civil liberty

Edward Snowden is a Commie

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , , ,

So says Max Boot at Commentary, a neoconservative publication that specializes in lies and slander to further the imperialist cause (there is, if you think about it, no other way to further a cause such as theirs). No, really, read it yourself.

Boot tries to pretend that the NSA was only spying on citizens of foreign states, rather than on Americans, but this is laughable on its face, especially given the recent IRS scandal (where an august body of bureaucrats charged with collecting taxes suddenly finds itself targeting conservative political groups during a close presidential election season).

I’ve read elsewhere that Snowden was inspired by Ron Paul. If this is true, then Ron Paul is even more of a bad ass than I thought. The only people on my campus who do not like Ron Paul are hardline Democrats and hardline Republicans. But just think: very few young people identify with a specific political party. The reasons for this vary, but for the most part young people are much more independent thinkers and have yet to enter the workforce. Once they enter the workforce, of course, they will begin to vote for a party line, but kids in college who already identify with a political party tend to constitute tomorrow’s fascists: they are condescending, gullible and believe that the political system is the best way to change society for the better.

American imperialism is dead. Once the Obama administration begins arming al-Qaeda, and the media begins to really throw Obama under the bus, the idea that US government can magically make the world a better place by bombing, arming and invading other countries will find its rightful place in the dunce’s corner of American politics once again. In the mean time, we need more heroes like Snowden to expose the horrific abuses of liberty that Washington has been pursuing under the guise of wars on terror, drugs and poverty over the last half century.

Buddhist Leaders Call on Myanmar to Expel Muslims

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Religion , , , , ,

From the New York Times:

After a ritual prayer atoning for past sins, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk with a rock-star following in Myanmar, sat before an overflowing crowd of thousands of devotees and launched into a rant against what he called “the enemy” — the country’s Muslim minority.

“You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” Ashin Wirathu said, referring to Muslims.

There is much more in the piece, including this:

[…] images of rampaging Burmese Buddhists carrying swords and the vituperative sermons of monks like Ashin Wirathu have underlined the rise of extreme Buddhism in Myanmar — and revealed a darker side of the country’s greater freedoms after decades of military rule. Buddhist lynch mobs have killed more than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes.

Ashin Wirathu denies any role in the riots. But his critics say that at the very least his anti-Muslim preaching is helping to inspire the violence.

What began last year on the fringes of Burmese society has grown into a nationwide movement whose agenda now includes boycotts of Muslim-made goods. Its message is spreading through regular sermons across the country that draw thousands of people and through widely distributed DVDs of those talks. Buddhist monasteries associated with the movement are also opening community centers and a Sunday school program for 60,000 Buddhist children nationwide.

This bad news is, of course, contradictory to everything Dr Delacroix and other imperialists have written on the subject of religious extremism. Imperialists in this century like to pretend that Islam has suddenly appeared to take the place of communism as the preeminent threat to peace and prosperity in the world. They point to violence, poverty and state-sponsored oppression as examples of Islam’s inherent incompatibility with the liberal world order.

This is all anecdotal evidence. There is nothing inherently violent about Islam. All religions are equally authoritarian at their core.

I pull two things from this piece: 1) it reaffirms my commitment to secular government and 2) it reconfirms my skepticism of democracy. These two things go hand-in-hand, of course.

A government that decides to adhere to one religion is necessarily going to oppress those it does not sponsor. This is easy enough for our Western readers to understand, but it is an argument that does not have nearly enough clout in the non-Western world (you could perhaps exclude China from this list, and India has essentially been Westernized; New Delhi even has its own condescending policy towards its indigenous minorities).

The democratic aspect, too, should be familiar to Western readers. Democracy needs restraints, and lots of them. The reasons for this are practically infinite, but suffice it to say here going to war in the name of democracy is a foolish, morally horrendous thing to do. The fact that imperialists today often shroud their lust for power in terms of democracy speaks volumes about the immoral nature of their worldview. (h/t Eugene Volokh)

The Real IRS Problem

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty , , , ,

It’s heartening to see distrust and resentment of the IRS building up in the wake of the targeting of tea party groups and such. But let’s not overlook the daily predations of the IRS, small and large, which add up to a mountain of costs borne by citizens – not just monetary costs but also mental anguish and occasionally violent confrontations.

Case in point: your humble servant. This morning I received a notice demanding $8,900 in back taxes. Needless to say that ruined my day even though it took me only five minutes to realize that they made a mistake and I owe them nothing. I have high hopes that this will be resolved quickly but you never know. I mentioned my plight to a friend this morning and he chuckled. He once had a $1,400 claim which he fought for ten years until finally he got to the right person at the IRS who found their mistake in five minutes. Did he get an apology? Restitution or compensation of any kind? Of course not.

The complexity of the tax code is often cited as a significant drag on the economy, in terms of time spent gathering information and preparing returns, money paid to tax preparers and tax attorneys, etc.  But there are lots of other bad effects.  No one understands the tax code in its entirety and most IRS agents understand little of it — or worse, what they often think they understand is wrong.  Nor do taxpayers understand it.  This opens the door for errors, misunderstanding, cheating and consequent confrontations, anguish, time and money wasted, and sometimes violence.

If we have to have an income tax (which I’m unwilling to concede), let’s have a simple flat tax and do away with, if not the inherent coercion of any tax, at least the enormous expense and anguish that are part and parcel of the current insane system.

Snowden and Me

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , ,

Much unnecessary hoopla about Mr Snowden. Much conspiracy theorizing on conservative radio (but not on Rush Limbaugh).

I think things are pretty much the way they look. He has not worked for the Chinese or anyone. Not much that is very new has been revealed. The new things for some people on this blog is that Mr Obama is just as bad (OK, almost as bad ) as Mr Bush. N. S. !

Mr Snowden is almost certainly not guilty of spying: You have to spy for somebody or for something.

Personally, I think he is probably guilty of violating some contract or other that he signed. That’s worth a year in Club Fed with Bernie (what’s his name again?)

Personally, I did not like the blank surveillance cover and the data mining before. I still don’t. I don’t like big government and I don’t like big government doing big things. What’s so hard to understand?

There is one thing I learned again that  I already knew: College is overrated. Mr Snowden, the high-school dropout was earning $200,00 a year, in Hawaii. Of course, he was working for the Fed. Government.

Update: Booz -Allen says that no, he must be bragging, it was only $120,000. That’s before bonuses, of course.

Around the web: other civil libertarian perspectives on privacy

muricaderp Links, Politics , , , ,

1) Scroll back through Umair Haque’s Twitter feed to June 10 for a series of salty, pointed critiques of David Brooks’ recent hatchet job-cum-subsidiarity Jeremiad.

2) Three essays from Jacob Bacharach:

A) “Peeping Thomism,” an accidentally timely call for, among other things, hiring managers to grow up and cut out their censoriousness about stuff that their applicants post on social media: “But, says the Director of Human Resources and the Career Counselor, social media is public; you’re putting it out there. Yes, well, then I’m sure you won’t mind if I join you guys at happy hour with this flip-cam and a stenographer. Privacy isn’t the responsibility of individuals to squirrel away secrets; it’s the decency of individuals to leave other’s lives alone.”

B) A calm but firm call for his own demographic to stop falsely denigrating the less educated (Bacharach is a novelist by trade).

C) On David Brooks, his “conservatism,” and the amazing entitlement of certain posh people.

3) From Karen Garcia, a week-in-review summary of the PRISM bombshell. Garcia is a top-notch blogger whose archives I’ve been combing since discovering a link in one of her comments on Brooks’ “unmediated man” column. Other essays especially worth reading, on tangential but related topics, include her back story about Cornwall-on-Hudson homeboy David Petraeus and her evisceration of the covert classism of the Obamas’ 2012 Christmas message to the nation.

Impeach James Clapper

muricaderp Politics , , ,

It’s very simple. The Director of National Intelligence needs to go. He lied to Congress about the NSA’s totalitarian PRISM program. That’s as serious and subversive a lie as can be told to Congress about any topic. It’s exactly the kind of official misconduct that the impeachment process was established to check and punish.

I encourage those of you who agree that Clapper should be impeached to reblog what I’ve written, either verbatim or modified as you see fit. So far, there has been a strong and encouraging grassroots response to the White House petition to pardon Edward Snowden, a fair amount of it from latent civil libertarians who have been shocked into engagement by the egregiousness of what Snowden has exposed. A campaign to impeach Clapper, whom Snowden’s leaks have exposed as a liar, would dovetail perfectly with the one to pardon Snowden. Clapper has already provoked a number of members of Congress with his lie about PRISM, so timely pressure from constituents could be what it takes either to pressure him out of office or to get him formally removed.

A couple of side notes on the official reaction to PRISM (the metadata, if you will):

1) Rudy Giuliani offered a cretinously jingoistic defense of Clapper in an interview with Greta Van Susteren last night (6/11), premised largely on Clapper’s distinguished service as a military officer, the underlying ethics being that we dasn’t criticize the troops. It’s worth noting that by that standard Edward Snowden would also be shielded from all criticism, although perhaps less fully shielded since Clapper had the patriotism not to truncate his military career by breaking both legs in a special forces training accident. It goes without saying, but shouldn’t, that one doesn’t hear this sort of defense offered on Bradley Manning’s behalf, and not just because he’s a young grunt. Nor does one hear it made in defense of Robert Bales or Nidal Hasan, except perhaps by their defense attorneys, because it would sound absolutely absurd to say such a thing about someone under court-martial for mass murder. I submit that it’s no less absurd or evil when said about a spook who has been caught lying to Congress about a totalitarian eavesdropping program.

The interview got weirder than that. When Van Susteren confronted Giuliani with a chronology of Clapper’s evasions, Giuliani suddenly changed tack and accused Clapper of being a loose cannon for not having formulaically stated that he could not answer the question or offered to answer it in closed-door session. By mayoral fiat, an esteemed officer and gentleman was turned into a blithering fool who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. This makes the notion of Giuliani as some sort of mobster at least look plausible.

2) This vile mashup of pop psychology, pop sociology, generational smears, class snobbery, and milquetoast despotism is bad even by David Brooks’ usual standards.

Maryland v. King: Scalia’s Noble Dissent

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law , , , , , , ,

I’m definitely not Antonin Scalia’s biggest fan, but – as the Cato Institute’s Walter Olson writes – “if there’s ever a time when Antonin Scalia really rises to the occasion, it’s when he serves as the Supreme Court’s liberal conscience.”

His dissent from the recent SCOTUS ruling on Maryland v King is, like the somewhat recent ObamaCare ruling, a glimmer of hope amidst all the despair. For those of you who are wondering, Maryland v. King is about whether or not the government has the right to extract your DNA – once you are arrested (but not booked or taken to jail) – and place it into a national search database.

And, in case you are further wondering, the distinction I drew between being arrested and being booked or taken to jail is an important one. This is because cops can arrest you without ever using handcuffs. All they have to do is utter the magic words: “you’re under arrest.” So, as an example, a cop can pull you over for having a broken taillight and if he doesn’t like your attitude he can simply arrest you. You don’t even have to get out of your car.

Here is a breakdown: Continue reading →

Istanbul: The Protests

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics, Religion , , , , , , ,

A moderately Islamist government has been in power in Turkey for about 10 years now. Over the weekend it faced its first stern test. One brave Turkish blogger has decided to reach out to the rest of the world:

No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out.

But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray.  They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening of May 31st the number of protesters multiplied. So did the number of police forces around the park. Meanwhile local government of Istanbul shut down all the ways leading up to Taksim square where the Gezi Park is located. The metro was shut down, ferries were cancelled, roads were blocked.

Yet more and more people made their way up to the center of the city by walking.

They came from all around Istanbul. They came from all different backgrounds, different ideologies, different religions. They all gathered to prevent the demolition of something bigger than the park:

The right to live as honorable citizens of this country.

Read the rest. Hurriyet, one of Turkey’s best media outlets, has been doing an excellent job covering events after the fact. Their English-language site is here, and I recommend reading the site on a daily basis (even after the violence is over).

Here is my two cents: the Erdogan government (the Islamist one) put one too many straws upon the camel’s back. Ankara simply took too many liberties when it came to regulating the cultural and material life of the Turkish people. Too many blasphemy laws and too many clothing restrictions, coupled with too poor an economic performance made these protests inevitable. The harsh crackdown on an otherwise free people ensured violence and larger protests.

By the way, Turkey’s first post-Ottoman government, headed by the ardent secularist and Europhile, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, also insisted on regulating the cultural and material lives of Turkish citizens, so Islam has nothing to do with this (check out our many discussions we’ve had here on the blog on this).

Rather, the “authoritarianism lite” of the Turkish state has more to do with its status as a post-colonial imperial state and a Cold War pawn than it does with any inherent cultural traits of the Turkish people or of the Islamic faith.

Reading Hayek in Beijing

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , ,

That’s the subject of a fascinating account of life in China through the eyes of a dissident in this last week’s Wall Street Journal. An excerpt:

Put another way, the conventional notion that the modern Chinese system combines political authoritarianism with economic liberalism is mistaken: A more accurate description of the recipe is dictatorship and cronyism, with the results showing up in rampant corruption, environmental degradation and wide inequalities between the politically well-connected and everyone else. “There are two major forms of hatred” in China today, Mr. Yang explains. “Hatred toward the rich; hatred toward the powerful, the officials.” As often as not they are one and the same.

There is more, too: Continue reading →

What is the “Chinese Dream”?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

The short answer is that it is the new slogan that new Premier Xi Jinping (who hung out in Iowa as a youth) has come up with. The longer answer is that it is basically a knock-off of the “American Dream” used here in the States, but minus the folksiness and with the added predictability of being engineered from the top down to harness a buoyant nationalism in the post-socialist state.

From Lily Kuo, writing in Quartz:

 Xi used the word “dream” at least 23 times in his speech to accept the post of president. Xi spoke of the need to “build a strong, democratic, civilized, and harmonious modern socialist country and to attain the Chinese Dream of the great renaissance of the Chinese nation” […]

In Xi’s estimation, the Chinese Dream isn’t meant to be a collection of individuals’ hopes and aspirations. Instead, the dreams of Chinese citizens are to be shaped to fit the government’s vision, rather than the other way around. To that end, the Chinese government has tasked “educators” with uniting “the Chinese dream [with] the dreams of youth and students, to grow up and become useful members of society,” according to the People’s Daily […]

Elusive expressions like Jiang Zemin’s “three represents” (which refers to the three pillars of the party—military, culture and public interest) and Mao Zedong’s “destruction of the four olds” (which connotes the destruction of pre-communist Chinese values) catalogue important transitions in China and form part of each leader’s legacy […]

There is more, and it is very interesting indeed, including the “Seven Don’t Mentions”:

constitutionalism, democracy, civil society, neoliberalism and Western media bias.

Don’t ask me why there are only five! When you read it, do try to remember my short essay on the future of Chinese nationalism. I also think it is pertinent to note that even our scandal-wracked President has not, and does not, procure paternalistic slogans the way the Communist Party in China does. In fact, the American people haven’t dealt with these kinds of slogans since the fascistic Roosevelt administration and his “new deal.” This is not to say that I think Obama is anything more than a thug in a nice suit, but only that our liberal democratic foundations are stronger than we sometimes realize (thanks largely to the same free press that Obama has been trying to intimidate lately).

As an added bonus, here is a collection of our short notes about the fact that fascism and communism are just two strands of the same vile idea: paternalism.

The IRS Crimes: a Gift from Providence to Libertarians

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

Anyone who has libertarian sentiments, in the Libertarian Party or outside of it, in the Republican Party, or elsewhere; anyone who sees himself as supporting the non-existent, imaginary “Tea Party,” is familiar with the difficulty of explaining even basic libertarian principles. There are three problems:

First, most people are lazy, especially when it comes to re-examining the creeds they absorbed in childhood or youth.

Second, libertarianism is paradoxically too familiar to draw interest. It’s more or less what you learned in high school about the work of the Founding Fathers. (Digression: It’s more interesting for immigrants like me than for the US-born precisely, because we had no superficial exposure to it at the time we had acute testosterone poisoning.)

Third, libertarianism is not sexy. It does not enjoy the emotional ease of access that big words procure: “Revolution,” “Justice,” “Fairness,” “the Future.” In other words, it’s not a cartoon; it ‘s not a reality show; it’s not a vampire movie. It’s an intellectual stance for adults only. Tough call!

Sometimes, though Providence throws us a lifeline. Now is such a time. A libertarian Hollywood scriptwriter, if there were one, could hardly come up with a better script than the current controversy regarding the IRS role in singling out conservative organizations, in persecuting them, in forcing them illegally and immorally to disgorge private information about opponents to the Obama administration. Or about imagined opponents.

The IRS storm happens at the same time as other Obama administration discrediting events:

It is trying to convince America that it did not deny protection to the assassinated Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and that it did not subsequently lie about what happened;

It is imposing on all American universities restrictions on free speech unheard for centuries in the Anglo-American legal tradition. (See Greg Lukianoff in the Wall Street Journal of 5/17/13);

It is attempting to justify spying on journalists on the basis of an unknown national security risk. (It might be justified. There are tried ways to convince the nation that the spying was justified. President Obama shows no intention of using them as I write.)

As far as the IRS persecution of Obama opponents, in my mind, it’s not a question of who is getting fired or of “who is going to jail.” Punishment of the more or less guilty would be low on my agenda. There is a more fundamental problem that is being pushed aside in televised congressional testimonies and in most of the printed press (I think. I welcome corrections.)

Given that the IRS exists as a very powerful, autonomous, large government organization of ordinary but overpaid people, with a proven capacity to hurt large numbers of citizens, it was bound to happen.

That the IRS is a government organization matters a great deal because , in practice, such organizations enjoy immunity from lawsuits. They exist beyond the reach of the arm of the law. But the rule of law is what largely defines civilized societies, of course. Such organizations as the IRS thus tend to pull us back toward a lesser state of civilization. That’s true irrespective of who is president and, to an extent, independent of which party is in power. If you have a famished and crazy dog chained in the backyard, you should not reassure yourself that everything is under control because it’s your house, not that irresponsible, other guy’s house.

It’s true that the IRS crimes now being discussed were somewhat more likely to take place under a Democrat administration. First, the Fascist current runs deep in the middle of the Democratic Party river. It’s the party of Roosevelt, who classically, used war to place as much of the American production apparatus under federal government control as he could reach (even artists). Second, the Democratic Party was the Party of Birmingham’s Bull Connor, of his attack dogs and of his water hoses aimed at peaceful black demonstrators. The Democratic Party is also most closely associated with labor unions, some of which (not all) have a history of thuggery extending a century or more.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, is not sinless but it carries in its veins an instinctive mistrust of government power which serves as some protection though as minimal protection. The rank-and-file Republican is much less likely than his Democrat counterpart to assume that anything is correct just because the government is doing it. Nevertheless, frankly, is there anyone who would assert with a straight face that the currently revealed IRS misdeeds would never happen under a Republican administration?

The truth now staring us in the face is that a free society simply cannot have in its midst a monster such as the IRS (described above). It should not be allowed to arise. If its exists, it should not be allowed to grow (as with the Obama administration giving it big additional responsibilities within Obamacare). Such a government bureaucracy should be given practically no discretion, no power to pass judgment without at least close judiciary monitoring.

How about collecting taxes for freeways, some will say? Supposing it has to be the federal government’s task to build freeways (just supposing) and to perform other necessary functions, it should be done with a simple flat tax allowing no deductions. It should be a low tax of 15% of gross income or less. (I live within my means; so can the government learn to do.) Federal tax collection would look like this.

You would receive a short postcard saying:

“1. Your income last year was___.

2. Send 15% (or less ) of that amount.

Thank you.”

Tax cheaters would have to deal with the local sheriff who would be paid a flat fee for each recovery.

Unrealistic? How about our existing system, is it realistic?

Genocidio(s) y modernidades múltiples

Guillermo Pineda History , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2011-08-19_2pm_FreedomLab

La tipificación del delito de genocidio por el derecho internacional -occidental y dominante- en Guatemala es un delito que comprende los actos de

“quien con el propósito de destruir total o parcialmente un grupo nacional, étnico o religioso efectuare cualquiera de los siguientes hechos: 1.- Muerte de miembros del grupo. 2.- Lesión que afecte gravemente a la integridad física o mental de miembros del grupo. 3.- Sometimiento del grupo o de miembros del mismo a condiciones de existencia que pueda producir su destrucción física, total o parcial. 4.- Desplazamiento compulsivo de niños o adultos del grupo. 5.- Medidas destinadas a esterilizar a miembros del grupo o de cualquiera otra manera de impedir su reproducción.”

Este delito sin embargo ha sido sujeto a interpretaciones por distintos grupos que buscan adaptarlo al contexto histórico, social, político y económico de los distintos pueblos y naciones, y de las distintas posturas -emic o etic- de estudio del mismo.  Así, algunos autores explican que el genocidio no es una definición legal hegemónica, occidentalizada y dominante no sujeta a distintas lecturas sino que es un término construido por un pueblo -el dominante occidental- para historicizar eventos del pasado y que, el mismo, puede y debe ser denunciado -del inglés contested- por las víctimas y pueblos no hegemónicos.   Resultando así, en que esta definición pueda y deba estar sujeta a distintas evaluaciones del delito por las víctimas, por sus ejecutores, por sus historiadores -emic y etic- y por sus juzgadores -emic y etic-.  Así, dependiendo del sujeto que lo evalúa y/o de las víctimas cualquier acto podría ser o no juzgado como un delito de genocidio en contra de pueblos y naciones minoritarias y no hegemónicas.  En cierta manera, esta fue la postura tomada por los compiladores del informe de la Memoria del Silencio de la Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH) y finalmente, constatada  el viernes pasado, 10 de mayor de 2013, con la histórica sentencia que emitió el Tribunal Primero A de Mayor Riesgo contra Ríos Montt, de 86 años, responsabilizandolo por la matanza de 1 mil 771 indígenas durante su régimen de facto entre 1982 y 1983.

Así, unos argumentan, las estrategias de guerra empleadas en la lucha armada contra un grupo de insurgentes por el ejército de Guatemala fueron percibidos por sus víctimas colaterales (poblaciones indígenas de la región Mesoamericana) como actos de destrucción parcial de la sociedad y del tejido sociocultural de la identidad de esos pueblos indígenas y que, por lo tanto, los líderes de esta lucha contrainsurgente podrían ser -y fueron- acusados del delito de genocidio.

Es mi opinión como historiador que la sentencia del tribunal sería pertinente y válida si este delito se refiriese a los actos de “(…) destruir total o parcialmente un grupo nacional, étnico o religioso efectuare cualquiera de los siguientes hechos: 1.- Muerte de miembros del grupo. 2.- Lesión que afecte gravemente a la integridad física o mental de miembros del grupo. 3.- Sometimiento del grupo o de miembros del mismo a condiciones de existencia que pueda producir su destrucción física, total o parcial. 4.- Desplazamiento compulsivo de niños o adultos del grupo. 5.- Medidas destinadas a esterilizar a miembros del grupo o de cualquiera otra manera de impedir su reproducción.”

Sin embargo, el delito de genocidio se refiere a la intención del acusado de actuar con la idea preconcebida de “(…) destruir total o parcialmente un grupo nacional, étnico o religioso (…)”.  A pesar de que existen evidencias de violaciones y crímenes de lesa humanidad, las mismas no presentan evidencias concretas de que existiera un acto intencionado de cometer genocidio y el delito aún no ha sido demostrado dejando a un lado de la discusión (hasta el momento más polémica que honesta discusión)  los crímenes de lesa humanidad -masacres, violaciones y torturas, entre otros- que sí se cometieron y que podrían quedar invalidados si la sentencia del tribunal fuera impugnada.

La historia viene en distintas formas y tamaños; no debemos de confundir la vasija -la historia- con su contenido -las historias-, aún cuando la vasija misma sea la que le da la forma al contenido.  El Contenido que se forma debido a los distintos procesos de transmisión y comunicación -social- que predeterminan lo que se puede conocer -los hechos históricos- y/o sobre cómo el contenido es seleccionado -historizado- para su estudio y entendimiento por los actores pueden y deben ser sujetas a ser denunciadas.  Esto no implica que, a la vez, todo sea relativo al contexto y sujeto estudiados y, por lo tanto, no tengamos definiciones concretas para términos en situaciones como esta.

Sin duda, este no es un tema sencillo y queda aún muchísimo por discutir y aprender.

The IRS and Fascism

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law , , , ,

If I wanted to set up a secret police in the US, would I try to create a Gestapo from scratch? Would I call it “Gestapo,” or “NKVD,” or “KGB”?

Or would I rather take an existing, comparatively efficient agency, familiar though unloved by the mass of the people, and simply extend the reach of such an agency? I mean the Internal Revenue Service, of course.

Do I believe that President Obama  ordered the IRS to discriminate against Tea Party-sounding groups and others identified as conservatives? No, I do not.

I think he is responsible for the actions of low-level underlings because he created a statist, totalitarian atmosphere. He did this a lot through his non-actions regarding his old friends, in particular, including the bomber- terrorist Bill Ayres. He is responsible for allying himself with out-and-out extremist groups in his first election. The mainstream press is light-heartedly helping him erode democracy in this country.

None of these important actors is fundamentally evil (not even Ayres today). The president is a man who looks so good in a suit that he is the suit itself in the end, an empty suit. The liberal press is silly in the manner intelligent people who are seldom contradicted become silly. Many of the ordinary Americans who voted for Mr Obama are keeping their eyes and ears tightly shut in an effort to keep believing that everything is alright because they elected a man of color. I mean even college professors, aside from journalists. Black voters have been trained to have low expectations. They tell themselves it’s good enough that the president is (more or less) African-American.  Another kind of supporters, unions, is as corrupt as ever. Take all the teachers’ unions, for example….or, rather, don’t!

I think Mr Obama is the non-Fascist leader of a genuine, grass-root American Fascist movement. The recent discoveries at the IRS are just one manifestation of creeping fascism.

The Second Amendment has rarely been more relevant.

El grave error del libertarianismo guatemalteco en el juicio contra el ex-dictador Efraín Ríos Montt

Guillermo Pineda History , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Justicia

El presente artículo busca conversar con un grupo específico de personas: libertarios y/o simpatizantes con las ideas libertarias que han tomado una postura pública en defensa de los generales Efraín Ríos Montt y José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, acusados de los delitos de genocidio y crímenes de lesa humanidad durante los años 1982-83 en Guatemala quienes no han dicho, también, y con el mismo peso en sus artículos impresos, entrevistas y demás presentaciones públicas que exigen se haga justicia por los crímenes de lesa humanidad cometidos contra civiles durante el gobierno de facto de estos militares y por los crímenes cometidos durante los 36 años de conflicto armado por el ejército y la guerrilla. Continue reading →

I Agree with Obama on Guantanamo but….

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Liberty , , , , ,

I agree with President Obama. It’s unacceptable that we, the US, have kept people as prisoners for as long as ten years without trial or any other procedure that could conceivably result in their release or conviction.

Let me say first that it’s not an issue of toughness or not toughness. I, for one, think it’s ridiculous to invoke the Geneva Conventions to protect people who burn women and children alive and who assassinate while wearing  civilian clothing. I am also in favor of making their lives difficult, of increasing the hardship of doing their disgusting job any way we can. That would include making a public announcement that specific individuals may be volatilized from the sky anytime, any place. That sure would create a circle of isolation around them. I would also be in favor of including an option to surrender and be investigated (by us.) I don’t understand why this option does not already exist.

There are three purposes for keeping people locked up. One is  to secure them while they await trial. The lock-up time in this case should be as short as technically possible. The second reason is that they are serving a prison term, a punishment imposed  after a conviction of guilt in a well-described, appropriate procedure.

The third reason  to prevent people from leaving is to keep them out of any situation where they can hurt others. Thus, the classical treatment of prisoners of war is to secure them until there is peace. No punishment ought to be intended. In fact, there is international agreement that such prisoners should be treated the same as the soldiers of the nation detaining them. Again, to punish people, you have to try them formally and to find them guilty of something. That’s true even if the accused are prisoners of war, for example. A prisoner of war may also be guilty of crimes. The two issues are separate. A civilized society should not allow its collective judgment to drift from one situation to the other.

I often hear comments among my fellow conservatives that obscure the existence of a line separating the task of punishing terrorists from the mission to keep them out of our harm’s way. I also hear an absence, the absence of realization that the issue if not one of some Middle-Eastern strangers’ – many of whom openly hate us – rights. It’s about our rights. (It always is, in the final analysis.) Confinement to a small space open has not chosen is experienced as  punishment regardless of intent.  It’ s even the most severe punishment several other civilized societies have. I agree with President Obama that we should not punish severely individuals who may be completely innocent. They may be people who are no more guilty of violence against the United States and against Americans than I am. (Repeat this sentence. Make th”I” yourself.” )

I suspect many of my fellow conservatives believe in their hearts that those detained by American forces because they are suspected of terrorism must be at least a little guilty, or guilty of something. Of course, there is no such thing as being a little guilty in our legal tradition. The idea belongs in totalitarian societies.

If we need to control  some people’s movements for the third reason, to prevent from from doing us harm, in a war that may never end, we owe it to ourselves  as a nation to develop inventive solutions that don’t confuse our need to be safe with the imposition of undeserved punishment. I can think of two such solutions .

We could develop a place to keep them that does not resemble prison except that it should be guarded from intrusion by outside forces. High-tech surveillance methods on the periphery of such a place connected to  missiles, for example come to mind. I am thinking of a sort of armed Club Fed. It could even be a Guantanamo Two, a decent resort where the detainees could lead a life more closely approximating normal life. Inside the resort, they would govern themselves as befit people who are not in jail or prison. There is no reason why they couldn’t have a normal family life with spouses and children. I can hear some already snickering about the cost of such a scheme. It’ s extremely unlikely that it would be more expensive to maintain than the highest security jail this country has ever had. It would also be less expensive than war, any kind of war.

There is another, a sort of libertarian solution to the problem of neutralizing those we suspect of wishing to do us harm.  We could try to free them  on bail. Let me explain: There are millions of individuals around the world and thousands of organizations who profess to be terminally disgusted by the very existence of Guantanamo prison. Among the latter are hundreds of Muslim non-government organizations (NGOs). Some of the latter have thousands and tens of thousands of  members. The US government could negotiate the transfer of custody to private NGOs of inmates who have been held for several years and who are not slated to be tried. The US government could ask for a vertiginous bail amount, millions or even billions of dollars per inmate so transferred. The bail money would be refunded after  a determined number of years (say, when the detainee reaches a certain age) if the detainee had not been killed or recaptured in the process of conducting or of supporting terrorist activities.

Either some would take up this offer of privatization of custody or not. If the offer were taken, we would at least have put some distance between us and the practical problems of dealing with people we think dangerous. (This includes, as I write, the horror of force-feeding.) Relapses of terrorists would become more publicized than they are now, less subject to the constant suspicion that the US is manipulating appearances.  At the very least, if there was no no rush to adopt Guantanamo detainees, it would be nice to point  out the hypocrisy of our critics.