leftlibertarian.org

The following article summary is taken from a longer piece published last year in the Lancet the international medical journal. I've added some additional paragraphs from the "GRAIN" website on the role of industrial poultry raising in China and other parts of south east Asia. Welcome to the exciting universe of poverty and greed ... aided as always by political totalitarianism.
"Since early 2006, highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 has been clocking up air miles at an alarming rate. It has spread quickly to Europe, the middle east, India, and Africa following no apparent pattern, and underlining how little scientists know about the virus ecology and where it will strike next. There is now growing concern that the whirlwind spread of avian flu in some parts of the world is not entirely governed by nature, but by the human activities of commerce and trade. Since mid-2005, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have given wide prominence to the theory that migratory birds are carrying the H5N1 virus and infecting poultry flocks in areas that lie along their migratory route. Indeed, this is probably how the virus reached Europe. Unusually cold weather in the wetlands near the Black Sea, where the disease is now entrenched, drove migrating birds, notably swans, much further west than usual. But despite extensive testing of wild birds for the disease, scientists have only rarely identified live birds carrying bird flu in a highly pathogenic form, suggesting these birds are not efficient vectors of the virus. Furthermore, the geographic spread of the disease does not correlate with migratory routes and seasons. The pattern of outbreaks follows major road and rail routes, not flyways. Far more likely to be perpetuating the spread of the virus is the movement of poultry, poultry products, or infected material from poultry farms-eg, animal feed and manure. But this mode of transmission has been down-played by international agencies, who admit that migratory birds are an easy target since nobody is to blame. However, GRAIN, an international, non-governmental organisation that promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity, recently launched a critical report titled Fowl play: the poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis. GRAIN points a finger at the transnational poultry industry as fuelling the epidemic."

[They point out that:] backyard or free-range poultry are not fuelling the current wave of bird flu outbreaks stalking large parts of the world. The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices. Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and Southeast Asia and -- while wild birds can carry the disease, at least for short distances -- its main vector is the highly self-regulated transnational poultry industry, which sends the products and waste of its farms around the world through a multitude of channels. Yet small poultry farmers and the poultry biodiversity and local food security that they sustain are suffering badly from the fall-out. To make matters worse, governments and international agencies, following mistaken assumptions about how the disease spreads and amplifies, are pursuing measures to force poultry indoors and further industrialise the poultry sector.

"Over the years, large concentrations of (presumably stressed) birds have facilitated an increased affinity of the virus to chickens and other domestic poultry, with an increase in pathogenicity. Since the 1980s, the intensification of chicken production in eastern Asia has gained momentum, changing the whole dynamic of avian influenza viruses in the southern China epicentre, which has had far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world. Reports suggest that the outbreak in Nigeria emerged as a result of illegally imported poultry, specifically day-old chicks. It seems that Nigeria has continued to import chickens from China and Turkey despite the FAO forbidding such trade with infected countries. It is unacceptable that this trade continues unchecked. Tighter regulation and monitoring of poultry movement should be enforced, and the perpetrators held accountable for their actions. Of major concern now is the continued spread of the H5N1 virus in Africa, where millions of people live alongside chickens, increasing the chances of the virus crossing into human beings. Poor medical, veterinary, and laboratory services, lack of health education, porous borders, and high mortality rates from other infectious diseases mean a new human influenza virus could spread undetected. Furthermore, we do not know what the impact of exposure to avian influenza will be on the many people who are already immunocompromised with, for example, HIV/AIDS. As in southeast Asia, poultry culls in Africa would damage the livelihood of millions of people. Poultry is a major source of dietary protein, thus ridding the continent of H5N1 could lead to malnutrition with devastating consequences to human health. Even with a concerted education campaign about the dangers of contact with dead birds, many Africans are likely to continue selling or eating birds that have died because they cannot afford to throw away meat even if it might be infected. Africa will need financial assistance to combat bird flu. Currently the $1·9 billion pledged in Beijing in January to combat avian influenza is earmarked for aiding research efforts, strengthening surveillance, and increasing the stockpiling of surgical masks and other equipment. But some of these funds should be set aside to compensate African farmers for destruction of their birds. Inadequate compensation will not only tip people into extreme poverty, but will also help spread the virus by discouraging people from reporting the disease."

Because of travel and other projects demanding my attention, I will not be blogging here for the next few weeks. I will probably return the week after Thanksgiving. I will continue to contribute to the Downsize DC blog. See you there.

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

A facsimile version of Tuckerite anarchist Francis Tandy’s Voluntary Socialism is now online at GoogleBooks. (Conical hat tip to Joel Schlosberg.) And Charles Johnson continues posting sections of Benjamin Tucker’s Instead of a Book. (Note: what Charles calls Part IV is what my edition calls Part V.)

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Selwyn Duke thinks that those who question the biological basis of various psychological and behavioural differences among races are “practitioners of a dark faith” (pun intended?) incompatible with the teachings of science:

It seems especially odd when you consider that most of these inquisitors [Duke’s term for the antiracist left] are secularists who subscribe to the theory of evolution. Yet, despite their belief that different groups “evolved” in completely different parts of the world, operating in different environments and subject to different stresses, they would have us believe that all groups are identical in terms of the multitude of man’s talents and in every single measure of mental capacity. Why, miracle of miracles, all these two-legged cosmic accidents, the product of a billions-of-years journey from the primordial soup to primacy among creatures, whose evolution was influenced by perhaps millions of factors, wound up being precisely the same. It’s really the best argument for God I’ve ever heard, as such a statistical impossibility could only exist if it was ordained by the one with whom all things are possible.

Duke’s argument as stated is flailing at a straw man, since few of the people he’s criticising have made the extreme claim that different races are “precisely the same”in “every single measure.” But Duke’s claim can be restated in a more moderate form: given the different evolutionary histories of existing races, isn’t it plausible to suppose that more of their differences are genetically based than the antiracist left is prepared to recognise?

The answer is no. Even staying at the level of empirical considerations, we might say that skepticism toward attempts to base behavioural differences among groups on biological grounds is inductively justified for the same reason that skepticism toward attempts to defend astrology is justified: because such attempts have been made over and over for centuries and have all proved spectacularly wrong. Asking us to consider the latest iteration of such theories in dewy freshness and innocence without attention to the long embarrassing history of such claims and their subsequent refutation is, well, unscientific, like asking Charlie Brown to trust Lucy to hold the football one more time. (Such history goes back a long way. Aristotle, for example, thought the failure of the Celtic and Germanic peoples to rival the cultural achievements of Greece was a sign of an innate intellectual defect. It’s ironic that the chief proponents of this type of argument in the 19th and 20th centuries were themselves of Celtic and/or German descent.) And this is before we even get to the social horrors that this sorry history of scientific failure has been used to justify.

Here’s an analogy: suppose that the next time a child goes missing, I say, “hey, maybe the child was kidnapped by Jews who wanted to use its blood to make matzohs.” When criticised for this suggestion, I exclaim indignantly, “Isn’t it possible that this is what happened? Shouldn’t we consider every possibility? Don’t you politically-correct inquisitors care about truth?” Well, of course my suggestion is possible in some abstract sense. But in light of the actual history of such speculations – their empirical ungroundedness, plus their horrific results – such a suggestion on my part would properly be assigned to the “pointlessly offensive provocation” file rather than to the “serious scientific hypothesis” file. And the fact that I find such hypotheses salient, despite their empirical weakness, reveals my own biases. (Of course all this applies to gender as well – which is why I was glad to see Larry Summers booted out of the presidency of my alma mater.)

But there is more involved here than empirical considerations, because empirical science deals only with the enabling conditions of mind, not the constitutive conditions. (For this distinction see here, here, here, and here.) In short, there are truths about what mind is that are accessible only to philosophical inquiry, not to empirical inquiry; and such truths place constraints on what sorts of empirical hypotheses about mind, and differences among minds, are admissible. Different races may indeed have reached mindedness by somewhat different evolutionary paths, but as long as it is mindedness they have reached, then whatever is philosophically knowable about mindedness will apply to all races equally. (It’s certainly not an astonishing statistical anomaly, calling for appeal to divine intervention, that widely separated and diverse cultures have converged on, for instance, the proposition that 7 + 5 = 12.)

As an example, it used to be popular in racist circles to say that certain races lacked a moral sense. Duke might say, “well, that’s an admissible empirical hypothesis – there’s no evolutionary guarantee that all races will have the same capacities – let’s do some tests and find out.” But suppose that it turns out, via philosophical analysis, that having a moral sense is part of having a mind – that mental and moral capacities are conceptually linked. In that case the suggestion will not be an admissible empirical hypothesis; its coherence has already been ruled out on conceptual grounds.

There is thus a sad irony in the fact that Duke’s argument is receiving favourable press among some praxeologists, because Duke’s complaint that antiracists’ dismissal of evolution-based arguments is an expression of “faith” is strikingly similar to the frequent mainstream characterisation of Austrian praxeology as a “cult” for dismissing empirical approaches to economics in favour of a priori considerations. From the materialist/empiricist/psychologistic/scientistic standpoint, any appeal to philosophical rather than empirical considerations counts as “faith” rather than science. But this simply evinces a lack of understanding of the nature of philosophical reasoning. Praxeologists recognise such critiques as bogus when directed at praxeology; they should recognise that such critiques are equally bogus when directed at the antiracist left.

I’ve argued in previous posts (see here, here, and here) that a number of popular hypotheses about genetically grounded behavioural differences are simply ruled out by philosophical considerations. In addition, there are cases where although certain hypotheses are not absolutely ruled out, their a priori probability is lowered. For example, one reason for stressing environmental (as opposed to biological) determinants of mentality as much as antiracist thinkers do is that mentality itself consists to a significant degree in transactions with the physical and social environment rather than merely what is going on inside the skull. This discovery, however, was reached by philosophical/conceptual rather than empirical means (the “externalist revolution,” as we may call it, of which Wittgenstein was the principal herald), and has gone largely unrecognised by those working in the empirical sciences – which is one reason that empirical researchers continue to proceed as though everything relevant to mentality were located in the brain. The externalist dimension of mentality does not absolutely rule out innatist hypotheses, but it does give us a reason we would not otherwise have had to look more closely at environmental determinants of mental features than we otherwise might.

In short, then, when a hypothesis is either impossible or relatively unlikely for a priori reasons, has a poor track record a posteriori as well, and has the inferiority of certain groups as its principal upshot, the suggestion that the hypothesis might have been prompted more by prejudice than by fearless scientific inquiry seems less like the “political correctness” about which Duke wails than it does simple common sense.

As much as I complain, and will continue to complain, about the quality of Google Books' digital archive, their access to materials is remarkable. I have very mixed feelings about that access, given the rather cavalier way in which scanning appears to be done. I worry that scarce, fragile volumes are being subjected to the rigors of the duplication process—without any complete and usable edition resulting! But the other side of the coin is that today I finally have access to a copy of William Batchelder Greene's 1859 An Expository Sketch of a New Theory of the Calculus, the work, published in Paris, which occupied much of Greene's attention in the years he and his family lived in France. And you have access to it as well, though I expect it is one of the least inviting of Greene's works. I have yet to determine if the diagrams are complete, though I already suspect that they are not. Google Books has also added the Explanation of "The Theory of the Calculus" (misidentified as The Theory of the Calculus itself).

If that isn't enough marginal William B. Greene material for you, then you can dip into the poetical works of William Batchelder Greene and William Batchelder Greene, Jr. Of some libertarian interest is the elder Greene's version of The Book of Job, which has some interesting commentary on secular and divine authority tucked away in its footnotes. Three other volumes:

• Imogen, and Other Poems, 1871.
• Cloudrifts at Twilight, 1888.
• The Staunch Express and Wild Cats, 1892.

all appear to be the work of the younger William. William, Jr. was an uneven poet, and received a number of poor reviews. Check out the timeline for a few, including one which begins: "Mr Greene's verses are beautifully printed on admirably thick paper. It grieves us not to find anything more hearty to say by way of recommendation of his volume." Of course, his father was prone, at least in youth, to some uncertain productions in verse, such as his "Song of Espousal." But there are some interesting moments, at least. "The Amputation," in The Staunch Express, is worth a look.

John Gray, best known for his Lecture on Human Happiness, is frequently listed among the earliest of mutualists. Certainly, he was an important figure among the more-or-less-Owenite socialists of the mid-1820s. His Lecture was cited by the "Mutualist" of 1826. But we know that at least some of the accounts of this "first mutualist moment" are at least a bit garbled, particularly where Gray is involved. I'm still deciding how to classify Gray's contribution to the history of mutualism, but the work has recently become easier, thanks to the appearance of a number of digital editions of Gray's works.

The following works are by Gray, or were part of the propaganda surrounding his proposals. A couple of notes: 1) The texts at archive.org are a little hard to work with, but they appear to be complete, which is much more than can be said for the versions at Google Books. I have reported a number of texts missing whole chapters, including one of the books by Gray. So far, I have yet to see a single instance of corrective action in that archive. 2) The "rough pdfs" are genuinely rough, though they are readable at proper magnification. They were provided by a friend who probably went to far too much trouble for such marginal material, but to whom I am very grateful. I hope to have clear, plaintext versions completed for those items soon. 3) An electronic version of the Lecture is in the works as well. I would like to include it in a collection of texts related to the spring course.

• Lecture on Human Happiness. 1825.
• ---. Philadelphia, 1826. [digital edition in process]
• The Social System, a Treatise on the Principle of Exchange. Edinburgh: W. Tait, 1831. [archive.org]
• Production the Cause of Demand. Birmingham: Radcliffe & Co., 1832. [rough pdf]
• An Efficient Remedy for the Distress of Nations. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1842. [archive.org]
• The Currency Question. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1847. [rough pdf]
• Lectures on the Nature and Use of Money. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1848. [archive.org]
• Committee of Enquiry into the Validity of the Monetary Principle Advocated in Gray's Lectures. A. & C. Black, 1849. [rough pdf]

Someone must have slandered Jean Gambell, for one morning in 1937, without having done anything truly wrong, she was arrested. Gambell, a poor working girl in England, was falsely convicted of stealing two and a half shillings from her boss. She didn’t steal the money, and in fact the money was later found, but by then it was too late. She had already been convicted, and, more to the point, she had already come under the eye of State psychiatry. Declared feeble-minded, this fifteen year old girl was locked up in English psychoprisons for seventy years over a trivial crime that she never committed. Her family desperately tried to get her released, but could not. Eventually she simply disappeared into the system, and her brothers no longer even knew whether she was alive or dead. Jean Gambell herself repeatedly told her prison guards in a care home that she had family she could go to, but they kept her locked up, because she had been officially declared crazy and stupid and could, therefore, be dismissed as a liar. All for her own good.

Jean Gambell finally escaped the talons of the therapeutic State last month—at the age of 85, with a lifetime stolen from her—when her brother finally learned that she was alive and confined in Macclesfield Mews Care Home.

Seventy years locked up in institutions hardly seems to be a punishment that befits the crime of stealing half-a-crown.

However, it is just such a fate that befell Jean Gambell when at the age of 15, in 1937, she was falsely accused of stealing 2s 6d (12.5p) from the doctor’s surgery where she worked as a cleaner.

She was sectioned under the 1890 Lunacy Act and even though the money was later found, she has been moved from mental institution to mental institution. More recently, she went into a care home and has been lost to her family, who thought she was dead.

But last month, by chance, her brother stumbled across correspondence which led to the discovery of her existence and the family was reunited.

Her brother David Gambell, 63, who still lives in his mother’s old home in Wirral, Merseyside, received a questionnaire addressed to his mother from Macclesfield Mews Care Home.

I thought it was just a survey for old people and I was about to throw it away when I saw Jean’s name pencilled in on one corner, he said yesterday.

I couldn’t believe it. I suddenly realised that my sister was still alive. I rang the care home straight away and they confirmed that our sister was there. He and his brother Alan, who had last seen their sister as small children when she was allowed to visit home with two wardens as guards, travelled to the Macclesfield home.

They were told by staff that their 85-year-old sister was deaf, could only communicate in writing and was very unlikely to remember them.

A little old lady on walking sticks came in, said Alan. She looked at us and cried out: Alan…David. Then she put her arms around us. It was very emotional.

I am sure that what has kept her going all these years was the challenge of proving to the authorities that she had a family. The trouble was, nobody would listen to her.

The brothers spent much of their childhood in orphanages because their parents were so poor. They said that they had later discovered that their father had tried for years to get Jean freed after she was put in Cranage Hall mental hospital in Macclesfield for being of feeble mind, but was unsuccessful because her records had been mislaid.

She spent years, lost in a maze of instutitons and care homes, trying to convince people in authority that she had a family. But nobody would believe her.

—David Sapsted, The Telegraph (2007-09-29): Falsely accused woman freed after 70 years

There is one thing that is even more terrifying than the savage cruelty of the hangman State, and that is the dispassionate sadism of psychiatric State—the therapist armed with the law, the straight-jacket, the lobotomy, and a near-absolute entitlement to take your freedom and destroy your life, and call that care for your professionally-reckoned best interests.

(Link thanks to Austro-Athenian Empire 2007-10-21: The Coldest of All Cold Monsters and Anthony Gregory @ LewRockwell.com Blog 2007-10-21: Innocent Woman Freed After 70 Years.)

Inspired by the work of Robert Anton Wilson, let’s invent a plausible sounding but utterly fictitious rumor and see how far it goes…

US President Harry Truman’s first lady, Bess Truman, was secretly a Stirnerite anarchist. When Harry asked her confidential opinion of a major post-WWII Soviet intelligence estimate, she said it was “the result of a bunch of spooks“. Harry, misunderstanding, began the habit of referring to US spies as “spooks” and the name has stuck ever since.

Second-tier Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani gets daily foreign policy briefings from Norman Podhoretz. Podhoretz, in turn, recently advocated killing potentially millions of innocent Iranians. According to Podhoretz’s theories, IF the Iranian government were developing a nuclear weapon, bombing Iran would delay this prospect by five to ten years. I’m not sure what sort of insanity, exactly, results in failure to acknowledge that, even if this were true, it would result in a US foreign policy of CONTINUALLY bombing Iran EVERY five years with no way to stop — until Doomsday, which might be rather soon. Such bombing would be an act of aggression under international law. While the Iranian government presently has no justification to attack the United States, Norman Podhoretz and (by extension) Rudy Giuliani want to give them one. This does not make America any more secure at all. Quite the oppposite, actually.

Please, sign the Iran Pledge of Resistance.

I think a great part of people’s rejection of Anarchy and misunderstandings about politics stems from two wrong beliefs about rights. Rights are a basic issue of politics, because people believe that we need the State in order to protect our rights. When we look at people’s rationale for the most criminal of the State’s [...]