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Category Archives: Libertarianism

Authority crisis roils America: Police abuse, torture and authoritarianism run amok

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There is so much thats horrifying about whats now simply called the torture report, the redacted summary of the Senate Intelligence Committees investigation into years of unforgivable CIA abuse post-9/11. But one thing that recurs disturbingly often is anal rape imagery: examples of rectal feeding, of rectal exams that used excessive force, and at least one instance, according to the report, of threatened sodomy with a broomstick.

Am I the only one who thought about Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was not just threatened but actually sodomized with a broomstick by the New York Police Departments Justin Volpe in 1997? The torture reports release, in the wake of grand juries failing to indict police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and right here in New York, where Louima was tortured, reminds us of the danger of unaccountable state power.

Yet an undercurrent of authoritarianism in American culture and a particular American deference to authority figures who are supposed to protect us threatens to let it go unchecked.

To be fair, many Americans are horrified by the torture reports revelations. And many Americans believe police officers should be held accountable when they use excessive force and harm or kill Americans, of any race. But theres a disturbing impulse evident lately, to excuse abuses of power on the part of those who are charged with protecting us, whether cops or the post-9/11 CIA. I dont care what we did! former Bush flack Nicolle Wallace shrieked on Morning Joe Monday. And she spoke for too many Americans. (Though not for her former boss Sen. John McCain.)

I watched the debate over the torture report unfurl all day Tuesday, online, in print and on television. All the coverage focused on a few questions: whether Sen. Dianne Feinstein is right that torture didnt work; whether the report might produce blowback by our enemies; whether the CIA is being scapegoated for Bush administration decisions. There was shockingly little emphasis on the fact that torture is illegal and a war crime, banned by the Geneva Conventions, a U.N. Convention against torture ratified under a supportive Ronald Reagan, and by Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113C of theU.S.Code.

So much in the torture report should appall Americans, above and beyond the many details of depravity. CIA officials lied about who they had in custody. They lied about what they were doing. They destroyed evidence. They tortured two of their own informants. At least 20 percent of the people they detained, as examined by investigators, were held wrongfully. They paid $81 million to two psychologists who knew nothing about al-Qaida, terrorism or the war against them. They didnt fully brief President Bush until April 2006, after 38 of 39 detainees had already been interrogated.

This should be an issue that unites civil libertarians on the left and the right as should excessive force by police but the authoritarian impulse is stronger on the right. Libertarianism also seems overwhelmed by the prevailing resentment of President Obama, and the changing America that he represents. Still, its amazing: Even as wingnuts deride Obama as a fascist and a tyrant, they applaud excessive force by police officers and CIA officials.

Its also amazing that its taken two years to get a redacted executive summary of the torture report released. Lets remember that were merely talking about sharing information about the Senates investigation into torture, not about indicting or punishing anyone. At least grand juries considered whether to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo in the killings of Mike Brown and Eric Garner. There has been no such process regarding CIA torturers.

Which is not to say the grand jury process in Ferguson or Staten Island delivered justice to those mens families. Nor have the families of John Crawford and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, African-Americans killed by police while holding toy guns, even gotten a fair and clear accounting of how their sons died. Young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than white men, yetwhite peoples confidence in police fairness, and doubts about cops racial bias, have never been higher, while African-Americans is understandably at a record low.

Thankfully Abner Louimas attackers were punished; Volpe is serving 30 years in prison, and Louima won a settlement of $8.7 million the largest police brutality settlement in New York history at the time. The Louima rape happened to take place under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has emerged as the chief defender of cops who kill in the last two weeks. Giulianis career is an example of how the authoritarian impulse in American politics often prevails.

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Authority crisis roils America: Police abuse, torture and authoritarianism run amok

EB56 Daniel Krawisz: Nakamoto Institute, Bitcoin & Libertarianism, The Problem with Appcoins – Video

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EB56 Daniel Krawisz: Nakamoto Institute, Bitcoin Libertarianism, The Problem with Appcoins
We are joined by Daniel Krawisz, the Director of Research at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Daniel co-founded that organization last year with Michael Goldstein and Pierre Rochard to educate...

By: Epicenter Bitcoin

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EB56 Daniel Krawisz: Nakamoto Institute, Bitcoin & Libertarianism, The Problem with Appcoins - Video

Conversation with John Tomasi – Free Market Fairness and Libertarianism (Skyperadio Ep. 9) – Video

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Conversation with John Tomasi - Free Market Fairness and Libertarianism (Skyperadio Ep. 9)
Prof. John Tomasi (Brown University), the author of "Free Market Fairness", in conversation with Otto Lehto. Is social justice compatible with free market id...

By: K2nsl3r

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Conversation with John Tomasi - Free Market Fairness and Libertarianism (Skyperadio Ep. 9) - Video

Downton Abbey's Dirty Secret

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Season five of the smash hit British period drama, Downton Abby, begins in six weeks. The series continues the fictional story of the aristocratic Crawley family and the familys friends, relatives and servants set in and around the Downton Abbey estate. The series recounts the day-to-day lives impacted by all the great events of the early twentieth century from the sinking of the Titanic through the aftermath of World War I and beyond.

A key general theme is the vast disparity in wealth between the aristocratic family and the lowly servant class. The irony is that the people in the aristocratic family and their servants seem oddly equal in terms of both abilities and flaws. The series is not an indictment of the aristocracy, which is why the left hates it. For example, Salon recently published a hit piece on the show. The show depicts a group of actual monsters in a manner thats explicitly loving, the article opines. [W]hen the facts get in the way, theyre disposed of. Downton Abbey is a show about how the world was straightforwardly better when an entrenched class system ruled.

Actual monsters? The idea that there are no decent people in an aristocracy is just nonsense and so is the idea that the show depicts the characters unrealistically. In truth the Crawley family is portrayed as vulnerable, somewhat inept, increasingly irrelevant, and often forced to adapt to change against its collective will.

Other commentators have seized on this realism. For example, Jerry Bowyers of Forbes finds the show reasonable and realistic, and that the aristocrats are flawed but admirable. He even concludes that the show portrays an anti-class-warfare message, which is another reason the left hates it and the masses love it. John Tamnys exploration of series creator Julian Fellowess ideology reveals an insightful and complex thinker and one that points us in the direction of libertarianism rather than conservatism, which also helps explain the shows great popularity.

The plot is largely driven by secrets. One episode might be based around a servant who has a secret on another servant. Another episode might be based on one member of the aristocratic family having a secret about another family member or friend. The juiciest secrets are often secrets held by a servant about one of the family members. However, the dirtiest secret about Downton Abbey is not fictional and has never been told before. The secret reveals the true nature of the state, whether it be aristocratic, democratic, or dictatorial.

The actual setting for the show is Highclere Castle, which is used for exterior and interior shots of Downton Abbey. Highclere is the estate of George Herbert, the 8th Earl of Carnarvon (third creation) and his wife Fiona Aitken.

The dirtiest secrets of the real-life Downton Abbeys of the world can be better understood with an examination of the 1st Earl of Carnarvon (second creation) James Brydges, and how such aristocracies came to be in the first place.

The first true economist, Richard Cantillon, described during Brydgess era (i.e., the early 1700s), the nature of human society thusly:

[I]f a prince at the head of an army has conquered a country, he will distribute the lands among his officers or favorites according to their merit or his pleasure. He will then establish laws to vest the property in them and their descendants.

This pretty much explains how the original English aristocracy came into being and how James Brydges became the 1st Earl of Carnarvon. Brydges was born into a low-level aristocratic family and became a Member of Parliament, largely through bribery, around age 25. He then used this position to impress and curry favor with the ruling political elite. His political influence continued to grow and he soon was appointed Commissioner of the Admiralty.

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Downton Abbey's Dirty Secret

Andrew Dittmer: Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt on How Private Equity Really Works

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Yves here. Naked Capitalism contributor Andrew Dittmer, perhaps best known for his series on libertarianism (see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and his responses to reader comments) has returned from his overlong hiatus to interview the authors of the highly respected new book, Private Equity at Work.

Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt have produced a comprehensive, meticulously researched, scrupulously fairminded, and therefore even more devastating assessment of how the private equity industry operates, including its deal and tax structuring methods, its impact on employment, and whether its returns are all they are purported to be. Their work was reviewed in the New York Review of Books; we also discussed it in this post.

Earlier this year, Andrew spoke with Appelbaum and Batt, and the first part of their discussion covers the problematic relationship between private equity funds (general partners) and their investors (limited partners) and how private equity affects other businesses.

In some cases, Appelbaum and Batt bending over backwards to be evenhanded. For instance, they attribute the explosion in CEO pay not to the leveraged buyouts industry (private equity before it was rebranded in the 1990s) but to an article by Michael Jensen in the Harvard Business Review that argued for paying CEOs like entrepreneurs. While narrowly true that the Jensen article was the proximate cause of the shift in big corporate pay models, having lived through the 1980s and the way that LBOs captured the attention of the business press, it is hard to imagine Jensens thesis being taken seriously in the absence of the LBO boom. The maximize shareholder value theory of corporate governance was first presented in a Milton Friedman New York Times op-ed in 1970 and had not gotten traction with the mainstream. It was the wave of takeovers of overly-diversified conglomerates in the 1980s and the easy profits garnered by breaking them up and selling off the pieces that seemed to prove the idea that too many CEOs didnt have the right incentives to run their businesses well (and in fact, its also true that the business press of the 1970s decried American management as hidebound and much less good at working with labor than the Japanese or Germans). But as weve seen since then, equity-linked pay has produced rampant short-termism and facilitated looting by executives. Even if the old pay model was problematic, its replacement has performed even worse, save for the CEOs themselves.

By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic as well as teaching undergraduates. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience

Interactions of General Partners (GPs) with Limited Partners (LPs)

Eileen Appelbaum: Rose and I did a briefing at the AFL for the investment group. We had investment people from both union confederations who are concerned about the fact pension funds are putting so much money into private equity. They told us that they had never been able to see a limited partner agreement until Yves Smith published them. The pension fund people are so afraid of losing the opportunity to invest in PE. Some general partner could cut them off for having shared the limited partner agreement. Unbelievable.

Andrew Dittmer: In general, LPs seem to have a pretty submissive attitude toward GPs. Where do you think this attitude comes from?

Rosemary Batt: One cause is the difference in information and power. Many pension funds dont have the resources to hire managers who are sophisticated in their knowledge of private equity firms. They dont have the resources to do due diligence to the extent they would like to, so they need to rely on the PE fund, essentially deferring to them in what they say.

Eileen Appelbaum: I think that there is a reluctance to question this information or to share it with other knowledgeable people they are afraid that if they do, they will not be allowed to invest in the fund because the general partners will turn them away.

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Andrew Dittmer: Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt on How Private Equity Really Works

Anti-terror measures will make us the extremists we fear

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Theresa May is pushing a terrorism bill through parliament which will place a legal duty on universities to ban radical speakers. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

In the 1860s when the Austrian ambassador complained to the home secretary, Sir George Grey, about Karl Marx and other revolutionaries, he received a brief and dismissive reply: Under our laws, mere discussion of regicide, so long as it does not concern the Queen of England and so long as there is no definite plan, does not constitute sufficient grounds for the arrest of the conspirators.

Not quite what the current home secretary would have replied, I suspect. Theresa May is rushing yet another terrorism bill through parliament. This will place a legal duty on universities to ban radical speakers mere discussion in the words of her Liberal predecessor, who probably also took a more favourable view of being labelled radical.

Fifty years ago Malcolm X came to speak in Oxford, an episode now recalled to stir the sentimental memories of the universitys alumni. Today, of course, he would never have made it to Oxford; the UK Border Agency would have turned him back at Heathrow. After all even the very silly, but vile, Julien Blanc, the seducers guru, has been banned.

Malcolm X would probably have fared better in his homeland. The United States remains a nation of laws girded by a constitution, despite police shootings and protest riots. Sadly the United Kingdom is rapidly becoming a nation of ministerial discretion and direction, ever wider administrative powers that would probably have more than satisfied the 19th-century Prussian and Austrian bureaucrats who were so worried about Marx.

Under Mays new legislation, universities will have to follow the guidance issued by the Home Office. If they fail to follow it, the home secretary will be able to issue them with directions. Far from being regarded as institutions in which the most vigorous (and contested) debates should be encouraged, higher education institutions are now to be treated as fertile ground for the radicalisation of gullible students by supporters of extremism.

This is not the first time the government has introduced legislation to require universities to ban extremist speakers, although paradoxically the first political intervention back in the 1980s was to stop universities, and student unions, banning rightwing speakers, extremists of another ilk.

But this initial, and rather one-sided, libertarianism was quickly succeeded by more authoritarian interventions. Until now, the centrepiece has been the Prevent strategy, begun under Labour and revamped by the current government.

The 2011 white paper asserted the governments absolute commitment to defending freedom of speech. But, in the very next sentence, it argued that preventing terrorism meant that extremist (but non-violent) views had to be challenged by the administrative measures it then outlined. We have travelled a long road from Greys reply to the ambassador.

There is so much wrong with the new legislation. The key terms such as radicalisation, extremism and terrorism will be defined by politicians who are advised by securitocrats, cowed by tabloid-inflamed public opinion and influenced by electoral advantage.

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Anti-terror measures will make us the extremists we fear

Morning Star :: Only a boycott will stop Amazons persistent abuse of its workforce

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It doesnt want to pay its taxes, it doesnt want to pay a living wage, it doesnt want to pay publishers, distributors or authors its time to act, says JIM JEPPS

Today has become known as Black Friday, an import from the US, where the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy reaches peak stupidity. Things have got so frantic in the US that in last two years running two people were shot in separate incidents over wide-screen TVs, parking spaces and for their rights to spend like an enraged bull.

Large corporations use the day to focus US attention on filling their coffers to the extent that advertising for goods and services becomes indistinguishable from down-the-line propaganda for capitalist consumerism.

Ever the more level-headed neighbours in Canada responded in 1992 with an activists annual Buy Nothing Day where they advocate taking a day off rampant consumerism and perhaps reassessing how happy our possessions really make us anyway.

So indistinguishable from big politics has Black Friday become that this week in Ferguson pastor Jamal Bryant, who was arrested last month for protesting against police violence, has declared a total boycott this weekend. He said: If a white officer kills a child he is still worthy to work? Black children matter. Black lives matter ... our generation stand because they refuse to roll over ... marching is good, praying is necessary (but) we need a clear economic agenda ... this Friday will be Black and Blue Friday, on this coming Thanksgiving black people will not be marching to stores, but marching against injustice.

The pastor declared: Lets shut it down. We are standing with the workers of Walmart at thousands of stores across the country who will not be working because they deserve a liveable wage. We declare war on poverty, we declare war on injustice and we declare war on anybody who does not respect black children. We are going to keep our money to ourselves until the red, white and blue salutes the black in this country.

In Britain most of us who encounter Black Friday do so via Amazon, which artificially ramps up sales as as it tries to get us to do our Christmas shopping entirely through them. As its near monopoly strengthens it is threatening the very existence of independent stores particularly book shops. Its estimated that one book store closes a week and thats a trend that will continue unless we resist it.

Some booksellers in Britain are hitting back against tax-avoiding Amazon with a cheeky Black and Red Friday, calling on people to boycott the online retailer this Christmas.

Nik Gorecki of the Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB) and left bookshop Housmans said: The public is waking up to the bad business practices of Amazon and a new boycott Amazon campaign this year has been gaining real momentum. This year the Alliance of Radical Booksellers is asking you to help spread the word about the alternatives to Amazon and support the alternative by way of your local radical bookshops.

As Uli Lenart, of Bloomsburys Gays the Word bookshop says: In spite of the complex and powerful dominance of multinational corporations the secret to society safeguarding our independent, local booksellers and businesses is really quite simple. Support them by spending in them even if it is just once a year at Christmas and they will continue to flourish and provide a humane and heartfelt local community service.

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Morning Star :: Only a boycott will stop Amazons persistent abuse of its workforce

If youre pining for the good old days amid todays turmoil, youre fooling yourself

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Oct. 1, 2014 5:15 p.m.

When President Obama recently said the world is safer and less violent than its ever been, the usual knee-jerk antagonists mocked him.

But Fox News pundit John Stossel, whose uber-libertarianism often rubs me the wrong way, SAYS Obama got it right:

Americans now face beheadings, gang warfare, Ebola, ISIS and a new war in Syria. Its natural to assume that the world has gotten more dangerous. But it hasnt.

People believe that crime has gotten worse. But over the past two decades, murder and robbery in the U.S. are down by more than half, and rape by a third, even as complaints about rape culture grow louder.

Terrorism is a threat. But deaths from war are a fraction of what they were half a century ago, when we fought World War II and the Korean War, and Chairman Mao murdered millions. Despite todays wars in Iraq, Syria, etc., last decade saw the fewest deaths from war since record keeping began.

(Snip)

We wax nostalgic about the past, but the past was much nastier than today. Fifty years ago, most Americans my age were already dead.

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If youre pining for the good old days amid todays turmoil, youre fooling yourself


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