Stromberg on Land Grabbing

I cannot recommend too highly Joseph Stromberg's Reason review of Fred Pearce's The Land Grabbers. Libertarians were once interested in the land question (neofeudalism) and land reform, particularly in the developing world today. Unfortunately that interest was short-lived, though left-libertarians like Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, Roderick Long, Charles W. Johnson, and Stromberg are trying to revive it. The point is that economic theory, no matter how sound, that ignores facts on the ground will be unsatisfactory. Worse, it may leave the impression that the current world largely conforms to the "free-market" ideal. This is an especially important lesson for libertarian college students who discuss ideas with progressive-minded students and professors. If libertarians are ignorant of history and current developments, such as the wholesale corporatist land-grabbing taking place right now in the developing world, they will get slaughtered in debate. Libertarians must rediscover their old understanding that feudal landlord "rights" do not count and that the true owners of the land are those who work it. Remember John Locke?

Related reading: Ross Kenyon's "Sweatshops, Bastiat, and (Potential) Misapplications of Economic Theory" at the Center for a Stateless Society.

Ayn Rand at Her Worst

I Had an Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish Grandfather

Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss--worth reading every day!--was kind enough to post my 1989 article from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs--also worth reading regularly!--about my anti-Zionist orthodox Jewish grandfather, Samuel Richman: "My Grandfather Sparked My Interest in Debate over Zionism."

TGIF: Where Free-Market Economists Go Wrong

The freedom philosophy is a radical idea that looks ahead, rather than to some mythical golden era or Panglossian present. Every time we pass up an opportunity to make this point, we alienate potential allies….

Read TGIF here.

This Makes Me Sick

This is the day-to-day reality of raw arbitrary Israeli power over Palestinian lives. From Philip Weiss's blog, Mondoweiss:




The boy is saying in Hebrew, “Hoo aravi, asoor lo lehiyot po.” (He’s Arab. It’s forbidden for him to be here.”)

I don't care what race I am a member of, what citizenship I hold, or what ethnic group or religion I was born into. This man is one of my people, and the boy on the horse and soldiers are not. If that be "race treason" (as David Mamet would probably think), then make the most of it.

Op-ed: Paul Ryan: Would-be Savior of the Welfare/Warfare State

Now we can see what Ryan stands for. At its most optimistic, his budget plan would merely stabilize the government’s fiscal condition at higher levels of spending without making any significant change in the welfare/warfare state.

Read it here.

Will Israel Attack Iran?

Here are two views (HT: lobelog.com):
“Please exhale: Israel is not going to attack Iran” by Gary Sick
“Colin Kahl: Israel Threats To Strike Iran Not ‘Merely Bluffing,’ by Jasmin Ramsey

Let’s hope Sick is right.

Also see "Olmert: Israel has no reason to strike Iran in near future," Jerusalem Post

Update:
Bloomberg News sees Netanyahu blackmail of Obama:

If Israel is about to attack Iran (and this time the threats are backed up by distribution of gas masks and other civil defense preparations), then using the campaign season to pull in the U.S. makes tactical sense. Neither President Barack Obama nor Republican candidate Mitt Romneywould want to alienate Jewish or evangelical Christian voters and donors by failing to support Israel. But it would also damage Israel’s most important strategic partnership. Nobody likes getting blackmailed.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that "Israel’s President Criticizes Talk of Unilateral Strike on Iran."

Latest Op-Ed: Labor Outsourcing Is Not the Problem

Read it here.

The Palestine Romney Doesn’t Know

Amazingly, it came from the Washington Post, but this op-ed by Zahi Khouri, "The Palestine Romney doesn’t know," is very much worth reading.

TGIF: Market, State & Autonomy

Miko Peled, The Israeli General's Son

Where's the Outrage?

Every day the Jewish State--Israel--throws non-Jewish Palestinians out of their homes to make room for Jews. When Mitt Romney says the United States and Israel "speak the same language of freedom and justice," I think he may be onto something.

Burning in Hell, I Hope

Harry Truman

The Real Day of Infamy

Today is the 67th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, one of President Harry Truman's acts of mass murder against Japan in August 1945. The anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing is Thursday. (It has lately come to my attention that the U.S. military bombed Tokyo on Aug. 14--after destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki and after Emperor Hirohito expressed his readiness to surrender.)

There isn't much to be said about those unspeakable atrocities against civilians that hasn't been said many times before. The U.S. government never needed atomic bombs to commit mass murder. Its "conventional" weapons have been potent enough. (See the earlier firebombing of Tokyo.) But considering how the "leaders" saw The Bomb, its two uses against Japan stand out as especially heinous acts. The U.S. government may not have used atomic weapons since 1945, but it has not yet given up mass murder as a political/military tactic. Presidential candidates are still expected to say that, with respect to nuclear weapons, "no options are off the table."

Mario Rizzo has pointed out that Americans were upset by the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 yet seem not to be bothered that "their" government murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in a few days.

As Harry Truman once said, "I don't give 'em hell. I just drop A-bombs on their cities and they think it's hell." (Okay, he didn't really say that, but he might as well have.)

Rad Geek People's Daily has a poignant post here. Rad says: "As far as I am aware, the atomic bombing of the Hiroshima city center, which deliberately targeted a civilian center and killed over half of the people living in the city, remains the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the world."

Finally, if you read nothing else on this subject, read Ralph Raico's article here.

[A version of this post appeared previously.]

Settlements Yesterday, Settlements Today, Settlements Tomorrow!

The New York Times did us all a favor last week when it published the blunt declaration that "Israel’s Settlers Are Here to Stay." It was an op-ed by Dani Dayan, described as chairman of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, which is how Israelis and their fanatical supporters, Jews and evangelical Christians, refer to Palestinian occupied territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Dayan writes:

Israel legitimately seized the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria in self-defense. Israel’s moral claim to these territories, and the right of Israelis to call them home today, is therefore unassailable. Giving up this land in the name of a hallowed two-state solution would mean rewarding those who’ve historically sought to destroy Israel, a manifestly immoral outcome. . . .

[W]e aim to expand the existing Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, and create new ones. This is not — as it is often portrayed — a theological adventure but is rather a combination of inalienable rights and realpolitik. . . .

Our presence in all of Judea and Samaria — not just in the so-called settlement blocs—is an irreversible fact. . . .

And consequently, instead of lamenting that the status quo is not sustainable, the international community should work together with the parties to improve it where possible and make it more viable. . . .

While the status quo is not anyone’s ideal, it is immeasurably better than any other feasible alternative. . . .

The settlements of Judea and Samaria are not the problem — they are part of the solution.

So the status quo is "is immeasurably better than any other feasible alternative." Easy for Dayan to say since it is not his rights that are systematically trashed by the Israel's occupation force. He is not completely under the arbitrary rule of the Israeli authorities. He was not evicted from his home or cut off from his farmland. He is not detained for hours at checkpoints. He won't be rousted from his bed and held in solitary confinement indefinitely without charge or trial. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Dayan makes much of the threats that Arab leaders voiced against Israel before the June 1967 war, but he omits the fact that not one Israeli political or military leader thought there was an actual threat from Egypt, Syria, or Jordan, which Israel attacked to launch the war. And unsurprisingly he overlooks the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including massacres of civilians, that began in December 1947 (with abuses and land dispossession starting much earlier) and the attack (aided by England and France) on Egypt in 1956. There was also Israeli provocation in the months leading up to the 1967 war. (Also see this and this.)

Dayan also pretends the repeated efforts by the Arab governments and the Palestinians to make peace never happened. (For much more on Israel's record of rejecting Arab peace overtures, see Jeff Halper's "The Trouble with Israel" [pdf].)

Why is the Times’ publication of this op-ed a favor? It allows us to see in full display what we’re dealing with in Israel. All the blather about democracy and human rights that issues from the Israeli government and its supporters is revealed as just so much rubbish.

We are fortunate that Jeremy R. Hammond, author of the excellent short work The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination, has written a concise, virtually point-by-point rebuttal of Dayan: "Wiping Palestine Off the Map: The New York Times’ Racist Editorial Policy." Hammond writes:

It is one thing for a newspaper to publish an op-ed in which a writer expresses his own personal opinion on a topic. It is quite another for the editors to exercise such extreme prejudice by allowing their publication to be used as a mouthpiece for a person who spews lies and hatred. People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Dayan simply makes up his own history to justify Israel’s policy, and the Times editors have no problem at all publishing his fictions. . . .

And both Dayan’s and the Times editors’ understanding of international law is sorely lacking. The argument that if a war is fought in “self-defense” that a country may therefore acquire territory from its enemies has no basis in international law, in no small part due to the simple reason that every aggressor nation claims its wars are launched in “self-defense”, Israel’s ’67 war being no exception. . . .

The fact that it is completely uncontroversial that every inch of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is under international law “occupied Palestinian territory” is apparently not relevant to the Times. There is not a nation on planet Earth that rejects the international consensus that Israel’s settlements are illegal, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, apart from Israel itself. . . .

[P]ermitting Israel to steal even more land with impunity means rewarding an aggressor nation that has historically sought to destroy Palestine and has occupied and illegally colonized Palestinian territory, oppressing the Palestinians who call that land home, for more than four decades—a manifestly immoral outcome.

I urge you to read Hammond's full article.

Alexander Cockburn, RIP

Alex Cockburn, 71, died today. I am saddened. He was a true maverick who wasn’t afraid to take positions that alienated allies and lost him friends and publishing outlets. From the start he saw through Obama. He distrusted centralized power and hated war. He was pro-gun and a skeptic about manmade catastrophic global warming. Alex was not fond of the free market (which he probably thought could not be kept clear of corporatism) but his website, Counterpunch, was open to libertarians (me and Kevin Carson included).

I met Alex once a few years ago and kept in touch with after that. I liked him and admired him. I’m sorry he’s gone.

Was the Constitution Meant to Limit Government Power?

While I don't agree with Robert Parry on what would be desirable, he makes some excellent historical points in "How Scalia Distorts the Framers." I've made my own contributions in "Was the Constitution Really Meant to Constrain the Government?,"  "The Constitution or Liberty?," and "That Mercantilist Commerce Clause."

Latest Scribblings

Two on the Supreme Court's ruling on Obamacare:
TGIF: "Obamacare and the Court"
Op-ed: "Supreme Court’s Word Game Saves Obamacare"

Good July 4 Reading

Independence Day Propaganda by Anthony Gregory

How to Celebrate July 4

If what we were taught about the American Revolution is right, then the most fitting way to celebrate July 4 would be to dismantle the American Empire and shrink (abolish would be preferable) the domestic State. On the other hand, if the purpose was to create the American Empire and a powerful State run by Americans, well then, never mind.