I’ve been a bit busy lately with trying to point out to my Leftist colleagues that a turn towards more libertarian positions is not only not absolutely bonkers, but in fact a good idea. So let’s take a bit of time off from the left-wing deviationists; time to check in on the latest anti-state, anti-war, pro-market news and views from Paleo Bizarro World. Today…

… Bob Wallace reports that European wars were caused by open borders, that the market doesn’t work, and that more government programs are the answer:

Europe was refered to by the Founding Fathers as nations of eternal war. That is exactly what they are, and this time, as every other time, they are bringing their problems onto themselves with their left-wing open borders nonsense. Left-libertarians, like leftists in general, don’t merely misunderstand human nature; they don’t understand it at all. They truly believe the free market will unite all in peace, as if murderous religious fanatics will give up their fanaticism in exchange for a DVD player.

… R. Kirkwood chimes in to preach the Ninth Crusade:

If there is a fight against Islam in Europe, by the time the leftist elites wake up and realize action is required, it may be too late. As well, to win they would have to fight for the Cross, not for the secular, socialist state. They must fight as Christians, not as secular democrats. That isn’t likely to happen, which is why the Muslims, who will be fighting for Allah, will win, and once again conquer Europe.

… and both of them are singing the praises of William Lind’s call for our Prince President to make his top priority . . . real immigration reform, meaning:

1. The government forcing immigrant entrepreneurs to speak only English in their places of business: A neutral policy of Americanization of all immigrants. As was true for the forefathers of many American citizens, they are welcome to maintain their national language and customs in their homes, but all business in the public square must follow American norms, starting with English-only.

2. Prussian-style government schools to nationalize the children of the country? Superb: Mechanisms to foster Americanization, beginning with the public schools. If we need a model, look at New York City’s superb public schools of 100 years ago.

3. The Berlin Wall? An example to be followed! Controlling our borders. Given the magnitude of illegal immigration across our southern frontier, we need to put in place something like the old East-West German border. Anyone trying to cross it unlawfully risks getting shot.

Thank the white heterosexual Christian God that we libertarians have such resources available in our struggle for liberty. Lew Rockwell’s Army is on the march…

Today is World AIDS Day.

I have a beautiful address book a friend gave me in 1966. I literally cannot open it again.

Ever.

It sits on the shelf
with over a hundred names crossed out.

What is there to say?

There are no words.

I’ll never understand why it happened to us.

–Jerry Herman

When we were wasting away and dying every day, so many people thought that it wasn’t their disease, that it wasn’t their problem. But it was. And AIDS is not over. It is still killing women and men every day. We must never forget. It must end. And it must never happen again.

During the late unpleasantness, in spite of a sharply divided electorate and sharply worded debate, there was one point of agreement that you could always count on. To illustrate, here’s George Bush, trying to lay the smack down on Kerry:

When our country is in danger, it is not the job of the president to take an international poll; it’s to defend our country.

And here’s John Kerry doing his best to sidestep the smack down by insisting that he agrees with Bush on the principle:

What I said in the sentence preceding that was, I will never cede America’s security to any institution or any other country. No one gets a veto over our security. No one.

Of course, Bush and Kerry disagree over something here: they disagree over what Kerry’s position is. But of course that disagreement reveals a fundamental agreement between the two: both of them accept the underlying premise that it would be absolutely damning for a Presidential candidate to tie decision-making about when and where the American military is deployed to another country or an international body. In fact, this is a point of political dogma repeated endlessly by almost everyone who has anything at all to say about the matter. Here’s William Saletan in Slate:

It’s clear from Kerry’s first sentence that the “global test” doesn’t prevent unilateral action to protect ourselves. But notice what else Kerry says. The test includes convincing “your countrymen” that your reasons are clear and sound.

And here’s Dick Cheney, direct as ever:

We heard Senator Kerry say the other night that there ought to be some kind of global test before U.S. troops are deployed preemptively to protect the United States. That’s part of a track record that goes back to the 1970s when he ran for Congress the first time and said troops should not be deployed without U.N. approval.

Now, I think that the Right is obviously wrong on the exegetical question of what Kerry actually said and believes, but I won’t belabor the point here (if you want it belabored, I suggest Roderick’s discussion at Austro-Athenian Empire). Let’s take it for granted that neither Bush nor Kerry would give another country a veto over American security policy, and move on to the critical question: do they have legitimate grounds for refusing to do so?

You’d take it from the way the debate has gone that it’s self-evident that they do: everyone in the droning classes seems to take it for granted that no sane governor could reasonably think that you ought to give other countries a veto over American security policy. Yet both Bush and Kerry were running for President–an office whose legal authority is supposed to derive from the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution (which you swear to uphold when you become President) says, inter alia, that

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. (Article VI, emphasis added)

One of those treaties made under the authority of the United States is the Charter of the United Nations, which was ratified by the United States government in 1945. If you accept the Constitution as legally binding, then you have to accept the provisions of the United Nations charter as legally binding; and among those provisions are:

Article 2

…

§ 2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.

§ 3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

§ 4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

…

Article 33

§ 1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.

§ 2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.

…

Article 39

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Article 40

In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable. … The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.

Both Bush and Kerry claim to recognize the legal authority of the Constitution and the treaties made under it, including the U.N. Charter. But the plain text of the U.N. Charter gives other countries a veto over U.S. military policy, through the apparatus of the United Nations. Except in cases of actual invasion (which are exempted Article 51), the United States government cannot go to war without U.N. approval without violating the U.N Charter, and thus also the Constitution.

Now, as an anarchist, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I couldn’t care less about the United Nations: I’d argue that trusting a body constituted by the world’s heads of state and their representatives to protect international peace and human rights is about as wise as trusting a League of Foxes to guard the hen-house (and for precisely the same reasons). For that matter, I don’t recognize the legal authority of the Constitution and I don’t think that the pretenders to government office have any legitimate authority to ensnare the rest of us in legally binding treaties. But I do care about bad arguments. If there’s anyone who doesn’t agree with my peculiar views on the nature of legal authority, it’s John F. Kerry and George W. Bush; they claim to recognize the Constitution as legitimate and either one would swear to uphold it after being elected. If they really believe what they claim to believe about the law, then a decent sense of intellectual shame would demand that they either:

1. … accept other countries’ veto power over the United States’ decisions to go to war,

2. … move to formally withdraw the United States from the United Nations, or

3. … stop claiming that the Constitution is the basis for their legal authority

Something’s got to give; you can’t hold all the positions that John Kerry and George Bush loudly insisted that they hold without getting yourself stuck in a rank inconsistency. It may be too much to expect intellectual decency from politicians and political discourse. But if political discourse has lost its sense of shame, then the sooner it learns it again, the better. And someone has got to start the teaching, by example.

As the French might say, écrassez l’inf?@c3;a2;me.

Generalísimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

In honor of the 29th anniversary of this joyous day, you may enjoy reading about the memorial anti-fascist demonstrations held across Spain, or by reading about the life and work of Buenaventura Durruti–an anarchist and a hero of the anti-fascist struggle in the Spanish Civil War, who happens to share the anniversary: Franco passed into his well-deserved oblivion 39 years to the day after Durruti was killed on the way to Madrid.

(Thanks, To the Barricades 2004/11/21.)

Let’s say you’re trying to rebuild a country shattered by 25 years of terrorism and brutal civil war. Corruption, political instability, and warlordism are daily sources of terror. Most of the country is completely dependent on foreign aid. Farmers cannot support themselves on traditional crops, and grinding poverty is the norm all throughout the countryside. But there is one glimmer of hope: a lucrative trade that now supplies 60% of the entire GDP and employs one out of every ten people in the country. What should you do?

Obviously, you should shoot the farmers and burn their fields until their only lucrative cash crop is eradicated!

Three years after the fall of the Taliban, the United Nations issued a dramatic plea for help yesterday, saying that Afghanistan’s opium crop is flourishing as never before and the country is well on the way to becoming a corrupt narco-state.

The UN’s annual opium survey reveals that poppy cultivation increased by two-thirds this year, a finding that will come as a deep embarrassment to Tony Blair, who pledged in 2001 to eradicate the scourge of opium along with the Taliban.

So alarmed is the UN that it is suggesting a remedy more radical than any that has been put forward before – bringing in US and British forces to fight a drugs war similar to the war on terror. It wants them to destroy farmers’ crops on a massive scale before they can be harvested.

— The Independent 2004/11/19: Afghanistan: a nation abandoned to drugs

Just what will they be destroying in this escalation of the drug war?

British officials point out that the Afghan economy is booming, that three million refugees have returned home and that four million children are in schools. But yesterday’s report reveals that the engine of economic growth is opium production. Last year Afghanistan exported 87 per cent of the world’s supplies. Opium is now the “main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples”, according to the UN.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that the trade is also fueling many problems for Afghanistan. Narco-trade is helping to foster widespread corruption, political instability, gang violence, and possibly some hefty smuggling profits for Taleban militants in western Pakistan. So the answer is… to escalate a violent conflict to keep Afghanistan’s only cash crop traded completely on the black market?

There’s a lot to be disappointed in and outraged at in Afghanistan. While terrorist jihadis and murderous warlords have been using their US-supplied arms, and the Commisar’s eyes have been turned toward Arab targets, things have gotten pretty rotten–no matter how much the Prince President may piously declare that freedom is on the march. There’s a reason that the United Nations ranks Afghanistan as the worst country in the world to live in, with the exception of Sierra Leone. But that’s because of things like these:

UN voter registration teams did have female staff members, but, again, security of staff and attacks by anti-government groups meant that registering women in remote areas was difficult. Women were targeted including in an attack on a registration bus in June 2004 in Jalalabad when three female staff members were killed; reports of threats by the Taleban and warlords to deter women from registering; and targeted killings of Afghans holding voter registration cards.

Amnesty International (AI) noted a pervasive lack of security during its mission to Afghanistan in August and September 2004. Women felt unsafe outside their homes in the presence of warlords, guns and the absence of rule of law.

…

A large number of women in Afghanistan continue to be imprisoned for committing so-called “zina” crimes. A female can be detained and prosecuted for adultery, running away from home or having consensual sex outside marriage, which are all referred to as zina crimes. The major factor preventing victims of rape complaining to the authorities is the fear that instead of being treated as a victim, they themselves will be prosecuted for unlawful sexual activity.

During its recent visit, AI found that a large number of female inmates in prisons across Afghanistan are incarcerated for the crime of “running away” and for adultery, as well as for engaging in unlawful sexual activity. Amongst many judges and judicial officials, there was a prevailing lack of knowledge about the application of zina law.

— Amnesty International News 2004/10/28: Women failed by progress in Afghanistan

A little while ago when NPR was running a similar story on the radio, they quoted some functionary from the Karzai government, who piously intoned–without giving any reasons–that if the opium trade isn’t brought under control, the experiment in democracy has failed. I don’t know; it seems to me that that should be the least of their concerns. How has Drug War imperialism come to warp our priorities so far beyond recognition that burning two thirds of a desprately poor country’s economy to the ground seems to be the only option anyone considers viable? Have they lost themselves so thoroughly in the twisted labyrinth of statist policy goals that they can’t see that they are effectively proposing a terror famine for the sake of controlling the trade in pain-killers? Have they flown so far off the handle that they just don’t care anymore?

This is statist nation-building–with militant misogyny, warlordism, and grinding poverty dragging the country down into hell, the US, UN, and UK prepare to inflict a political economy straight out of Mao’s Great Leap Forward on a nation of millions so that they never have to question their domestic policy initiatives. Is that sound in the distance freedom on the march? Does freedom wear jackboots?