Prosthetic Conscience

For Wal-Mart, a Christmas That’s Made to Order

From For Wal-Mart, a Christmas That’s Made to Order - NYTimes.com

“In my mind, there is no doubt that this is Wal-Mart time,” H. Lee Scott Jr., the company’s president and chief executive, said recently at a meeting of analysts and investors in Wal-Mart’s hometown, Bentonville, Ark. Referring to the discount chain’s founder, he added, “This is the kind of environment that Sam Walton built this company for.”

Of course, through aggressive union-busting, operating particular stores at a temporary loss to drive competition out of business, and use of their position as an oligopsony buyer to force manufacturers/producers to cut prices, Wal-Mart has been one of the major forces in lowering real wages in the US since their founding. The transformation of the US into a low-wage country where most workers can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart, or believe they can, is a positive feedback loop for Wal-Mart’s success. I say “or believe they can”, because of course, Wal-Mart does not have lower prices than its competitors overall on a comprehensive basket of common goods; it has lower prices on a selection of goods for which shoppers are especially aware of the prices, and often slightly higher prices on everything else.

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The November 5 Movement

November 5. 2008 from Tarek Milleron on Vimeo.

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2012 polling statistics

2012 polling statistics

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Forums of the Libertarian Left

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Soothing anxieties with cynicism

A friend of mine writes:

This has been floating around the Radical Mamas Tribe on CafeMom, and I was wondering if you guys had any input/insights/information about it. Also, do you think this is what will happen if Obama gets elected - people will riot and then the government will take over? I believe the chances of “them” assassinating him or rigging the election are quite high. Did you see this week’s postsecret? There is one about that possibility.

One of the brigades being rotated home from Iraq was moved to under the command of NORTHCOM. There’s a link to a story about it in my blog. Basically, they’re on leave, but available to the DHS to be deployed for any emergency (including civil unrest). It’s worrying in the general sense of the ongoing erosion of our civil liberties and self-government, but I don’t think it represents any specific plans for martial law in the near future. IMO “they” can get everything they want with less resistance without using that tool.

I halfway suspect that there will be rioting by the losing partisans no matter who wins. I think that the military would be used to put down rioting by disappointed Obama supporters, while I think they might take a lighter touch to disappointed Obama supporters. But I don’t think that any election results, once announced, would be overturned. Not because “they” believe in democracy, but again, because on the one hand, “they” care more about the existing political and economic system staying in place rather than who in particular chairs it, and because on the other, both major candidates have broad support among the ruling class. I say this not to disparage Obama — I agree with Chomsky that Obama is the lesser of two evils, and will probably even vote for him rather than Nader or McKinney — but just to emphasize that national electoral politics are not a very effective way for the left to operate in our society.

On the election being rigged, I think that is not certain, but certainly more likely than an overt coup. Any competent news organization already has rationalizations prepared for the day after the election to explain why the election results don’t match up with the poll results of the previous day. As long as the election results can be made credible, rigging them doesn’t undermine mass faith in the system in the way that a coup or assassination might.

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What kind of anarchist are you?

What kind of Anarchist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Anarcho-Syndicalist Anarcho-Syndicalism is the anarchist wing of the labour movement. Syndicalists believe in workers’ solidarity, self-management and direct action. This movement is most commonly associated with France and key thinkers include Rudolf Rocker. Anarcho-Syndicalist 80% Anarcho-Communist 65% Anarcha-Feminist 60% Anarcho-Capitalist 55% Christian Anarchist 40% Anarcho-Primitivist 30%

Edit: updated after I thought a bit about the intent of some of the statements distinguishing between anarchosyndicalism and anarchocommunism.

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Progressives, rejoice!

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IVomitedSticker.png

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Beehive Collective

Last night, members of the Beehive Design Collective spoke at the Green Quad at USC, and Lori and I were there to hear them and see their artwork. If you haven’t seen any of their work, they create fantastically detailled black-and-white drawings that tell the stories of world injustices and the movments resisting them, all in terms of animals, especially insects. I first saw their work at my friend Heather’s house; she has a poster they did for the mobilization against the FTAA.

They presented a poster about Plan Colombia, and explained all the details of their graphic. A lot of it was stuff that we were already familiar with, thanks in large part to our friend Amanda, who worked in Colombia with Witness for Peace. But it was still good to hear more about it from such earnest young people (who make me feel very old).

The bees are in need of a techie bee to run their webserver and make their backups. Lori suggested it to me, and I was seriously considering it. I think they need a penguin rather than a bee to maintain their technology. However, while penguins can survive in the cold of downeast Maine, sea turtles cannot, and would freeze to death in a beehive heated only by the buzzing of wings. If you are a penguin who would like to help the bees make their honey, please contact them through their website.

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Turning Around the Antiwar Movement

Marc D. Joffe wrote Turning around the Antiwar Movement on AntiWar.com.

I agree with a lot of what he says: the antiwar movement /is/ failing to achieve its goals. This is right on the money:

If you organize a vigil that is attended by a handful of people and is noticed by no one who can change the situation, you have made yourself feel better, but you haven’t meaningfully contributed to the prospects for peace. If you host a low-traffic Web site or post to a rarely visited blog that preaches only to the converted, you have also failed to move the dial.

On the other hand, I think his solution, bigger and better-planned versions of the same kind of events are also not likely to achieve success. Permitted marches, vigils, and similar demonstrations are such a standard part of the political landscape today that even when visible (and they are often made invisible by the corporate news media), they are unlikely to affect the opinions of either the public or the power elites, no matter how large they are. Different tactics are going to have to be developed, but I have no idea what those could be. They must be non-violent but non-ignorable; that’s a hard combination to create.

I’m basically in agreement with him about ANSWER and MoveOn, though ANSWER is not as important here in the east as it apparently is in the west. Here the problem is with UFPJ, which has a lot of the problems that Mr. Joffe points out with regard to MoveOn: excessive timidity, and excessive attachment to the Democratic Party.

I wrote a bit more than this, but I’ve cut it back… too much in the way of meandering thoughts on tactics without any really good suggestions.

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Republican virtue

Rad Geek Peoples’ Daily has an article on Republican virtue.

Not the virtue or lack thereof of modern day Republicans, but of figures of the old Republic. Rad Geek argues against romanticising the founding fathers on the basis that slavery was a worse tyrrany than monarchy.

Roderick Long contributes this:

The interesting question is: how many (white) people today who are anti-slavery would still have been anti-slavery if they’d been born in antebellum Virginia? There’s no easy way to test this, but one clue is in the attitude they take toward widely accepted injustices today. If they passively accept present-day injustice, the likelihood that they would have rebelled against equally widely accepted injustices 200 years ago is slight. (Of course the — perhaps suspiciously? but nonetheless reassuringly — self-congratulatory moral is that we today who are anarchists, feminists, antimilitarists, etc., can plausibly claim that we would have been abolitionists back in the day!)

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Why I will vote in the SC Republican Primary for Ron Paul

Well, it’s official, Stephen Colbert will not be on the ballot of either major party in South Carolina. As a result, I will be voting for Ron Paul in the SC Republican Primary.

“But wait,” I hear you ask. “Aren’t you a leftist, whose low opinion of the Democratic Party front runners results from their right-leaning stances on the issues? And isn’t Dr. Paul a conservative libertarian, whose social values put him outside the bounds of the Libertarian Party, much less the left-libertarian circles you move in?” Yes, and yes.

However, let’s look at this tactically. South Carolina is a small, lightly-populated state, whose 8 electoral votes will certainly go to the Republican Party next November. The Democrats only interest in the SC primary is as an early gauge of potential in more populous and less solidly Republican Southern states like North Carolina and Tennessee. It’s not really likely to have that much effect on the Democratic Party’s nomination process.

Furthermore: the Democratic candidates for whom I would feel comfortable voting (Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Mike Gravel) are all polling in the one to three percent range. The Democratic nominee is almost certain to be the brazenly authoritarian, corporate, and imperial Hillary Clinton.

My nightmare scenario for the 2008 presidential election is a matchup between Hillary Clinton and authoritarian narcissist Rudy Giuliani, the Republican candidate who most shares her Neoconservative agenda. As a South Carolinian, I can do very little about Senator Clinton’s nomination. However, because the South Carolina primary is more important to the Republicans than the Democrats, I may be able to contribute to keeping Rudy out of the White House.

I disagree with Ron Paul on at least 60% of the issues (and probably another 20% where we agree that the government should not be involved, but disagree on what private citizens should be doing). But the issues where I agree with Ron Paul are also the ones that I think are most important. With the three Democratic third-tier candidates I mentioned above, he is among the only major-party presidential candidates who favor a complete and timely withdrawal from Iraq. This alone makes him acceptable in a way Hillary Clinton is not. It is important that Dr. Paul show well in South Carolina to boost his showing in later primary states.

Would I vote for Ron Paul in the November election? Probably not. But do I want him to be on that ballot? Certainly so.

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Swords in your luggage

While you can’t carry a sword on the plane with you (Kill Bill to the contrary), they can be included in your checked luggage, along with your cricket bat. Sabers are specifically included — do TSA not consider sabers swords?

Witches note: knitting needles are fine for carry-on. Not sure about broomsticks or frying pans.

I had no idea what category to put this into. Politics, hobbies, zombies. They’re all suitable in one way or another.

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Flying killer robots bound for Iraq

Apparently, flying killer robots are bound for Iraq.

Hat tip to Ken MacLeod

There’s a lot of science-fiction resonances in this story. The Yahoo article refers to the “Reaper” aircraft as “hunter-killer drones,” which is unpleasantly reminiscent of the Terminator series. Never mind that the British forces will be using a satellite communication system designated Skynet.

However, the US hunter-killer drones are not autonomous, but remotely-operated, so they actually have more in common with the “soldierboys” and “flyboys” of Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace. This is not surprising considering that Forever Peace is more-or-less based on the first Gulf War in the way that The Forever War was more-or-less based on the VietNam War.

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UK Would-be Bombers Incompetent, Insignificant Says Bomb Disposal Expert

A British bomb-disposal expert writing in the Register points out the astonishing level of incompetence exhibited by the recent attempted bombers in London and Glasgow, the overreaction of the authorities, and the historical insignificance of al-Qaeda. If you still need proof that the SCWOT (So-called War On Terror) is a naked power-grab by fascistic securicrats, and that the idea of a “clash of civilizations” is laughable on its face, have a looksee here. Hat tip to Ken MacLeod.

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Interesting Presidential candidate

George Phillies

A potential Libertarian Party candidate for President in 2008. His focus seems to be on “not looking batshit crazy,” which is much better than the LP has ever managed in the past. I don’t know too much about his views on the more controversial aspects of the LP platform, because he has chosen to highlight all of the sensible things.

Interestingly, he opposes corporate “free trade” agreements. I consider this a litmus test over whether I can support a Libertarian candidate (not the only one, but one of a few big ones). He describes the goods produced in countries that suppress labour unions as “stolen property,” and argues that we should not engage in “free trade” in stolen property. He also recognizes that “Free Trade” agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA are state-managed trade for the benefit of politically-connected industries.

I disagree with him on immigration. His position is reasonable, but wrong. I largely disagree with him on healthcare, as he does not recognize the role of the insurance cartels in creating our crisis of healthcare costs. Interestingly, his argument that cost transfers (from insured to uninsured patients) result from an unfunded mandate on hospitals to care for those who cannot pay, and should either be eliminated or funded, can be interpreted as a call for single-payer health insurance. I doubt that’s what he means, though I’d certainly be willing to pick up the argument and run with it.

He recognizes the threat of peak oil. He seems to agree that some property rights are naturally held in common.

In all, a candidate I disagree with on many issues, but not more than I disagree with the Democratic Party front-runners.

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The care and feeding of campus libertarians

Julian Sanchez, at campusprogress.org has an article on how campus progressives can work with campus libertarians on common projects without undue strife (hat tip to Logan Ferree). The article stresses focusing narrowly on areas of agreement, separating people from policies, and “don’t ‘educate.’”

I mostly agree with it in the short term. In the long term, however, I think both progressives and libertarians need to become more aware of and familiar with the left-wing libertarian tradition.

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The W0rd: Symbolic

I saw this a while ago (about when it came out), but didn’t link to it. When I showed it to Lori, she insisted that I put it on my blog. So here it is.

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Transnational Labour Citizenship

On Salon, Andrew Leonard reviews Jennifer Gordon’s paper “Transnational Labour Citizenship” (via). I’ve read the article, but not the original paper; the basic idea is that immigration for purposes of work should be unrestricted for members of international labour unions. I’m not sure how it would work, but it sounds like a good idea, and it would certainly reverse the “protectionist” tendencies of current labour unions.

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O-bomb-a and the War Party

More linkage, less writing! If you thought that Senator Obama was against the indefinite extension of the Iraq war, think again. Anti-war libertarian Justin Raimondo shows how Obama’s position on the war does not differ in any substantial way from that of the most intransigent neo-cons. The same can be said for the Democratic Party mainstream as a whole.

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