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Monday, May 03, 2004:
PROGCAL RESORTS TO AD HOMINEM, ADMITS DEFEATThe boys of Progressive at Cal (we link, they don't, I wonder why...) have lately worked themselves up over the family history of fellow Berkeley blogger HA. Here's how someone summarized the line taken by ProgCal: " HA posts on Res Ipsa Loquitur. Res Ipsa Loquitur has a link to VDARE. VDARE has an editor who disagrees with some parts of the 1965 Immigration Act. The 1965 Immigration Act broadened the amount of immigrants who could come from certain areas, including Russia. HA's father came from Russia. HA, therefore, opposes his own existence." ProgCal's charge that HA's support for immigration reform is somehow hypocritical is a particular instance of the more general claim, often made by those who would prefer not to debate the finer points of immigration policy, that America's immigrant origins morally prohibit Americans from supporting immigration restriction. After all, "we are a nation of immigrants". Since HA's father was apparently a beneficiary of the same system, originally created by the 1965 Immigration Act, that HA wishes to see reformed or abolished (he'll have to tell us which), HA occupies a morally untenable position. As debating tricks go, this one is particulary cheap -- and easy to refute: 1) Let's pretend for a moment that "moral" issues need to be settled before the nuts and bolts of immigration policy are discussed (don't blame me: that's where the progcal types want to start). This is how I make sense of the charge of "hypocricy". As progcal uses the notion, a judgment is hypocritical if it is logically inconsistent with the maintenance of its conditions of possibility. Thus: HA criticizes immigration policy as a concerned American citizen; he is a citizen by virtue of post-65 immigration law; his criticism is therefore immoral. Note here that, when generalized, this logic has some pretty silly consequences. In the first place, it renders every stance (since we're all supposed to be immigrants) hypocritical except open borders, now and forever. There are people who make these noises but they are very, very rare. And what holds for immigration holds for every other past state of affairs. Your father was a slave master? Well then you had better support slavery. You went to private school? Well then you had better send your kids there, too. Have you ever driven an automobile? Well then you have no right to criticize American energy policies. And so on. But enough of that. The "we are all immigrants" spiel, of which the "HA is the child of immigrants" spiel is a local example, is just another way that immigration enthusiasts try to avoid giving real answers by shifting the burden of justification. It's not the stuff of a grown up intelligence. All recent polls indicate that the citizenry, left and right, is concerned about trends in contemporary immigration. Talking about it is thus perfectly legitimate (as indeed it would be even if others weren't -- that's just one of the prerogatives of the critical intelligence), no matter where your grandfather came from. Progcal also pretends to be concerned about res ipsa's sidebar ethics. Res ipsa carries a link to VDare; progcal doesn't like VDare. According to them, ACLU activist Ira Glasser has proven that VDare's editor, Peter Brimelow, is a sort of "cryto-racist". It turns out, however, that Ira has rather tweaked his sources. For example, Brimelow's one reference to his son's "blond hair and blue eyes", quoted by Glasser and obediently regurgitated at progcal, has nothing to do with reinstating nation-of-origin preferences (though for a number of reasons, and in suitably modified form, that might not be such a bad idea). Rather, it is drawn from a discussion of the interplay between immigration and racial preferences, an interplay that is increasingly to the disadvantage of young men of that description. Or don't you agree? It is likely, in any case, that the progcal boys have never read Brimelow. It is even more likely that they have never read his 1995 bestseller, Alien Nation, the book from which Glasser produced his bastardized quotations. As Richard Bernstein wrote of the book in the New York Times (no bastion of immigrant-bashing, that): " Mr. Brimelow has made a highly cogent presentation of what is going to be the benchmark case against immigration as it is currently taking place. Those who think that the system needs no fixing cannot responsibly hold to that position any longer unless they take Mr. Brimelow's urgent appeal for change into account." Clearly, that has yet to occur. Until it does, I don't see how we can be expected to have an intelligent conversation about that book's contents. There's a lesson here for the progcal boys should they wish to draw it: in general, it is a good idea to avoid holding violent opinions on subjects about which one is ignorant. The progcal boys should know, in any case, that there is no greater admission of defeat than the argument ad hominem. As for the actual issues involved in the debate over immigration, res ipsa will be glad to discuss those if and when they arise.
Saturday, May 01, 2004:
MAY DAY, MAY DAY!
Ten new countries joined the EU today, bringing the number of member states to 25.
The Economist, though generally rosy on the EU, makes some important points:
" Average GDP per head in the ten new member countries is only 46% of the EU15 average. And although one new member country, Slovenia, is actually richer than the poorest present member, Greece, the poorest new country, Latvia, has a GDP per head of only 36% of the EU15 average. According to estimates by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister organisation, even on the rosiest forecasts it will take Poland, say, 59 years to catch up with the EU average of GDP per head. Gaps as big as this dwarf those in previous enlargements, causing headaches in Brussels."
Gee, I wonder what that will mean....
" Fraught negotiations on the draft constitution lie ahead, followed in several countries by tricky referendums to approve it (the most difficult of which will most probably be the one promised for Britain by Tony Blair a week ago). Two other highly contentious issues then loom: a decision on whether to open membership negotiations with Turkey, and agreement on the next six-year budget programme. [...] Earlier this year, a Eurobarometer poll showed that support for the EU in member countries has fallen sharply to under 50%, well below the levels of over 70% in the early 1990s. Even previous Euro-enthusiasts seem to have been infected."
One can only hope for the worst.
Other good reasons why the Sierra Club shouldn't worry about immigration and domestic overpopulation.
Friday, April 30, 2004:
TAKING IT UP THE ASS FROM UNIONS
Frequent readers of Res Ipsa Loquitur are aware of our enlightened, informed, anti-union stance -- and how employers, and the general public, "take it up the ass" from unions.
So it is with mixed emotions that we learn that pornstars are considering forming a union. Now you can take it up the ass from a union -- literally! (unfortunately, you'll now pay inflated union rates for this service.)
The script to South Park's Goobacks episode is available here.
[ South Park Elementary, day. The school bell rings and the students are in their seats. So are a lot of new immigrant students]
Mr. Garrison: All right, children, the school board has mandated that I must now teach class in both present-day English and Futurespeak.
Kyle: What?!
Mr. Garrison: So, with that in mind, let's continue our lessons on verbs. Remember that there are transitive verbs such as [writes on the board] "The boy threw the red ball," which in Futurespeak of course, is [makes a sentence of grunts and guttural sounds] Everyone say it with me? [the kids repeat the sentence, which sounds like a series of barks, coming from them. Timmy attempts it] Aaand there are intransitive verbs, such as [writes on the board] "The 11:15 bus from Denver arrived twelve hours late." Or in Futurespeak, "Vvut."
The Kids: "Vvut."
Kyle: Dude, hold on! This is bullcrap! If they wanna live in our time, then they should learn our language!
Craig: Yeah!
Stan: That's right! [other students speak up]
Douche: [steps in] Hey now, these immigrants have a right to retain their culture. Who are we to say our language is best? They deserve to have an education just as much as you do.
Mr. Garrison: Thank you, aging hippie liberal douche.
Douche: You betcha. [steps out]
Timmy: Timmih.
Mr. Garrison: Okay, now let's get back to it, kids. What kind of verb is this? [writes on the board] "The sad girl puts balls in her mouth." Or, in Futurespeak of course, "Gluch gligh balls glych gligh."
(link via Ian Murray)
Thursday, April 29, 2004:
MORE BAD THEATER
The New York Times reports that minority pressure groups are increasingly pretending to be outragaed by their supposed neglect at the hands of the Kerry campaign: " 'He is generally surrounded by white folks, and sure that concerns me, sure,' said Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina."
Now, isn't that a damn strange thing to say...
The bad news here is that the perception of black and Latino disaffection will tempt the GOP establishment into yet more whorish overtures.
THINKING ABOUT GRAD SCHOOL?
Then you should probably read this Village Voice piece on the "exciting new road to poverty" offered by humanities and socsci grad programs.
" Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all."
Erin O'Connor, who's stuck in the middle, has more at Critical Mass.
GOOBACKS FROM THE FUTURE
In the most recent (and very funny) episode of South Park:
" humans from the year 4035 are arriving in South Park through a time portal and are looking for work. When the boys try to earn some extra money, the time immigrants, who are willing to do the same work for next to nothing, take their jobs."
As usual on South Park, the rival parties to the inevitable debate are shown to be fools (the show's highpoint involves the appearance on the O'Reilly factor of anti- and pro-immigration spokesmen "Pissed-Off White Trash Redneck Conservative" and "Aging Hippie Liberal Douche"). On balance, however, the episode seems to come down on the side of immigration reform.
The future America (AD 4035) from which the immigrants have travelled is a place where the "browning of America" is a fait accompli, English has been replaced by a pig-like Esperanto, and over-population forces the inhabitants to leave their era in order to flip burgers in the 21st-century -- i.e., very close to the nightmare vision of what present immigration will mean for the US if allowed to continue unchecked. Upon stepping out of the time portal and running across the highway, the immigrants set to work underselling domestic labor. Stan Marsh and his friends join a group of unemployed workers to demand immigration reform ("theytookerjobs!"), a move that Marsh's father initially opposes until he also finds himself out of work. When the reformer's campaign to promote homosexuality (and thereby rid themselves of the future) fails, they decide to improve global conditions as a way to discourage future immigration. At the episode's close, they've decided that this, too, is "gay" -- even more gay, as Cartman points out, than the homosexual orgy which they have just left and which, as the credits roll, they resume.
Asked his opinion of the immigration question towards show's end, the always judicious Stan Marsh remarks:
" It sucks that the immigrant's time is crappy but the cold hard truth is that if we let all the immigrants come to our time then our time is going to suck, too."
One would like to think that some of the Aging Hippie Liberal Douches from the Sierra Club were watching.
Aging Hippie Liberal Douche lectures the boys -- and their new classmates -- on the virtues of bilingual education.
(see also Virginia Heffernan's recent appreciation of South Park in the New York Times, " What? Morals in 'South Park'?")
Wednesday, April 28, 2004:
DEATH TO THE COMMIE MENACE
As everyone knows, I am a big fan of the Sino-Viet model of re-education, only in reverse (e.g., torturing people until they renounce their Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism-Maoism-Polpotism). Imagine my surprise to find my "vecindad" declaring a no-commie zone. God bless you all.
Of course, this doesn't stop the Mexican Nationalists, or reconquistadors such as Marco "everyone who isn't Latino is a racist" Firebaugh, from imposing his particular brand of totalitarianism upon the state. Let's hope the Vietnamese in Little Saigon string him up and cut off his balls like Mussolini, should he wander over to Westminster.
Or better yet, let's hope they do the same to Steve Lopez, that little whiny Mexican Nationalist who couldn't write about anything not pertaining to his "raza" or particular brand of anti-white racism. I'd like to see him wander into Viet-GOP territory and become a eunuch.
RINOS WIN IN PA
Arlen Specter, Bush's man in the Senate, narrowly won his strongly contested primary campaign in PA today against conservative challenger Pat Toomey.
Conservatives are very unhappy. As Timothy Carney put it in the National Review today, the PA race was just the latest in a string of battles " between the establishment and the grassroots [...] Pat Toomey didn't lose to liberal Arlen Specter. Toomey lost to the entire Republican party. That Republican victory was at the cost of the conservative cause."
OTHER FAILURES
So it's now official. The Save Our State Initiative has failed to qualify for the November ballot. What follows is drawn from the SOS website announcement of the same:
" Ron Prince, Chairman of Save Our State, announced today the end of the petition drive to qualify a sequel to Prop 187 for the November ballot. Having collected just under 500,000 signatures from SOS volunteers, Prince acknowledged that 'you can't get an initiative on the ballot in California today without enough money to pay for signatures'. The campaign fell short of the 800,000 signatures necessary to insure qualification.
The principle reason cited by Prince for the Save Our State campaign's failure to garner more support for its ballot measure was 'opposition from the Republican Party establishment'. In 1994, Prop 187's landslide victory swept conservative Republicans into statewide offices. But today's 'centrist party elites', as Prince described them, do not support populist causes. 'A backlash will be felt in November', warned Prince. He said that Republican candidates will have a difficult time explaining to the voters why they wouldn't help prevent illegals from getting driver's licenses or welfare in California', the two main points of the initiative. Moreoever, the turnout of Republican voters won't be as large as it would have been if the SOS initiative had been on the ballot.
The other problem confronting the Save Our State campaign was a lack of funds. Unlike 1994, none of California's Republican leaders helped financially. Their opposition to the new version of Prop 187 discouraged other donors from helping the campaign."
Tuesday, April 27, 2004:
DERBYSHIRE ON IMMIGRATION REFORM... AND THE WAR
National Review's John Derbyshire has a piece on immigration reform and US foreign policy at VDare (Derbyshire supports war in Iraq, most VDare contributors oppose it). I mention this not just for its intrinsic interest as a document in conservative coalition politics but also because it has come to my attention that certain CAL blogosphere personalities believe that VDare is a racist site, a view in support of which they cite isolated passages from VDare Editor Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation. They've not read the book, of course, but rather depend on ACLU activist Ira Glasser's very partial gloss thereof (which VDare, fair as always, published at their site).
This has all been thoroughly argued elsewhere. Even so, it is worth noting the following:
i) The remarks cited by Glaser are incidental to the book's argument, which mainly concerns the social and economic costs of immigration. To dismiss the latter on grounds of the former is, at the very least, disingenuous.
ii) The remarks cited by Glaser are supposed to be self-evidently vile; they are not. Whatever "progressives" may like to tell themselves on the matter, nations and political cultures are not invented out of wholecloth. Transforming a nation through immigration is an easy thing. Transforming it while maintaining the institutions and practices that you prefer is something else altogether. If you can't understand that, you're probably not worth talking to.
Hubert Selby is dead at 75. We let one of his first reviewers read the elegy:
" This is a brutal book — shocking, exhausting, depressing... The profound depression it causes — once one starts seriously to read it — is a measure of an authentic power which carries through and beyond revulsion. Just who should be asked to undergo this experience is another matter."
It's a hard day for the world of French letters, where Selby has long enjoyed a successful career in translation.
And, God, what's happening to the New York Times? For the third time in one day, the Times gets something right, slamming Strip Search, HBO's embarrassing polemic on the Patriot Act (Alessandra Stanley, " When the Nation is at Risk, Did You Say Civil Rights?"):
" A film that could have raised difficult questions and challenged easy orthodoxies instead confirms the most skeptical view of show business engagé: movies and political messages rarely mix."
REASON COMES TO BRITAIN
On the eve of a new round of European expansion, British immigration enthusiasts begin to reconsider the wisdom of their policies.
" There are real concerns," Blair said. " They are not figments of racist imaginations."
It's a measure of the perversity of our times that this admission represents a considerable victory for the cause of immigration reform. Perhaps one day America's do-gooders will permit us to draw similar conclusions.
Meanwhile, on the right, things are looking even better. " Michael Howard accused the prime minister of 'blind panic' today as Tony Blair tried to regain control of the immigration agenda with a speech to the CBI in London [...] 'You could not have a better example of how the government has let us down than on immigration,' he said."
Monday, April 26, 2004:
DON'T BE SAD, CARL
In my capacity as temporary member of the Sierra Club, I recently received my first issue of the Club's imaginatively titled magazine, Sierra. Unfortunately, my favorite article -- Executive Director Carl Pope's appalingly stupid review of the recent immigration flap -- has yet to be put online. But I will fill you in on some of the high points:
From the start, the Club's strategy has been to confuse and mislead. In an editorial for the Bay Guardian, recently elected board member Sanjay Ranchod made believe that immigration is a zero-sum game: either the US takes the world's immigrants or they go somewhere else to mess up the environment. An editorial in today's LA Times makes similar noises. According to the editorial, reducing domestic overpopulation somehow can't happen until the root causes of global overpopulation have been solved.
Clearly, Pope's memos are getting read.
The zero-sum argument: " Do people who migrate to the United States increase environmental stress," Pope asks. " It depends on where they would end up otherwise. Los Angeles, for example, could handle 10,000 Ecuadorians more easily than the Galapagos Islands [sic] could." The root causes argument: " Overpopulation is, both globally and nationally, an enormous problem. We need to address its root causes."
You see, we can't do anything until we've first done everything.
Even Pope seems to recognize the weakness of his sham case. Otherwise, he might try to support it with evidence or argument. Otherwise, he might not have chosen to waste the better part of his editorial in stale calumny.
" Earlier this year, I sadly opened a new file folder to deal with a virus -- not a computer virus, but a very ancient human virus, one that now threatens to infect the Sierra Club: the virus of hate. In this folder I have kept documents -- e-mails, recommended Web links -- that associate the Sierra club with various expressions of racial and ethnic hate."
Don't be sad, Carl. You've won.
MORE BLOGGING DIARRHEA
I'm not sure that our friend at XRLQ is really ready for this one:
Blogging Roundup: The Right Coast (very impressed by Christina Aguilera) and Caljunket (annoying Californian nonsense) have some really silly things to say in their most recent posts. Paul Bruno of A Fortiori is apparently to set aside his blog. For all of our disagreements, we wish him the best. SCSU Scholars has an interesting take on mandatory diversity training, a logographer has a proper tribute to Pat Tillman, Lucas Doolin continues to wonder why "conservationists" are so fucking stupid, the lonewacko reports a myterious drive-by of Chinese diplomats at Los Alamos, Dog of Flanders reports that Vlaams Blok has been absurdly banned from the most recent elections, and Belmont Club has, as always, something interesting to say about things Iraqi.
Oh, and a curse on all you little swots.
GROTESQUE
Steve Sailer reports on a recent bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) to help eliminate "racial health care disparities". There are indeed health disparities between the races but, as Sailer points out, these have little or nothing do with health care providers and much to do with the behavior of consumers. If blacks and Latinos contract AIDS more often than whites or Asians, mightn't that have something to do with variations in the rates of dangerous sexual and drug behavior in these "communities"? See Sally Satel's discussion of the same.
Turns out that Frist wants to establish an Office of Minority Health within the Department of Health and Human Services. Frist's plan also seeks to "increase diversity of health professionals". Great, more affirmative action in med schools. At least when the Snehal Shingavi's of this world get into the English Department with their no doubt sub-standard GRE's, nobody dies.
But enough of that: it's obvious that Frist is just towing the new party line, which is to snatch as much of the minority vote as possible from the Democrats in the run-up to the November election (cf. Bush amnesty). As Sailer points out elsewhere, this is a foolish strategy: while the Republican portion of the minority vote may increase in absolute terms from one election to the next, in relative terms it almost never does. Meanwhile, they lose my vote.
Sunday, April 25, 2004:
DESULTORY SUNDAY
Lucas Doolin recently had yet more kind words for res ipsa:
" Great reporting on the Sierra Club... I'm a liberal of the old kind who is getting tired of identity politics, the open-borders immigration lobby, and other issues being injected into liberalism. My support is for New Deal type programs, labor, and traditional environmentalism, not for post-Sixties cultural nihilism... I see much of conservatism with the same problems as liberalism and refusal to take a stand on the immigration issue.."
It's heartening to know that there are still liberals of the old school out there. Patriotism is a place beyond politics, rooted in fidelity to the past and aiming at the common good. Both parties could use more of it. Doolin, in any case, is hardly the only disenchanted liberal out there. As Peter Brimelow remarked of the rise of the Green Party as a force in state politics:
" The modern Democratic Party has become preoccupied with the ethnic and patronage agendas of the blocs that increasingly make up its base. White Leftists, more ideological and perhaps idealistic, no longer feel at home in that party, and they are leaving, although no doubt failing to acknowledge the real reason, even to themselves."
Something similar may now be happening to Republicans. I hope.
And in the news: The Guardian is reporting that Britain may be close to adopting a national ID card scheme, part of Tony Blair's effort to overcome the recent asylum scandal. Critics of the plan assert that it will do little do discourage illegal immigration. "ID cards won't solve illegal immigration," said one minister, "ask the French, Germans or Americans about that."
Well, no, don't ask us: the US has never had a national ID card.
It also appears that Muslim women will be exempt from being photographed for the new cards, presumably for fear that it would trouble their sensitive menfolk. France and Germany already know all about it: stories of Muslim women refusing to lift their purdas and veils for state identification purposes are commonplace (as are stories of Muslim men refusing to let male doctors treat their wives, even in emergencies, etc.). And here's the funny part: in North Africa, Muslim women are forced to reveal both face and hair for state ID's -- and no one bitches about it.
Strange, no?
Meanwhile in West London (New York Times, " Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam"):
" On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce -- provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in three months -- Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said... On working-class streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, intelligence officials say a fervor for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open."
Res Ipsa to European Jihadists: Put your damn shoes on!
Saturday, April 24, 2004:
BUT THEY'RE BLOND!
UK Commentator has an interesting post on those funny looking Afghanis (blond hair, blue eyes, red beards) we saw so often on TV two years ago.
It appears that Britain's Spectator magazine intends to send an expedition there to do a little genetic testing: could it be, as the inhabitants of northern Afghanistan were said to have told Genghis Khan, that these people are the descendants of Alexander the Great's army? It's possible but unlikely. Many peoples have had similar myths. They are almost always groundless -- witness the self-serving French belief, very prevalent in the Old Regime, that the French were descended from Trojan colonists. Besides, there is little reason to suppose that first millenium BC Greeks had particularly northern European traits (though they almost certainly did not look like today's Greeks).
A more likely explanation is that these oddly European-looking Afghanis are stay-behinds from the Great Migrations that pushed across Central Asia and into Europe over the three thousand years prior to Christ's birth. Pre-historic ethnology and archaeology are agreed that such a migration occurred, there is good linguistic evidence to support the view, and a number of ancient sources testify that something of the kind was happening. What remains unknown is the Migration's specific region of departure and the reasons for which it began. The latter will likely never be discovered. The Spectator expedition, whether it intends to or not, may shed some small light on the former.
The story will at least be amusing. But wouldn't it be so much more interesting to know what these same Afghanis made of their surprising liberators?
IMPOSSIBLE KOSOVO
In March, Kosovo Albanians stepped up their campaign to cleanse the remaining Serbs from the province. For the Western press, this was all very embarassing. Having so long cast ethnic Albanians as imaginary Jews to Serbia's imaginary Nazis (the same crude logic, if you haven't already noticed, that drives major media coverage of every case in which a European-descended historic majority comes into conflict with a once persecuted minority), the Western press simply did not know how to talk about what was happening. Ethnic cleansing became oddly ambiguous "episodes of violence", dubious rumors of parity were reported without attribution and then later suppressed, and, very soon after it broke, the story was quietly swept under the carpet of inconvenient truths.
It is not going away for all that. As a recent report by Brussels' International Crisis Group (ICG) noted:
" On 17 March 2004, the unstable foundations of four and a half years of gradual progress in Kosovo buckled and gave way. Within hours the province was immersed in anti-Serb and anti-UN rioting and had regressed to levels of violence not seen since 1999. By 18 March the violence mutated into the ethnic cleansing of entire minority villages and neighbourhoods. The mobs of Albanian youths, extremists and criminals exposed the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR) as very weak. Kosovo's provisional institutions of self-government (PISG), media and civil society afforded the rioters licence for mayhem."
What there was in the way of public support for NATO's 1999 intervention in Kosovo was driven by Western media support for the same. Too caught up in local narratives of collective guilt and minority restitution, press outlets in Europe and the US saw in Kosovo just another cheap opportunity for the performance of right-thinking and moral probity. As always in such cases, critical intelligence and journalistic standards left by the window.
The ICG reports warns that Kosovo risks becoming "Europe's West Bank". If so, will this mean that Western elites will finally realize that good guys are sometimes bad guys, that history is a messy business, and that what happens over there is not always comprehensible in terms of what happens (or used to happen) over here? I wouldn't count on it. The myth of pluralism that so distorts coverage of Kosovo is, like all political myths, a dream of power. It is tremendously powerful for this very reason.*
* sententious conclusions are not always bad ones...
Friday, April 23, 2004:
LET THE WHINING BEGIN
The aggrieved "underrepresented" crowd wasted no time in utilizing their media mouthpieces over at the Chron today:
"I'm ashamed to promote this institution as a place that promotes equal access to all communities," said junior Daniel Goldtooth, a coordinator for the Native American Recruitment and Retention Center. "I can no longer tell a Native American student to come to Cal. ... I can no longer do a disservice to my community by telling them to come to a campus that does not support them."
Maybe if you read your textbooks instead of whining all the time, there may not be any reason to complain. But I would have to agree that I would not recommend the Berkeley campus to anyone who is asian or caucasian, as the open hostility and overt racism towards the melanin challenged is something I would not want anyone to experience.
"The governor believes it's acceptable to allow our university to become an elitist institution," said Anu Joshi, student body vice president for external affairs. "It's not."
I've got news for you Anu, Cal has been and always will be an elitist institution, no matter how many stupid 900 SAT kids they let in. Your efforts to make the campus akin to a community college are in vain. Race hustling grifters like Anu may find it difficult to become productive members of society once they leave the institution. That's what I call social justice.
Thursday, April 22, 2004:
FALSE ALARM
Yesterday, I wondered whether the Save Our State Initiative hadn't died for lack of support. Though petitions were still being returned, the official web site seemed to suddenly disappear. It is now back up, with this cryptic account of what occurred:
" Save Our State's Save187.com web site is back after being temporarily knocked offline for approximately two days due to an issue beyond our control that we cannot comment further on at present time. We have been able to restore a few of the site pages. We are currently exploring all avenues available to S-O-S."
One result is that the petition deadline has been extended to April 26th (Monday). Download a petition here and send it in over the weekend. It will be your last chance to do so.
Fry him!
An interesting situation is developing in San Francisco. Read about it here.
Here's my summary: Some cop got killed, they caught a suspect, and newly elected SF District Attorney Kamala Harris does not want to pursue the death penalty, as she ran her campaign with a promise that she wouldn't for "philosophical reasons." The police unions and other folks including Sen. Feinstein are objecting and asking her to try to get the death penalty. Now, this is probably an issue that should've been raised before she was elected, but no one really cared back then.
While there's a lot of rhetoric about "I don't want to use the death penalty" and "This crime deserves the death penalty!" Putting aside the question of whether the death penalty should be used at all, I think the more interesting issue is this:
Is it part of Harris's job to determine which punishments she will pursue? The answer is yes and no. Yes, in that she should not aim for the death penalty if she knows that no SF jury will agree to it. This is one of the reasons she gives, and seems legitimate enough. ( Debra Saunders suggests that the threat of the death penalty would've given the DA a better plea bargaining position, but Saunders is kind of an idiot, so I dunno how true that is.) However, can the DA apply her philosophy in these decisions? This seems to go somewhat beyond her role. After all, she was elected to prosecute crimes, not to determine their value and punishment. That's the job of the jury. The public defender's office doesn't get to choose which cases it handles, why is the DA any different?
As a humorous aside, The Chron is using this as an example of why the assault weapons ban needs to be extended. (the officer was killed with an AK-47) "The shooting death of officer Espinoza, allegedly at the hands of 21-year-old assailant, serves as a chilling reminder of the availability and danger of assault weapons." Of course, this occurred while we were under an assault weapons ban.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LENIN!
Yes, today is Lenin's birthday. You think this is a coincidence?
Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to get me a desert tortoise and make some turtle soup.
OTHER LOST CAUSES?
The Save Our State Inititiative website is all of a sudden down. One can't help but wonder whether this doesn't mean that the necessary signatures were not, in fact, gathered...
If so, it would be further evidence that the citizens of California are no longer capable of standing up for their interests.
Wednesday, April 21, 2004:
EARTH LAST
The Sierra Club election results are in and, as usual, the good guys have lost big. Credit must be given to the current Club leadership for its successful manipulation of major media friends and extremely dubious election practices. Credit must also be given to the tens of thousands of Club members who obediently turned out to oppose the forces of good sense and vote for cretins like this one.
Well, they got what they wanted.
Brenda Walker, lately purged from the Club for breaking taboos on immigration, has the last word on the election's outcome here.
MORE THOUGHTS ON ADMISSIONSSomeone raised an interesting point in the comments section to the last post: supporters of racial preferences often make an exception for Asian students, dividing them into sub-ethnies where everyone else is treated as a racial or racial-linguistic bloc. Thus the creation of the racially and linguistically arbitrary category "Southeast Asian or Pacific Islander" (SAPI). The effect of this category is to reduce the impression of Asian over-representation while ensuring that the greatest possible number of non-whites benefit from preferential admissions policies. If one wanted, one could make similar distinctions within each of the other three major groups (blacks, whites, and Latino/Chicanos). To do so, however, one would need a kind of data that doesn't seem to exist, mainly because supporters of preferences aren't interested in gathering it. It would not surprise me, for example, to learn that recent African immigrants are better represented in admissions (relative to their share of state populations) than slave-descended African-Americans. Nor would it surprise me to learn that Jewish Americans are better represented (again, relative to their share of state populations) than WASPS and Cubans better represented than Mexicans. In short, the distinction made for SAPIs could in principle be made for every major racial and linguistic group (presumably such distinctions are just as sociologically rich in the latter case as in the former). And they should be -- if admissions preferences are really aiming at something like proportional represenation. But then of course we know that they aim at nothing of the kind. Update: It's that time of the year. SCSU Scholars reports on similar foolishness at UVA.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004:
ADMISSIONS ROUNDUP
Cal Files draws our attention to the most recent admissions statistics for UC Berkeley. These deserve (and no doubt will receive) scrutiny. Some first impressions:
Admissions of "under-represented" minorities (whites excepted) declined across the board. African-American candidates suffered the most here, with 29.2% fewer admitted than last year. An echo of last year's Morres report controversy?
There were fewer (-5%) international admits. An echo of stricter Visa requirements for foreign students?
Total admissions increased by 2.4%. This despite warnings that state budget cuts would lead to reduced admissions.
Whites and Asians increased their share of the entering class. White students enjoyed the largest percentage gain on last year (10.6%). Asian representation increased by 4.7%.
The first and last of these are sure to draw loud cries of protest from the usual quarters. In the hopes of inspiring a more nuanced debate, Res Ipsa draws your attention to the following:
1) Though white representation increased over last year, whites (35.5% of the entering class) remain significantly under-represented relative to their share of the state population (46.8%).
2) Asians remain the only genuinely over-represented ethnic group at UCB. 40.8% of next year's class will be Asian-American. That's four times greater than the Asian share (11.1%) of the state population.
It looks like it might be time for BAMN to find a new enemy.
NOT DEAD YET
Sorry to disappoint you: posting will be lighter but will continue.
Have a look at this discussion of the "New Arab Way of War" at Belmont Club -- and be sure to scroll to the end of the post should you have lingering doubts on the virtues of the new Spanish government.
Update: Let's not forget that Tommaso thought this was a " mixed victory" in the War against Terror.
Further Update: Res Ipsa is dumping Stanford's Bo Cowgill on grounds of non-reciprococity.
Sunday, April 18, 2004:
RES IPSA NOTES
I thought I would take the opportunity of a quiet Sunday evening to raise a number of points that may be of interest to our small (but growing!) readership. In the first place: Over the past few months, I have somehow become res ipsa's chief poster, a position that I never intended to occupy. I will be renouncing this position sometime between May and June of this year. Unlike our sometime contributor Beetle Aurora Drake, I am not in the least inspired by the Angry Clam's example nor have I ever been. It is a question of purely personal exigency. For those hoping to carry on the tradition, this is the moment to step up. Or nearly.
Point two. I've lately noticed that almost every minor personality we mention sooner or later drops by after googling themselves (the shameless bitches). Though I officially disapprove of the practice, I recommend name/article citation to future bloggers as a cheap and easy tactic of site publicity.
Hello, Megan Harlan (mediocre New York Times travel writer), Sanjay Ranchod (race-hustling Sierra Club Board wannabe), and Walter Benn Michaels(pathetic nostalgia-driven leftist). We love you.
Finally this, not especially interesting point. If political blogging has any purpose, it is in letting someone else read the papers for you. To the degree that I have ever followed blog discusssions, it has been for this reason: that I had found someone of similar disposition wiling to do the reading for me. We will never become arrogant here. Still, it is something to keep in mind.
CALIFORNIA, GROUND ZERO OF IMMIGRATION POLICY
Res ipsa has long bitched about the GOP's misguided opportunism on immigration. That makes sense: res ipsa is a mainly Californian outfit and nowhere is the failure of the nation's immigration "policy" more glaringly evident than in California.
As Steven Greenhut of the Orange County Register put it in the most recent edition of the American Conservative (" Rumbles on the Right: California's GOP Rejects the Bush Amnesty Plan"):
" A strong argument can be made that the California Republican Party’s prospects have declined not just in relation to the growth of the Latino population but in relation to its refusal to take strong stands on immigration and other issues that appeal to the general electorate. As the Republicans have become squishy, they have given voters less reason to vote for them. By embracing the post-Prop. 187 mythology, Republicans unsuccessfully tried to lure new Latino voters even as they alienated the non-Latino voters at their core."
Greenhut predicts a renewed focus on the issue in the upcoming election -- despite the administration's cretinous support for an amnesty. Let's hope he's right.
FROM THE BUREAU OF SMALL IRONIES
Britain's wealthiest man is... a Russian Jew.
Saturday, April 17, 2004:
BERKELEY MAKES THE TRAVEL PAGE
" Oakland and Berkeley: The Quirky Heart of the East Bay" read today's NYT travel headline. Megan Harlan admires pretty much what you would expect -- the Claremont, the Campanile, Jack London Square, Rockridge, 4th Street and the North Side. She gets two things wrong, however:
i) Telegraph Avenue is not cute.
ii) Chez Panisse is not nearly as good as its reputation but is precisely as expensive.
Harlan was right about O Chame, however. It is excellent.
" I had my favorite meal of the weekend at O Chame on Fourth Street; its interior resembles a marvelous Japanese country retreat. The chef, David Vardy, has given Japanese cuisine the California treatment - udon soup with fat grilled oysters; mahi-mahi with chanterelles. The little bean cakes for dessert were as lovely as delicate ceramic statues."
Friday, April 16, 2004:
LOOK BACK IN ANGER
Rumor has it that Berkeley alumnus and Res Ipsa friend The Angry Clam has given up blogging. If true, it's a sad moment for Res Ipsa, which seems to have had a long alliance with Angry and now finds itself the lone conservative voice in the Berkeley blogosphere. Perhaps PB will have a word to say later.
In the meantime, responses to the Clam's passing from XRLQ and Patterico.
FOOLISH FRIDAY
So I've had a look at the Daily Cal, something I generally prefer not to do, not least for this reason:
" A poster for student group Berkeley Students for a Sovereign Taiwan was defaced with red paint and eggs last week in what the group believes could be a hate crime... Chinese characters were written in paint on the display case... Some members of Berkeley Students for a Sovereign Taiwan believe the vandal is Taiwanese because of the message’s reference to Taiwan as “our” country... The Hate and Bias Task Force is referring to the vandalism as a hate and bias incident. Depending on further investigation, it might be called a hate crime, according to the task force."
Now, if I were writing the story I would have wanted to know this: what will determine whether or not the poster-defacing counts as a "hate crime"? Will it be one if, as seems probable, it turns out to be the work of some other Taiwanese kid? Or is the motive of hatred being reserved for the unlikely case that the perpetrator is an embittered white sinophile from the Department of East Asian languages?
PRAISE (and site management)
Res ipsa get some (mixed) praise:
Of res ipsa's recent coverage of the Sierra Club controversy, Lucas Doolin writes: " It's hard to believe that such on-target analysis turned up on a conservative blog." Thank you, Lucas, we can't believe it ourselves.
By the way, has anyone else noticed that the Clam seems to have suddenly disappeared?
update: We've dropped our Denbeste link (there's something creepy about Denbeste, don't you think?) in favor of The Right Coast, a San Diego group blog that is like us but much better. Further shakeups may be in the works.
further shakeups: Apologies to PB but it was time to drop the two Gustavos from the sidebar -- he quit blogging some time ago. Gene Expression (interesting if you are a genetics dilletante, not so interesting if you're not) and the Hoosier Review (an excellent conservative student blog in Indiana that does not practice reciprocity) have gone the same way.
Goodbye but not good-riddance.
In their place will now be found links to Erin O'Connor's Critical Mass and the SCSU Scholars site, on the grounds that res ipsa is supposed to have something to do with university politics.
Goodbye and good-riddance to Calstuff for not linking. Calfiles is more interesting anyway.
Thursday, April 15, 2004:
SOME PUNNING TITLE ON OUTSOURCING
The whole point of the Roberts piece to which I earlier referred was that outsourcing is detrimental because certain necessary conditions of comparative advantage no longer obtain. I am thus not particularly impressed when Tommaso points out that, according to the theory of comparative advantage, outsourcing should be beneficial. This is true; it is also irrelevant.
Apart from their violence, the strangest thing about the responses elicited by my last post on the issue is the refusal on the part of my critics to actually go to the trouble of explaining the mysterious mechanism upon which their argument supposedly turns. The charming Sameer writes “I'm not going to explain it to you, try understanding first-grade economics before you spout off about how outsourcing is going to make us into a third world country." The charming Tommaso tells us to go read an essay.
I read the essay. It seems that I did indeed badly mangle my presentation of comparative advantage (depending, as I was, on hazy memories of Ricardo). On the other hand, I was struck by the following:
“ In its most simple form the model [of comparative advantage] assumes two countries producing two goods using labor as the only factor of production. Goods are assumed homogeneous (identical) across firms and countries. Labor is homogeneous within a country but heterogeneous (non-identical) across countries. Goods can be transported costlessly between countries. Labor can be reallocated costlessly between industries within a country but cannot move between countries. Labor is always fully employed. Production technology differences across industries and across countries and are reflected in labor productivity parameters. The labor and goods markets are assumed to be perfectly competitive in both countries. Firms are assumed to maximize profit while consumers (workers) are assumed to maximize utility."
The sentences in bold indicate the unfulfilled conditions identified by Roberts. Now, an actual argument against Roberts would involve one of the following three claims: i) that Roberts is wrong and that these two conditions on comparative advantage obtain after all; ii) that Roberts is wrong but that outsourcing is dangerous for other reasons; or iii) that Roberts is right but that this fact has no consequences (or has beneficial ones) in the present instance.
Which of these cases is Tommaso making? He’s not saying i) because he doesn’t assert labor immobility or scarcity of knowledge. He’s not saying ii) for the precedent reasons and also because he seems enamored of free trade. And he’s not saying iii) because Tommaso can't entertain the possibility that international trade may sometimes be harmful and anyhow would never admit to being wrong.
In short, we find ourselves at a bit of an impasse. I assert that outsourcing is detrimental to the US economy if Roberts is right and comparative advantage is not at work (what happens to particular national economies, for example, if the whole world were to start functionning as if all trade was domestic?). Tommaso ignores what I say and asserts that, if comparative advantage is at work, outsourcing should be beneficial.
I can’t say I learned a lot, except perhaps that Tommaso has trouble engaging in civil debate. Somehow, that's no great surprise.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004:
WILL EUROPE SINK ISLAM?
Some time ago, I linked to a much discussed piece by British historian Ni all Ferguson on the end of Christendom and the rise of Euro-Islam. Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal's brilliant Europe correspondent, submits the question to a similarly sensitive and intelligent treatment -- and reaches very different conclusions.
According to Dalrymple, far from announcing its arrival as Europe's next religion, Islam's apparent strength is in fact evidence of its weakness:
" But the anger of Muslims, their demand that their sensibilities should be accorded a more than normal respect, is a sign not of the strength but of the weakness—or rather, the brittleness—of Islam in the modern world, the desperation its adherents feel that it could so easily fall to pieces. [...] To be sure, fundamentalist Islam will be very dangerous for some time to come, and all of us, after all, live only in the short term; but ultimately the fate of the Church of England awaits it. Its melancholy, withdrawing roar may well (unlike that of the Church of England) be not just long but bloody, but withdraw it will. The fanatics and the bombers do not represent a resurgence of unreformed, fundamentalist Islam, but its death rattle."
Despite appearances, Dalrymple's case is not really at odds with that of Ferguson. Ferguson predicts rapid growth for Islam in the near future. Dalrymple believes that this very growth, by forcing believers into daily contact with the decadent culture of the infidel, will in the long run spell Islam's doom.
If there is comfort here, it's only in the thought that one's enemies are inevitably defeated in their turn. Before that happens, there's certain to be a lot more of this sort of thing.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004:
OUTSOURCING AND THE PROBLEM OF CHEAP LABORI had not planned to post on this subject again but things have lately taken a turn for the interesting. You will recall that Tommaso challenged me to explain how outsourcing means net domestic job loss. I replied (citing Pa ul Craig Roberts) that this was because the internationalization of the labor market has meant that American workers can now be undersold in almost every instance by foreign labor. A fortiori's Paul Bruno then rushed to Tommaso's defense, quoting a piece by Noam Schieber to the effect that comparative advantage sorts everything out in the end -- after a period of adjustment, economic rivals will ultimately divide production between themselves, with the consequence that each ends up specializing in whatever it produces at the lowest cost. Battle briefly raged in the comments area of Bruno's blog. Following Schieber, Bruno offered the example of the T-shirt and computer software industries. Supposing that India made T-shirts cheaper than the US but the US made software cheaper than the Indians. In that case, investment dollars would flow to India for the production of T-shirts but would remain in the US for the production of software. I agreed but underlined the suppositional nature of the argument: what happens when the US produces neither T-shirts nor software cheaper than India? Roberts' (and my) point is precisely that, given the current super-abundance of cheap foreign labor and an unprecedented global distribution of knowledge, one must suppose that production advantage is to be found elsewhere in almost every instance. If so, this means that the US will continue to lose jobs until it can compete in the international labor market -- i.e., until it can make T-shirts AND software as cheaply as India. The law of comparative advantage, it is true, operates throughout this process. The question is, who wants the US to become a Third World economy just to satisfy some economists' model of how things should work. It is at this point that Tommaso, long absent from the debate, entered the arena. Here's what he had to say: " Why won't India end up making T-shirts and computers? Well, even if Indians are better at everything a person with money to invest would want maximum returns on their money. Accordingly, a person with money to invest in India would spend it on say T-shirts (if indians are better at making those than computers) rather than computers becuase that would provide the better returns. It's not just investors of course. Indian workers, like worker s everywhere would flock to the better paying industries. Even if the other Indian industries are more efficient than any other in the world, capitalism would redirect their energies to were they would be the most effective." Even I thought Tommaso was smarter than that. In the first place, some investment is individual but much of it is corporate. Corporations with a stake in a certain market will naturally tend to invest in that market. Microsoft will invest in computers, say, but not T-shirts. If computers are cheaper in India than in the US but not so cheap as T-shirts, Microsoft (and many individual investors) will still put its money there. Second, Tommaso seems to think that the Indian or Mexican or Chinese labor markets suffer from such scarcity that, once the Indian (or Mexican or Chinese) T-shirt revolution gets under way, there somehow won't be enough workers left over to produce computers. This is patently false: world demand for T-shirts is nothing like adequate to guarantee full-employment to India's one billion plus workers. The same goes for other industries. Finally, Tommaso seems to believe that comparative advantage implies a one-industry-one-country model according to which each economy eventually takes charge of a certain manufacturing sector, leaving the left-overs to its competitors. He should know that diversified modern economies don't work that way. As long as Indian labor continues to undersell foreign labor (and all else being equal), it is perfectly situated to become the T-shirt AND software maker to the world. And what holds for T-shirts and software holds for almost every other area of manufacturing. Such is the dilemma of outsourcing. In a newly global market for labor, the US economy faces undesirable alternatives: either impose protectionist measures and thereby save what can be saved or allow comparative advantage to do its work, eventually reducing us to parity with those countries that now take our jobs. Perhaps Tommaso wouldn't mind making T-shirts. I do.
Monday, April 12, 2004:
LA TIMES GETS IT RIGHT FOR ONCE
Steve Lopez of the LA Times has some refreshing things to say about illegal immigration. Of the Sierr a Club controversy, for instance, Lopez writes:
" Zuckerman [UCLA prof and SC board member] and others argue that the club ought to do more than prattle on about worldwide population control. They say it's high time to scream for U.S. lawmakers to slow the flow of immigrants. Members of the old guard counter that if the club goes nativist, it will be in cahoots with rednecks and yahoos. [...] I'll leave it to the combatants to work things out. But regardless of the outcome, someone, somewhere ought to be leading a discussion about how many people is too many, particularly in California.
" As Zuckerman says, public officials seldom utter a word, a thought, a solution regarding the exponential growth that has plundered paradise. Long-range planning doesn't exist, unless you count proposals to spend years fixing interchange bottlenecks that end up with more traffic when the job is completed."
(link via Lonewacko)
Sunday, April 11, 2004:
ANOTHER TEDIOUS BLOGGING DEBATE
The outsourcing question recently came up again and I foolishly promised to post on the issue (note: obligation discharged).
It went something like this. Paul Bruno at afortiori alerted his readers to the newest issue of the California Patriot Online a few days ago. I had a look. The first thing I noticed was this letter to the editor by someone named Jessica:
" You say you speak for the silent majority? You forgot to mention the silent white majority. Most of your articles are written by white people, and all the people on your board are white people. Why no African-Americans? Why no Latinos?"
Answer: because the Cal Patriot's editors are white supremacists, of course.
I next came across this article by Angel Symoon Brewer on outsourcing. I thought it was a generally good article that would have been much improved had Brewer taken the risk of picking sides. Bruno agreed, adding in comments that:
" If it had been me writing, of course, I probably would have mentioned that if outsourcing isn't giving us the net increase in jobs it ordinarily would, that is probably because of a rather irresponsible fiscal policy on the part of the Bush administration that discourages reinvestment back into our own economy of savings resulting from taking advantage of cheaper labor over seas. Then again, I wouldn't be writing for the Patriot. [...] But I think you're right on both counts. It's not a bad article, except for its being too wishy-washy. I suspect that wishy-washiness stems, in part, from the Bush administration's own wishy-washiness on the subject. There's tension between the Bush campaign and Bush's economic team, and I think the article reflects that."
Not a bad analysis, it seemed to me. I replied:
" Had I written the article i would have said that the outsouring-is- advantageous-because-of-reinvestment argument relies on a myth of corporate efficiency, according to which corporations are always reinvesting whatever money happens to be lying around in research or technology rather than in management pay raises, advertising, or building yet more factories abroad. I would have also pointed out that outsourcing is bad because, as Paul Craig Roberts never stops saying, the international market on labor and changes in production mobility have made nonsense of the classical theory of comparative advantage."
The ever churlish Tommaso Sciortino then got in on the act, posting this tardy concession to good sense:
" I hope I didn't leave the impression that I think free trade is totally without problems [ yes, that is exactly the impression you left]. Orlando [ Tommaso calls me 'Orlando' because... well, I don't know why. Maybe it's funny.] says he now understands the law of comparative advantage but thinks it doesn't apply. I look forward very eagerly to his upcoming post. Hopefully, he will be able to explain why industrialization and mechanization creates jobs and outsourcing doesn't. Just a quick note for now: If we are willing to invest in our citizen's education to make ourselves more competitive, free trade is good in the long run. If we fail to make ourselves competitive, we'll become a national Detroit."
This leaves me wondering where Tommasso thinks the fight is. Did I ever say that education was unimportant? Have I anywhere suggested that outsourcing was about something other than competition? If there is still an issue between us, I believe that it is one of emphasis. Tommasso has a very optimistic view of how the market operates. He seems to think that, if we just keep "educating people", sooner or later a new technology will come around that we have and the other guy doesn't, giving us advantage in the new market. I also think education is important but take the idea of competition more seriously. Corporations outsource because outsourcing is cheaper. It is cheaper because labor is cheaper in developing countries (regulations and taxes are also important, of course, but the price of labor is the essential thing). Since this isn't going to change anytime soon, there's nothing to guarantee that new technologies, once developped, don't also follow the more general trend toward moving production abroad. At a certain point, this trend will become irreversible.
Former WSJ editor and Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts has written extensively on this point. According to Roberts, the classical theory of comparative advantage doesn't work like it used to:
" For comparative advantage to operate, two conditions are required: (1) a country's factors of production must seek comparative advantage within the country and not move to absolute advantage abroad, and (2) countries must have different relative costs of producing different goods. [...] When free trade theory originated two centuries ago, climate and natural resources were important components of GDP. Climate and natural resources could not migrate, and countries' different climates and resource endowments meant that relative costs varied among countries. [...] In today's modern economies, production is based primarily on acquired knowledge. Modern production functions operate the same regardless of their location. There is no necessary reason for the relative costs of producing manufactured goods to vary from one country to another. Only the absolute costs vary, with the advantage going to countries with large excess supplies of labor. It is nonsense for economists and pundits to claim that the US benefits from the loss of jobs, capital and technology when economic theory tells us that all three are needed for economic development."
Free trade is indeed good in the long run -- for someone. There's good reason to worry that it won't be us.
THE SIERRA CLUB ELECTIONS TURN UGLY (AGAIN)
So it appears that Brenda Walker, a prominent figure in the movement to reform the Sierra Club, is to be expelled from the Club for daring to criticize immigrant Hmong. Undemocratic abuses of power aside, the most wonderful thing about all this is that Walker's comments on the Hmong -- perfectly sensible ones, by the way -- had absolutely nothing to do with the Sierra Club or its current election cycle. But as Larry Fahn and his cronies in the Club leadership know only too well, coverage is the essential thing; the truth can look after itself. Or, more likely, not.
(Happy Easter)
Friday, April 09, 2004:
What's a governor to do?
Whoa.
Thursday, April 08, 2004:
CUTE
Hostage burning has apparently become la nouvelle mode in Iraq.
Also, further proof that diversity is our strength:
"The British antiterrorism authorities charged five men on Thursday with conspiring to build a huge bomb from 1,000 pounds of explosive material to be used against unspecified targets. [...] The charges, along with those leveled in a Canadian court on Wednesday, connect seven young Pakistani immigrants — six of them living on the outskirts of London and one in Ottawa — with hatching a terrorist plot that could have had devastating consequences."
NOT THAT BERKELEY CARES
With the ongoing election nonsense consuming so much attention, some of you may have forgotten that the rest of the world exists. All the better for you.
In Iraq, the situation is daily deteriorating. As the uprising -- that, I'm afraid, is the word -- spreads beyond the initial sites of Sunni and Shiite insurgency, policy makers are slowly coming to grips with the failure of the US occupation. In just one of many signs of bad things to come, the Washington Post reports that:
"Portraits of Sadr and graffiti praising him have appeared on mosques and government buildings in Sunni towns west of Baghdad, according to Arab media reports. On Monday night, gunmen loyal to Sadr joined with Sunni insurgents in Baghdad in attacking U.S. soldiers on patrol in the first reported act of collaborative Sunni-Shiite resistance activity."
Anthony Cordesman (PDF file), of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warns that, whatever the outcome of the present fighting, it is sure to set the precedent for things to come:
"Almost regardless of the outcome of the current fighting, virtually every milestone in Iraq's political calendar, every religious festival and holiday, and every key political event in a Coalition country political calendar are going to be possible dates for new cycles of terrorism, violence, and demonstrations. This is likely to continue through at least early 2006, when a new elected government is scheduled to take office."
In retrospect, partition is beginning to look very attractive indeed.
It's not only in Iraq that the news is bad. The European left may gloat for now but they, too, will soon have to come to grips with a problem that is now global in scale. Even as a bomb scare today closed one of the main urban lines through Paris, there are further signs that a newly militant Islam is being born in Europe. The Spanish elections of course did not help. As Reuel Marc Gerecht recently put it:
"If a Western split does not occur, then we will probably have the French to thank. They know that Zacarias Moussaoui was once upon a time a good Frenchman. They know that more Khaled Kelkals are being born in the banlieues. They know that even the most dedicated Muslim holy warriors might sometimes have to settle for attacking the second best. But then again, Paris hated losing on Iraq. Many in the French elite--most prominently, the foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin--want the democratic experiment in Iraq to fail. With the American loss of Spain and the waffling in Poland, the French sense victory in Europe. It will be interesting to see whether France's envy of American hegemony trumps its own experience and fear of Muslim holy warriors trying to blow their way into heaven."
Few Western countries are more inward-looking and self-regarding than France. Given the scale of France's Muslim problem, this national vice may for once work in our favor.
Update: Belmont Club is reassuringly deflationary on the recent fighting. Let's hope he's right.
Wednesday, April 07, 2004:
Oooh, money
Daily Cal columnist Andro Hsu relays an interesting idea: Since the California primary is almost irrelevant, why don't we just not hold the election and save money?
Tuesday, April 06, 2004:
COURTING THE ILLEGAL VOTE
Or is it the legal co-ethnic sympathizer one? I'm not sure. Anyway, our friend the Clam draws our attention to Florida Governor Jeb Bush's recent decision to support legislation that would grant drivers' licenses (and hence bank accounts, social security numbers, voting rights, and de facto citizenship) to illegals. The Clam pledges not to vote for JB should he run in 2008. Too bad he won't say the same for his big brother this year. I'm increasingly unclear on which particular is supposed to recommend Bush over Kerry in November. Pehaps the Clam can enlighten us on this point.
Which reminds me. Time is running out on your chance to put a thumb in the eye of the GOP establishment. Only nine days remain to sign on to Son of 187, a state ballot initiative that would, amongst other things, deny licenses to illegals. 400,000 signatures have been collected. Many more are needed before April 15 if the initiative is to make the November ballot.
Click here to download the petition.
Even Jesse Jackson hates Wal-Mart
Reading the SF Chronicle while sitting down for some probably inauthentic Mexican food, I saw, with smug satisfaction, this article about how Wal-Mart is bypassing a city council and taking it directly to the voters to decide whether they should be allowed to plop one of their monster stores in Inglewood. Everyone hates Wal-Mart. They provide cheap goods, and cheaper jobs. The horror. In any case, the money quote in this article has to be this one, from "Altagarcia Perez, rector of the Holy Faith Episcopal Church and a member of the Coalition for a Better Inglewood" ('better', in this context, apparently means "with fewer jobs and more expensive crap"):
"It rezones the area without community input and without input from the government."
Apparently, elections do not count as "community input."
au revoir
I will be away from my computer as of tomorrow for about one month's time. For those who are interested, Croatia and Greece are the destinations at hand. If I feel particularly inspired and happen to have a computer handy, I may make a travelogue post or two. I promise nothing, however.
Here's to hoping that when I return, headlines like this are a distant memory.
FALLUJAH AND POINTS SOUTH
I hate to continue pilfering from Belmont Club posts but they're so good.
Monday, April 05, 2004:
I still object to Latin
Your next brand new blogger for Res Ipsa Loquitur is... me!
Which is strange, because I strongly discourage group blogs, oppose the use of foreign/dead languages, and am not even a conservative. But you don't have to be a conservative to dislike Berkeley liberals. In the interest of full disclosure, here is where I stand on a few random "important" issues. ("Important" means, for the most part, "Not actually relevant to most of our lives but are highly divisive for other, mostly psychotic emotional, reasons.")
Abortion: I hate children. They're annoying, because they're stupid. You heard me. They're stupid. Yeah, you might think it's cute when the baby spits up and gurgles, but not me. So anything to decrease the number of children around is fine by me. Pro-Abortion! Hell, I don't even think we should be stopping at the third trimester.
The Environment: Let's face it, even if we act with reckless disregard for the environment, the people who will really suffer are not us, but our children. And considering how I feel about children... Anti-Environment!
The Death Penalty: I couldn't possibly care less about this issue than I do. Does it really matter to me whether Bob the Disembowler gets shot full of killing goo or sits in prison for a few decades?
Of course, none of these issues matter the slightest bit to me, which is why it's very easy to argue about them. Hiya, folks. I think locally and don't act at all, so my posts will likely be rather Berkeley-centric. Glad to be aboard.
THINK GLOBALLY, ACT STUPIDLY
This week's Bay Guardian features an editorial on the ongoing Sierra Club election controversy by board candidate Sanjay Ranchod. Bracketing the usual eyewash about "diversity and the club membership" -- Ranchod says that taking a stance on mass immigration will alienate the Club's precious ethnic minority contingent, a startling admission of priority on the part of someone who claims to be motivated by concern for the environment -- the article nicely exemplifies the profound bad faith of the anti-reform current in the Club.
Here, for what it's worth, is Ranchod's "argument":
Just as pollution doesn't respect national borders, immigration restrictions don't solve environmental problems; they merely shift those problems elsewhere. [...] Global population growth is best addressed by providing all people a decent standard of living and by giving all women the means to control their fertility ? in short, by mitigating the conditions that drive people from their homes to begin with. To help address this problem, the Sierra Club has increased financial support for its global population program to advocate for increased U.S. funding for successful domestic and international family-planning efforts. [...] Migration is a global phenomenon that happens when opportunity, freedom, environmental degradation, and desperation are distributed across the globe so unevenly that people are forced to stay and barely survive, or move and possibly thrive. We must address these root inequalities if we are to effectively reduce migration pressures. [...] Divisive positions would alienate many of our allies and hamper our ability to build broad coalitions in support of conservation goals.
I apologize in advance for taking any of this seriously. But then, when dealing with the Bay Guardian's readership, you never know. So here goes, taking the arguments in the order in which they appear:
i) " Immigration restrictions don't solve environmental problems; they merely shift those problems elsewhere." No, Ranchod, those problems already are elsewhere. The only sense in which immigration restriction could intelligibly "shift" population growth problems elsewhere is if you buy the proposition that population migration is a zero-sum game, with one country permanently losing population and another country permanently gaining it. There is no reason, however, for assuming that population movement works that way and good reason for thinking the contrary, such as the fact that much of the developping world continues to observe broadly Malthusian growth curves. Besides, even if the US were to take ten times as many immigrants as it presently does -- and it already takes more per annum than every other country in the world combined -- the effect would be diminishingly small expressed as a share of the total world population. What it would do is ensure that the US becomes rapidly over-populated in its turn, a process that is already well under way thanks to people like you.
ii) " Global population growth is best addressed by providing all people a decent standard of living and by giving all women the means to control their fertility." Ok, but what does that have to do with national immigration policy? Indeed, denying Third World governments an outlet for their surplus populations may be a necessary first step in ensuring that these governments adopt a responsible attitude to growth.
iii) " Migration is a global phenomenon that happens when opportunity, freedom, environmental degradation, and desperation are distributed across the globe so unevenly that people are forced to stay and barely survive, or move and possibly thrive. We must address these root inequalities if we are to effectively reduce migration pressures." Again, Ranchod is missing the point: there's an obvious distinction to be made between migration and "migration pressures". In a world in which just anyone can hop on (or under) a plane going just anywhere, it is reasonable to suppose that incentives to migration will be reduced only once disparities in global wealth are evened out. And yet, while Third World populations will continue to seek entry to the First World, we are under no obligation to permit them entry and could (if we wished) effectively block it.
Immigration reformers wish to reduce migration; to criticize them for not also reducing "migratory pressures", something that no country can do on its own, is to badly miss the point. And, who knows, maybe immigration restriction would reduce migratory pressures. After all, the (correct) belief that the West has surrendered on immigration is surely one of these.
iv) " Divisive positions would alienate many of our allies and hamper our ability to build broad coalitions in support of conservation goals." Well, you shouldn't have chosen those allies in the first place given that they are invested in policies that are directly at odds with the interests of your membership. You are an environmentalist, right?
Instead of waiting around for the paradise of global equality to arrive -- Ranchod's novel solution to the problem of population migration -- wisdom is to be found in a more pragmatic approach, one that seeks to reduce immigration-driven population growth here while at the same time advocating birth control and investment in the Third World.
Now wouldn't that be clever.
(for more on the Club leadership's campaign of misinformation, see here)
BATTLE OF FALLUJAH BEGINS
Belmont Club with another fascinating take on Marine siege tactics:
"The operation on Fallujah has commenced. From preliminary reports, it seems that the enemy will fight. Marines are taking mortar fire from town and have responded with air support. This will be an extremely difficult operation, and the degree of enemy entrenchment fully justifies the Marine decision not to rush into the fray. As noted in earlier posts, the enemy will use counter-siege tactics by creating incidents elsewhere to divert the Marines."
Click here to read the rest.
MORE UGLINESS
Events seem to have accelerated of late:
i) Over the weekend, Spanish police moved in on a group of Morrocans believed to have been involved in the Madrid bombings. Four suspects and one police officer died when the suspects -- including one identified as the group's ringleader -- blew themselves up. The Times (UK) is now reporting that some of the suspects may have escaped; Spanish authorities are reportedly bracing for Easter weekend attacks.
ii) Eight US troops and four Salvadorans were killed Sunday in a coordinated series of Shiite riots in Bagdhad and three other Iraqi cities. One of the attacks was directed against Najaf's Spanish garrison, soon to be withdrawn to Spain. As the Belmont Club notes of this last:
"What will now overtake the Spanish command through no fault of its own soldiers is a rout. This occurs when a force is chased off the battlefield in increasing disorder. Once the retrograde movement begins, enemy harassment is redoubled and the retreating force is ultimately pursued to the very point of embarkation and there is no reason pursuit must end when it returns to Spain. A rout can only be stemmed when a retreating army turns on its enemies and puts them to flight."
iii) Closer to home, lefty blogger the Daily Kos has gotten himself into some well-deserved trouble after remarking of the American security contractors killed last week in Fallujah: "They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them."
Sunday, April 04, 2004:
BRITAIN'S OTHER SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
A crisis over immigration policy is brewing in Britain following the revelation that Tony Blair struck a deal last year with Romanian leader Adrian Nastase to relax visa requirements for Romanians, ahem, travelling to Britain. In exchange for Blair's agreement to accept more Romanians, Nastase pledged to discourage them from claiming asylum upon arrival in the UK. Over the past five years, Britain has seen claims on its asylum system -- the most generous in Europe -- more than double (84,000 in 2002 against 32,000 in 1997) as criminal immigration gangs got in on the act.
All of a sudden, asylum applications dropped, allowing the Blair government to claim that it had delivered on its promises. And it had -- to the Romanians. Blair's Romanian deal had no impact on the number of immigrants arriving in Britain, only on how they were counted.
The evolving scandal has finally forced the government to act (or at least suggest that it will do so in the future). According to the Guardian:
"The Government is set to announce that those who employ illegal migrants could face fines of up to £20,000, up from the present £5,000. [...] There will also be new powers for register offices to block sham marriages which illegal immigrants use to gain the right to live in Britain. Last week leaked emails revealed that there could be up to 15,000 such marriages a year; the official figure is 1,700. [...] Students applying for college courses will face more stringent checks after evidence that bogus applications were allowing people to stay in the country although they were not at college."
One can only hope that the Bush administration is paying attention. But don't count on it.
Blair to Romanian government: "Please, gypsies first."
Meanwhile: "A YouGov poll for the Mail on Sunday showed that 80% of voters believe the government is not tough enough on immigration issues. Only 29% trust Mr Blair to sort out the problems."
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