for his arrest or had lied to him at some point in his "interview" and could then "formally" arrest him (with actual charges). See, in modern cop parlance even though the kid was trussed up with cuffs and stuffed into the back of the police car while the cops rifled through his backpack, he wasn’t actually arrested; the kid was "detained". WTF?
People accept this kind of nonsense too. How Orwellian is that? Very in my humble opinion. My lawyer told me that any time that a person can’t stop talking and just walk away from a cop or other state minion then they are in fact under arrest whether officer pig or whoever says those magic words or not
Anyhow, in order to note the ongoing debasement of our language by the mainstream and very statophilic media I have used a great definition of "detained" that was iterated by Becky Akers in a recent column on the LewRockwell.com website. To wit: "detained" – Amerika’s new euphemism meaning, "arrested for no cause whatsoever".
That little snippet of clear thinking as well as a superb definition needs to be preserved to our lexicon methinks. So I added to it to the LibertyWiki. And it is here if you wanna see it.
And thank you Ms. Akers.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2006
A Soldier’s Pay
During the worst of the worst slaughter of World War I in 1917 the French army was in such disarray and misery that it mutinied against the command of their officer corps. This is bad indeed if you’re an invaded state in the middle of a war. The thinking of the French government was that his sort of thing must be put down immediately, decisively, and ruthlessly too.
But what to do? If you gather up all the mutineers (some 25,000 men) and hang or imprison them all as units, then you are eviscerating your own force; if you only go after the ringleaders you may find yourself in the same situation again soon. What the French brass decided on was a death lottery; every seventh member of the enlisted force in a mutinous unit was sent to the firing squad. So if you survived the mutiny, its aftermath, and the war, you were home free. Or so it seemed at the time anyhow.
According to this article I was sent (via Kathy Fischer) it appears that today’s soldiers are in sorta/kinda the same boat. If they survive their current tour and aren’t seriously injured or unhinged mentally, a lot of them walk away with some serious money. A lot more serious than most would get working at the Dairy Queen in some small town in Texas or hustling on the street in Los Angeles or doing day labor in Newark anyhow. In my old stomping grounds around Ft. Riley (Kansas, USA) the entire local economy is principally based around getting as much as possible of whatever largesse a grateful nation bestows upon our honored veterans.
I haven’t consulted Google to see what neo-con chickenhawk and Classicist professor Victor Davis Hanson has to say about how the ancient Greek warriors he study’s blew their booty and swag upon their return from war lately, but I would imagine that soldiers, then and now, aren’t that much different. And so it goes.
And more is the pity too. And so, as a cynic once noted, "[The] past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." True that.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 01:49 AM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2006
Privatized and Non-Coercive Foreign Aid
It is a trite bromide in political activist circles; to wit: “Think globally. Act locally.” But from an anarcho-libertarian perspective that is prolly the best way to help others elsewhere in the world though.
I was reading in the LA Times about a Haitian immigrant who works two jobs in Miami and remits most of his earnings to his extended family back home. A one-man charity operation it would seem. And he’s not alone in doing this either. According to the new story Haiti’s second largest source of cash flowing into the private economy (i.e. - not to the government and from a statist entity or NGO) comes from expatriates who remit some or most of their wages.
Bravo! My hat is off to them.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2006
Talk is Cheap; Liberty is Expensive
“While the most embattled cartoons in the history of that genre have receded from the front pages”, says an editorial in USA Today, “the fallout lives on. Just last week, the animated and often-controversial South Park television show took on the issue and was rebuffed when its creators tried to depict the prophet in a scene.
Instead, a black screen appeared with the words, ‘Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network.’
It's more of the same in academia. New York University, for example, states that it is ‘committed to maintaining an environment where open, vigorous debate and speech can occur.’ But late last month, the Objectivist Club, a student group that supports the philosophy of Ayn Rand, discovered that the NYU policy is more situational than firm.
The club wanted to have a panel discussion, "Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons," but after protests from Muslim groups, the NYU administration insisted that the controversy could be discussed without showing the cartoons. When the club disagreed, NYU then imposed such limiting conditions on the club - including who could attend the discussion - that the club finally "voluntarily chose" not to show them.”
“Voluntarily” is the word used in the NYU administration’s press release anyhow. I’ll let the reader judge just how voluntary the decision really was. This all underscores what I believe is a simple fact of life; to see what people really value ask what they’re willing to pay for it. And not necessarily only with money either. Pay for with risk, reputation, and the willingness to go against the prevailing opinion of the elites and/or other powers-that-be.
All of which is why I prefer the market; people lie, deny, rationalize, and obfuscate. Markets don’t. If people say they believe in free speech and open intellectual inquiry, but are not willing to pay the price for what they cost, then do they truly believe in those things? Markets never make that mistake. If people say they want more of a good or service but won’t pay the price that is required to freely obtain it (i.e.- without force or fraud), then despite whatever denials to the contrary are made the truth of their sincerity is obvious.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2006
The Infectious Meme for Liberty
Ten percent of Americans are self-described libertarians according to the Pew Research organization’s latest polling data. I am not sure if this is good or bad however; I had often felt in the days after the terror attacks in 2001 that the American people didn’t want liberty any more, but instead wanted revenge and more "security".
Of course the State gives them neither, but perhaps the "security moms" and such are now remembering that being heavily taxed, spied upon, regulated, and swarmed over by Leviathan’s minions at all levels doesn’t really make one more "secure", eh?
The Hammer of Truth blog transposes the Pew data onto the famous Nolan Chart of political preference (and arrives at the 10% figure by the way), meaning that those 1 in 10 who prefer liberty are "libertarians". And these folks should not be confused with Libertarian Party supporters or voters though, and so the LP bigshots shouldn’t get their hopes up just yet.
My interpretation of this data, if it’s true, is that we still have a long way to go. In America’s heavily gerrymandered two-party electoral system the best these libertarian leaning types can do if they vote is to help the lesser-of-the-two-evil statist party’s candidates win election in a few close races. Some would consider this outcome progress I suppose. But that’s about it as I see it.
However what this data does show is that the memes for self-reliance and liberty haven’t been wholly eradicated by seventy some years of educational and political social engineering schemes by the State though either. I haven’t felt this optimistic since I saw V for Vendetta a few nights ago and the audience applauded at the end.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2006
A Long and Good Life Comes to An End
Claire Wolfe writes about a life and death that we should all aspire to. From Claire’s article:
“Mrs. Nat was ‘nobody.’ No one at her funeral could extol her worldly accomplishments. She never held high office, never won an academic prize, never wrote a book, founded a company, or funded a billion-dollar charity. She wasn't rich or famous or beautiful. She never starred in a movie or appeared on the cover of People magazine (or even the front page of the Hardyville Independent for that matter). She never invented anything more important than a more delicious way to make chocolate cake.
But anybody looking and listening around that circle could know that Mrs. Nat had done all the things that really counted. She had loved and been loved. She had given and received graciously. She had laughed hard and softly cuddled her grandbabies. And in her gentle, peacemaking way, she had been free and helped raise generations of children in freedom.”
I hope my obituary is this good.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2006
VP Cheney’s Tax Refund = $1.9 Million
I’m OK with that too. The less the State takes in the less they have to spend on stuff that the people who earned it can spend for themselves. And as a matter of principle this is proper, even if it’s Deadeye Dick the Friend Shooter & War Profiteer, too.
link (via Drudge Report)
Posted by Ali Massoud at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2006
DEA Agent Who Shot Self In Foot Sues U.S. Government
And is seeking damages for distribution of a humiliating gun accident video starring him. That pesky Freedom of Information Act is the problem don't you know. My point: Next time you hear or see Officer Pig doing a "gun safety" PSA remember this guy, eh? Hah!
Posted by Ali Massoud at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2006
Politics Tends to Corrupt, Be on Guard!
From Tom Ender @ Endervidualism, (an anarcho-libertarian cultural website he edits and hosts), comes his farewell address from two years ago when he bowed out as a LP apparatchik. It is reprinted here as a public service to remind us all that if you wanna see the "enemy" in electoral politics, to just look in the mirror.
"Although actual political power resides in government," says Tom, "pursuing ambition within a political party is usually a required step to achieving actual government power. Like pursuing power in government, pursuing influence within a party poses many of the same corrupting tendencies. Also like governmental politics, party politics is contentious. When contending with others in the party, consider that while they may disagree with you, they will remain good people. Avoid losing sight of this possibility."
Read.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2006
NYC to Revamp its School System Yet Again
Oh sure they will folks. By ah..hiring consultants who were previously part of educational bureaucracies elsewhere or who are really just high-priced spin doctors? I don't think so, but hope springs eternal in a (ambitious) politician's heart.
"How much" says one bureaucrat quoted in the NY Times", can the system support increased autonomy and authority of school leaders without making the commensurate changes with respect to the external demands," asked Anthony Lombardi, the principal of P.S. 49 in Middle Village, Queens. "Ideally there should be a balance of accountability, autonomy and contractual flexibility."
It always amazes me when I hear stuff like this from supposed educators. Truly. I mean WTF does the foregoing blurb actually mean anyhow? Whatever you want it to I guess. My kids go to private schools.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2006
US Army Hired ex-Cons as Security Guards for Bases and Other Critical Facilities
“The U.S. Army and private contractors”, says an article in the (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot, “employed convicted criminals as security guards across the country despite repeated warnings in the past three years of the ‘risky situations’ that could present, according to a new federal report.”
Your tax dollars at work, eh? Well what’s the big deal anyhow? My points are these. Government by definition is a criminal conspiracy that has and holds power by force. So hiring armed thugs as security guards is wholly in keeping with modern statist theories of government. And they are by far cheaper to deploy and maintain than the uniformed cannon fodder that is needed (by the state) for other things elsewhere.
(Via Prison Planet.com)
Posted by Ali Massoud at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2006
Are All Leaks Created Equal?
Leak classified information on the Bush administration's NSA wiretapping program, and you'll be investigated and, if caught, prosecuted.
Leak classified (phony) information about Iraq's alleged WMDs in order to bolster the administration's case for murdering Iraqis, and it's A-OK. In fact, the president will give you the go-ahead to do so.
At least that's what "Scooter" Libby says he was told to do:
Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors that his boss said President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.
Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
All leaks are not created equal.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)