Current Events

From the Comments: Islam’s “Violent Penchant”; Shooting Rampages and Stonings

Brandon Christensen Current Events , ,

Dr. Delacroix takes me to task over my dismissal of Islam’s inherently violent penchant. I think violence on grand scales, including war and terrorism, are always and everywhere a product of politics and institutions. Dr. Delacroix argues that Islam itself provokes violence. He writes:

A French citizen with a Muslim name goes on vacation to the tribal areas of Pakistan and to Afghanistan. Latter on he goes on a shooting rampage. The probabilities are such that he has to have sought his victims. The first set of victims were Muslim soldiers in the French army. Of course, for a jihadist such soldiers are traitors. The second set of victims were Jewish children and an adult in a Jewish school. You have to look for a Jewish school in France. I wouldn’t know how to find one. It’s not as if the killer wanted to kill children and then he went to as school that happened to be Jewish.

None of this means anything according to Brandon. Of course, this anecdote is only one of of several I presented in support of the idea that Islam has a violent penchant. Brandon dismisses “anecdotes” as evidence. He seems to say that if I had presented a thousand anecdotes, I would have accomplished nothing. I imagine he believes it’s enough to say “not so” for his negative thesis (no violent penchant) to be considered true.

Strange mental world!

I did not say anything about what is responsible for terrorism in the Middle East. I only took exception to a small statement of faith of Brandon’s in a larger development.

Why was the French citizen in Afghanistan and Pakistan? I ask because both states are in the middle of an international conflict (along with France, I might add). Continue reading →

Baby’s a Tuna, and It’s Feeling Blue

Fred Foldvary Current Events , , , , , , ,

Bluefin tuna are being hunted to extinction. They have already been reduced to a small fraction of the global numbers of a hundred ago. They may disappear from the Atlantic Ocean by 2012. The average weight of those caught has already been dropping. Other kinds of tuna and related fish are also being slaughtered, but the bluefish will be the first to go under.

Bluefin tuna are the genus Thunnus in the family Scombridae, with several species, among them Thunnus atlanticus (blackfin tuna), Thunnus orientalis (Pacific bluefin), and Thunnus thynnus (Northern bluefin).

The bluefin have a big problem: they taste very good. Tuna have been eaten for centuries. Indeed, the word “tuna” comes from ancient Greek. Canned tuna greatly increased the consumption, but what is finally terminating the bluefin is sushi. Four fifths of the bluefin tuna consumption is for sushi and sashimi. Sushi is seaweed-coated vinegar rice wrapped around a morsel of food such as raw fish, and sashimi is the raw fish by itself.

Bluefin tunas taste good because unlike most fish, they are homeothermic (warm blooded); they metabolize their temperature, like mammals and birds. With a higher body temperature than the surrounding cold water, tuna have a large ocean range. The warmth also enables tuna to swim fast (“tuna” in Greek means “to rush”), which enables them to catch more prey. So bluefin tuna grow up to a size of up to four meters. Continue reading →

Hugo Chavez, Fascist/Socialist (Same Thing) Dead at 58

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , ,

Hugo Chavez, the portly, socialist dictator from Venezuela, died from cancer at the ripe old age of 58. My only lament is that I will probably never get to piss on his grave.

His rule was fairly typical for a Leftist regime: assaults on free speech and the free press, diminished civil liberties, picking and choosing winners and losers in the private sector, strong ties to the military, etc. etc. From the New York Times:

At the same time, he was determined to hold onto and enhance his power. He grew obsessed with changing Venezuela’s laws and regulations to ensure that he could be re-elected indefinitely and become, indeed, a caudillo, able to rule by decree at times. He stacked his government with generals, colonels and majors, drawing inspiration from the leftist military officers who ruled Peru and Panama in the 1970s.

[…]

He began describing his critics as “golpistas,” or putschists, while recasting his own failed 1992 coup as a patriotic uprising. He purged opponents from the national oil company, expropriated the land of others and imprisoned retired military officials who had dared to stand against him. The country’s political debate became increasingly poisonous, and it took its toll on the country.

Private investors, unhinged over Mr. Chávez’s nationalizations and expropriation threats, halted projects. Hundreds of thousands of scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and others in the middle class left Venezuela, even as large numbers of immigrants from Haiti, China and Lebanon put down stakes here.

The homicide rate soared under his rule, turning Caracas into one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Armed gangs lorded over prisons, as they did in previous governments, challenging the state’s authority. Simple tasks, like transferring the title of a car, remained nightmarish odysseys eased only by paying bribes to churlish bureaucrats.

Other branches of government often bent to his will. He fired about 19,000 employees of Petróleos de Venezuela, the national oil company, in response to a strike in 2002 and 2003. In 2004, he stripped the Supreme Court of its autonomy. In legislative elections in 2010, his supporters preserved a majority in the National Assembly by gerrymandering.

All the while, Mr. Chávez rewrote the rule book on using the media to enhance his power. With “Aló Presidente” (“Hello, President”), his Sunday television program, he would speak to viewers in his booming voice for hours on end. His government ordered privately controlled television stations to broadcast his speeches.

Again, nothing too surprising here. This is what socialism will bring your society, every single time. It’s a conversation that doesn’t happen enough around the world.

What I find most surprising about his death is not that so few on the Left are willing to condemn him for his brutality (Leftists are – by and large – authoritarians who believe that the ends justify the means), but that so many Leftists really believed Chavez’s fascism represented a threat to US interests in the region.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, American policy in the region has changed markedly since the end of the Cold War. American interests in the region have largely faded into obscurity, even when it comes to the drug war (which should end tomorrow). Afghanistan, Mexico and West Africa and the Caribbean are the new fronts in the war on drugs, and overthrowing democratically-elected governments to prevent communism was sooooo 1980s. Nowadays Washington sees democratically-elected socialists coming to power as good for democracy, so long as the fascists don’t try to rewrite the rules to fit their fancies and eliminate democracy (like they’ve done in Honduras, Venezuela and, to a lesser extent, Argentina).

Chavez was nothing to Washington. Not even a pain in the ass. That uninformed Leftists continue to lie to themselves, and the like-minded tools they hang out with, should not surprise me, but alas…

Latin America has thrived since Washington has taken a softer, more respectable approach to the region. States that come under socialist influence – like Venezuela and Cuba – become pariahs on their own. Most of this has to do with the fact that militaries are involved in one way or another. Socialism has never come to power democratically.

I’m not too fond of memes, but here is one that often pops into my head when I read a Leftist’s defense of some dictator or other in some part of the world: Continue reading →

Rand Paul: Filibusterer Extraordinaire

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , ,

Rand Paul’s filibuster of John Brennan is now going on 8 hours.

Mr. Brennan thinks that the use of drone strikes to kill enemies of the republic is perfectly legal, even on American soil.

No word – yet – on whether Mr. Brennan thinks it would be perfectly legal for a Republican to use drone strikes to kill American citizens.

Making Whistle-Blowing Pay

Warren Gibson Current Events, Economics, Law, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

The federal bureaucracies are hard at work churning out rules to implement the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” act. In May the Securities and Exchange Commission announced rules for its new whistleblower program, which rewards individuals who provide the agency with “high-quality tips that lead to successful enforcement acts.”

The minimum amount of recovered funds that can earn a reward is $1 million, but the sky’s the limit on the upside. The whistleblower gets to keep 10 to 30 percent of the amount collected, including fines, interest, and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains. We’re talking about big game here, with awards conceivably topping $100 million.

Eric Havian, an attorney with a law firm that represents whistleblowers, noted in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Kathleen Pender that the securities laws cover a “huge category of bad conduct,” such as illegal insider trading, cooking the books, market manipulation, stock option back-dating, false or misleading disclosures, and the deceptive sales of securities. Almost anything potentially can be illegal, and these vaguely defined offenses leave much room for government mischief. As for insider trading, this is a practice that does little harm and may actually provide benefits to small investors. (See my January/February 2011 Freeman article, “Inside Insider Trading.”)

If corporations felt they needed limits on insider trading or other conduct to attract shareholders, they could write prohibitions into their bylaws so that violations, if not settled internally, could be remedied under civil law. Continue reading →

Justice for Bangladesh?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Religion , ,

From the New York Times:

The year 1971 was seminal for Bangladesh. We had been denied our right to self-rule since the Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947. In March of ’71, the Pakistani military, supported by China and the United States, initiated a bloody suppression of 75 million Bangladeshis. Millions fled the murderous onslaught and sought refuge in India.

Militias affiliated with the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami collaborated with the Pakistani military. They informed on, hunted out, and participated in the rape, killing and torture of ordinary citizens. They targeted hundreds of intellectuals, who were killed in cold blood.

Bangladesh is one of the poorest states on the planet. Here’s why:

Bangladesh’s original Constitution had four basic principles: nationalism, democracy, socialism and secularism.

Can you guess what happened after independence? Go ahead: guess. Or just read the whole thing (it’s short).

As of now there are massive protests going on in Bangladesh calling for revenge. While I support justice, and the Bangladeshis have suffered innumerable injustices over the past five decades, I don’t think calls for blood bodes well for the rule of law.

In other, more local, news here is a good account of the shootout that recently happened in Santa Cruz. I’m going to turn in my guns tomorrow.

Scotland and Secession

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , , ,

From the New York Times:

Scotland would have to renegotiate membership in the European Union and other international organizations if it votes for independence in a referendum next year, according to legal advice expected to be published Monday by the British government.

Read the whole thing.

A couple of thoughts:

  1. Wow, the British government published a report on the possibility of secession. Can you imagine Washington ever doing something so outside the box?
  2. The rest of the analysis falls in line nicely with my own arguments (if I do say so myself!) that secession/devolution will only succeed in Europe (or elsewhere) if the new states are allowed into the EU (or other regional and international bodies not named the UN).

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links

Hey all, I’ve been busy lately. I’ve got four more months of college left so I’m trying to take advantage of every last bit of it.

  1. Healthcare Isn’t a Free Market, It’s a Giant Economic Scam
  2. The United States that Could’ve Been
  3. It’s official: Marxism is a religion
  4. Property Rights: the Key to Economic Development
  5. The Evolution of Irregular War. I’ll have more on this later (I hope!).

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links
  1. Rand Paul’s foreign policy speech. A realist gives his thoughts.
  2. Free Soviet-era films online! I have a weird thing for Soviet art and literature. I’m always fascinated by what the censors would promote. Indulging in Soviet arts and letters forces me to ask why such art and literature was promoted by the state in the first place. What was it about the art that championed socialist man? (h/t Tyler Cowen)
  3. Why didn’t we know that the Russian meteor was coming?
  4. D-7 (original version)
  5. Did somebody say “tribal clashes”? (from 2008). Kenya is voting again. Let’s hope this piece proves to be a flash in the pan.
  6. Federalism for the 21st century.

North Korea’s “Artificial Earthquake”: What is to be Done?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , ,

Foreign policy has been awfully quiet these days. President Obama has been murdering people left and right on a whim, and nobody in Washington seems to care. You can imagine what the reaction would be in Washington if a Republican had been the one flaunting the rule of law. The Economist has a good article on this development if anyone is interested.

One newsworthy item that concerns American foreign policy has been centered on the Korean peninsula, a place that the United States first became involved militarily during the 1950’s. Given that our government is currently mired in two foreign occupations at the peripheries of the Islamic world (Afghanistan and the Balkans) as well as being embroiled in conflicts along the Sahel (thanks to President Obama’s attacks on the Libyan state), one should naturally be curious as to why the current affairs of the Korean peninsula are of interest to the United States government.

To make a long story short, the US government currently has some 50,000 troops stationed along the border of the North-South divide (drawn up in the 1950’s after a devastating war was fought between communist and conservative factions within Korea, China, and the United States), and has an alliance with the South that guarantees military help in case of a war with the communist North. The later state is actively attempting to build a nuclear weapon.

As a rule, I think it is appropriate that when citizens of a republic hear about other nations and events, the subject matter ought to revolve around how beautiful the geography of a said nation is, or how beautiful the women are, or how bad the food is, or which team won the national championship, and in which sport. That American citizens are hearing about a possible escalation of military tension in the region is, by itself, not a bad thing nor a surprising thing, but when our military and our tax dollars are suddenly involved in the escalation itself, then American citizens have ample cause to be worried, angry, and tense. These are not qualities that are often sought out by individuals on a daily basis, and when a government that claims to be republican in nature begins to cause these said psychological factors within it’s borders, then citizens ought to question the supposed republicanism of their government. Continue reading →

L’ Anarchisme et la recherche de la liberté: recommendations des Déserts du Nouveau Monde.

Jacques Delacroix Books, Current Events, Liberty ,

Je suis vieux mais j’ai quand même un copain lycéen à Paris. Je l’ai rencontré un Quatorze Juillet justement, en Californie où je vis depuis déjà longtemps. Ugo a quinze ou seize ans. Il me dit par courriel qu’il lit Bakounine et Kropotkine. Cela me fait plaisir à deux titres. D’abord, cela signifie qu’il a échappé à la malédiction du relent de totalitarisme collectiviste qui habite toujours de nombreux Français comme une croûte en Octobre colle encore aux lèvres des revenus de la colonie de vacances du mois d’Août.

La deuxième raison de ma réjouissance c’est que de telles lectures ne peuvent qu’allonger l’aune à laquelle Ugo mesurera la liberté. (J’allais dire la “liberté individuelle” mais, il n’y en a pas d’autre, c’est une mauvaise manie verbale.) Il me semble en effet que quand on vit dans le brouillard d’une societe étatique comme la France il doit être difficile seulement de reconnaitre le simple fait de liberté. Dans une telle société, on doit être menéinconsciemment à une mesure de la libertéétriquée pour la simple raison que les nombreux “droits” des autres ne peuvent que limiter naturellement, automatiquement les siens propres.

L’un de ces soi-disant droits est le droit de vivre correctement sans avoir jamais às’efforcer, c’est-à-dire aux crochets d’Ugo et d’autres qui ne rechignent pas à travailler ou àinventer. Continue reading →

Horse Meat and the European Union

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Liberty , ,

Big scandal in the European Union about horse meat masquerading as beef. Neither in Europe nor in this country do people really understand the story. Good thing I am here with my cross-cultural skills!

First things first and a confession: I ate much horse meat as a child, something like twice or three times a week. It was cheaper than beef. The horse butcher was half a block from the beef butcher. Horse meat was cheaper. My mother was concerned that her sons would not develop the right kind or quantity of hormones if they didn’t get red meat at every meal. Well, I don’t want to appear immodest or lacking in humility but it appears that my mother was right about the effect of horse meat on virility!

We ate ground horse meat barely singed. It tasted good, a lot like beef, in fact but also a little sweet. We did not feel sorry for the horses. There was a horsey set in France but it did not live in the government housing where I grew up. We did not know any of them although we read about some of them in the tabloids. Long story short: There is no particular health hazard associated with horse meat if it’s normally inspected. It’s probably less dangerous than say, chicken. Continue reading →

Equal Pay for Equal Work: The New/Old Trojan Horse; Unfairness

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Politics , , , , , ,

I am a sore loser. Thoughts of re-emigration dance around in my head. However, I am too old. And the very mechanism that I fear is trapping this whole society has entrapped me: I am dependent on Medicare which is not transportable. I am a ward of the federal government which took loads of my money for forty years and turned it against me, like a two-bit dope-dealer. Like other conservatives I know, I am tempted by the option of personal, psychological secession from the new Obama Peronista United States. But, finally, there is nothing to do right now but to continue to sound a voice of reason and of conscience in the hope that it will reach some of the inner children Pres. Obama has been singing to.

(Personally, I make it a practice to take my inner-child out every so often and to beat his ass.)

President Obama won re-election handily not by winning arguments but by side-stepping deftly vital issues of the solvency of this society, present and future, and of the role of government in restricting our freedoms. (There was also quite a bit of slime he threw at hapless Romney but that was secondary in his victory, I think.) After his inauguration speech I wonder if he is going to succeed in side-stepping central matters again by raising silly issues such as that of homosexual marriage. (I don’t use the word “gay” because it carries a political agenda. I am not against homosexuals, however. I don’t even think they have a greater chance of burning in Hell than I do, for example.) Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links
  1. North Korea: the new capitalists
  2. The rise and fall of Market Monetarism
  3. Listen to the fascists sing: a sublime parody
  4. The Caucasus: Another Regional War in the Wings. Don’t forget who is playing here: Russia, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran.

 

Telling the Truth and Tarentino, Liberals, the Secretary of State, and the President

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , , ,

I have a liberal friend with whom I have fairly frequent serious discussions. He thinks of himself as a moderate liberal, even a centrist because his owns guns and his guns are dear to him. Yet, he voted for Obama and he can give a spirited defense of every aspect of Obama’s policies and actions. That’s a test, in my book.

He told me once, but only once, that the administration’s program of at-a-distance- assassination-of-the-untried was not a problem for him. He dos not see how assassinating an American citizen, for example, on the presidential say-so, could be a problem, ethical or judicial. He does not discern a slippery slope. That too is a test.

He and I have had repeatedly two bases of disagreement. First, we have different values, of course. Thus, he insists that it’s fine for him to use the vote to take my money by force in order to give it to someone that he, my friend, thinks deserves it more than I do because he, the other guy, does not have health insurance.

I disagree.

Note that this is an actual example of a fundamental value difference because my liberal buddy does not have to go there to achieve the same results. He could try, for example, to convince me to give up some money on the basis of expediency: It’s unpleasant, even messy to have the uninsured dying on my front lawn for lack of medical care. (As they do all the time, of course.) Or, he could persuade me on fellow-human grounds. He does not feel like doing either because, I think, he has no moral qualm about taking my earnings by force for a cause he judges good. That’s a big difference between us. Continue reading →