leftlibertarian.org

The Gaza strip is surrounded on every side either by the sea, or by a border wall erected and guarded by the military forces of the Israeli and Egyptian governments. The one and a half million people locked down in this tiny strip of sand have suffered grinding poverty and cultural deprivation, as a direct result of the extreme difficulty, or, for the past seven months, the complete impossibility, for peaceful workers or merchants to make their way over the government-created borders within which they are imprisoned, or to ply their trades in either Israel or Egypt. The walled-off border-crossing into Egypt has been repeatedly closed off for indefinite periods of time at the discretion of the Israeli government, and now has been locked down completely since June 2007. Last week, Palestinian militants, probably with the backing of Hamas, blew a hole in the wall near the Rafah Border Crossing in the middle of the night. Here’s what happened the next morning:

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - On foot, in cars and in donkey carts, tens of thousands of Gazans flooded into Egypt on Wednesday through a border fence blown up by militants — puncturing a gaping hole in Israel’s airtight closure of the Gaza Strip and giving a boost to Hamas.

In a shopping spree that was both festive and frenzied, Gazans cleared out stores in an Egyptian border town, buying up everything from TV sets to soft drinks to cigarettes.

… For ordinary Gazans, it was a day of joy and plenty.

Osama Hassan, 25, said the border opening will enable him to marry his 17-year-old fiancee next week, because they were able to get items they need to set up a household. He bought a special mattress for his injured back and she assembled kitchen supplies.

… Freedom is good. We need no border after today, said Mohammed Abu Ghazal, a 29-year-old out-of-work Gazan.

Children bought soft drinks and chocolate, women scooped up cheese and cleaning products, and men stocked up on cigarettes — all expensive or simply unavailable in Gaza because of Israel’s shutdown of cargo crossings.

Other Palestinians staggered over toppled metal plates that once made up the border fence, carrying TV sets, cell phones, tires and plastic bottles filled with fuel. Some brought in goats and chickens.

Four Palestinians in wheelchairs were pushed over the border, where ambulances picked them up for treatment in Egypt. At one point, a dozen people crowded around a motorcycle to lift it over a low border wall in Egypt.

… After news of the breach spread, people across Gaza boarded buses and piled into rickety pickup trucks heading for Egypt. It was a rare chance to escape Gaza’s isolation.

Moussa Zuroub, 28, carried his young daughter, Aseel, on his shoulders through the muddy streets of Rafah, which is divided by a wall into Egyptian and Gazan segments. I’m coming just to break that ice — that all my life, I’d never left Gaza before, he said.

By nightfall, more than 1,000 Gazans reached El-Arish, an Egyptian town about 37 miles south of Rafah, walking the streets and shopping in stores that stayed open late.

… The chaotic scenes came almost a week after Israel imposed a tight closure on Gaza, backed by Egypt, in response to a spike in Gaza rocket attacks on Israeli towns. On Tuesday, Israel eased the blockade slightly, transferring fuel to restart Gaza’s only power plant.

But true relief came with the toppling of the wall. Egyptian shopkeepers took advantage of the surge in customers, swiftly raising prices of milk, taxi rides and cigarettes. Shops quickly ran out of most of their goods.

In Gaza City, the price of cigarettes, which had skyrocketed during the closure, started to drop. Local money changers began charging extra to change Israeli shekels into dollars, as Gazans were using the U.S. currency in Egypt.

Crowds waited along roads in Gaza City, trying to catch rides to the border. Taxi driver Mahmoud Abu Ouda made one trip to Rafah, but stopped because he had no more fuel.

The city is empty of cabs. They are all in Rafah, he said.

—Ibrahim Barzak, Associated Press (2008-01-23): Gazans flood Egypt after border breach

Meanwhile, here’s the official reaction — which is the dignified term that the press uses to describe the ranting power-trips of a tiny, parasitic minority sitting in comfortable government offices far away from the millions of people upon whose lives and livelihoods they constantly render their sanctimonious opinions and summary judgments — to thousands of desperate people suddenly having a momentary taste of joy and freedom:

Official reaction to the day’s events ranged from dismay to embarrassment to outright anger.

The United States expressed concern about the border breach. Israel demanded that Egypt take control of its border. Hamas called on its rivals to help come up with new arrangements for Gaza’s crossings.

Egypt’s leader said he had no choice but to let in the beleaguered Palestinians. But Arab and U.S. officials in Washington said the Egyptian government assured the United States the border would be closed quickly.

… We are concerned about that situation and frankly I know the Egyptians are as well, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.

… An Arab diplomat in Washington said Egypt indicated to the U.S. that the flow of people would end by midday Thursday and pledged to rebuild the smashed barrier. A senior U.S. official, however, said Egypt was not specific on when the border would be closed but promised the situation would not continue for long.

They will make an effort first to contain the crowd on their side of the border so they don’t go anywhere, and then coax people back. We’ll see tomorrow how that has worked, said the official, who like the Arab diplomat, insisted on not being quoted by name in return for describing the conversations between the two governments.

—Ibrahim Barzak, Associated Press (2008-01-23): Gazans flood Egypt after border breach

Please note that in the minds of the bellowing blowhard lords of the world, assembled under the banner of Peace Through International Apartheid, the free and jubilant movement of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, their ability to, for once, get enough food and seek healthcare and even get a few minor luxuries and pleasures like chocolate for their children or cigarettes—and, for once, to trade with equals for the things they want, rather than being forced to take hand-outs from the all-pervasive U.N. relief agencies and NGOs that provide minimal relief in Gaza’s permanent state of emergency—is chaos that a government needs to take control of, a situation to be defused, a breach to be repaired—in short, a violation of sanctified bordercrat prerogatives which provokes concern and demands a prompt solution—which, in the mind of the Commissar, means a gang of armed men coaxing and corralling thousands of happily freed people back into their pens, and rebuilding the walls that shut them in as quickly as possible. To hell with joy and plenty—there are National Interests and Security Concerns involved.

It should go without saying that I have nothing but contempt for Hamas, the quasi-governmental terrorist force that uses Gaza as a base for exchanging dick-swinging shows of belligerence with the Israeli government, each armed faction playing off the other while their innocent neighbors, both Jewish and Arab, pay for it in death, terror, and ruined livelihoods. But even the most despicable creeps can be the occasion of something good, and I wonder—with fear and trembling—what kind of psychology it could possibly take to look at the Gazan’s jubilee days and see nothing but a menace to be eradicated and a situation to be coaxed and jostled and hammered back into the status quo ante.

Tear down the walls and bury the stones from which they were made.

(Via Mike Linksvayer 2008-01-27.)

(Revised late Thursday pm with more detailed information.)

Does anyone find it interesting that JFK was shot on 11-22, MLK on 4-4, and RFK on 6-6?

Of course, the last initial in their names is the 11th letter of the alphabet, and all died on dates divisible by 11.

If you add the corresponding numbers to the letters in their initials, you get:

JFK: J:10+ F:6 + K:11 = 27, and 2+7=9
MLK: 13+12+11 = 36, and 3+6=9
RFK: 19+6+11 = 36, and 3+6=9

The year MLK and RFK died, the Beatles released the White Album on 11-22, five years to the day after JFK was shot. It included the strangest track in the Beatles' entire catalog: "Revolution 9."

It could be said that if you want to look for patterns, you will find them. But often you don't have to look very hard.

I don't know what numbers the full names of the Kennedys and King will yield, and won't bother figuring it out, but I've toyed with some of my own information:

Adding the digits of the day of the month I was born, 26, comes to an 8.
My full birth date, including year, also comes to a 26, or 8
My Social Security number comes to a 44, or 8.
My full name comes to 215, which adds up to 8.
The signature I use on official documents comes to 152, which adds up to 8.
I was born in the eighth astrological sign.
I was born in october, and "oct" is an old root word for 8.
The letters of my first name come to a total that is divisible by 8.
The letters of my nickname come to a total that is divisible by 8.
My full name has 16 letters.
The address number of the house I grew up in adds up to an 8. (applies to some, but not all of my siblings)
Wilson is the 8th most common surname (applies to all Wilsons, so it's a stretch).
Three of the most life-changing years so far in my life each add up to 8, though that's open to interpretation.

The point is, I didn't go out looking for 8s. These are most of the things that I thought of and tried. It doesn't apply everywhere. My nickname is a 5. JLW comes to a 9. (So if I become known by that and become a political/social leader and get assassinated, I'm in the pattern.)

When I initial something, however, I use JW, and while that is not reduced to 8, the sum comes to 33. This is a significant number in occultism and conspiracy literature, most notably, the idea that the world is run by a conspiracy of 33rd Degree Freemasons. In France, the Freemasons were Jacobins, credited with instigating the French Revolution. My first and middle names, taken together, literally means "one who supplants the King," with my middle name being French for "the King." And the numbers of "James" and "Leroy" are 3 and 3, so "James Leroy" is "33." "Wilson" comes to 92, which comes to 11, and ultimately, 2, so my full name is either 332, or 3311. But before becoming 3's, both James and Leroy are 12's, so my name might be 121211. I don't think you'll have to think hard to realize that 12 has some significance in time measurement, astrology, and religion. If you want to discount the "33," you'll get "1212" instead. 2012, is a crucial date in the Mayan calendar, the end of the world or something.

Anyway, back to the Jacobins. James is a variant name of Jacob, dating back to ancient Hebrew. Jacob, of course, was the patriarch of the 12 tribes.

According to Jim Marrs, the French Jacobins can be traced back to the British Jacobites, who sought to restore the Scottish Stuart monarchy line in Britain, whose last Stuart King - James II - had established the Scottish rite of Freemasonry. My first name, last name, and ancestry are Scottish. So my name evokes both "Jacobins supplanting the French King" and "James the (rightful?) King."

Both my astrological sign Scorpio and my "number," 8, indicate I'd have a personality with some fascination with this stuff. Since I'm fascinated, I'm open to the possibility that my interest in politics was literally written in my name. But if my brown wavy hair and orange beard (I don't have one, but I did for a few months several years ago) say anything, I am part of the Wilsons of the Gunn clan in Scotland, and being the third-born of a fifth-born of a last-born to dirt-poor pioneers, I doubt I have much significance in that line. If I recall, however, there is a Stuart in the ancestry somewhere. In the Bible, the power or inheritance usually goes to second-borns, last-borns, or descendants of bastard or mixed stock. If my claim to the Scottish throne can be established, I think I'd make a decent king. My monarchy in law would be very close to anarchy in practice. (Anarchy in the good, spontaneous-order, libertarian sense, not the chaotic, violent sense that should be described for what it is, chaos.)

But all I know is that if I ever become famous, I'll be somewhat paranoid whenever March 3 (3-3) or August 8 (8-8) rolls around. Of course, if I do become famous and die under anything remotely resembling mysterious circumstances, it won't matter what date I die; someone will find a connection.

And they'll probably be right; I do believe everything is connected together on one level or another. My parents are clueless about this information, their selection of my name had more to do with an Apostle and a family friend and not historical claims, let alone irony, so it's either completely coincidental, or there is some synchronicity going on. Or, we find the patterns we want to find. I don't know about you, but the patterns I found about myself are pretty cool.

All right, I’ve got my mojo … well, not back, but I’ve got it: My Florida primary predictions were exact as to the order of outcome, and within 2% for each of the candidates. Let’s see if I can turn this into a roll.

For Super Duper Tuesday, there’s just no way I can pick percentages, etc. on so many states in anything like a timely manner. For some — most — of the Super Duper Tuesday states, I haven’t even seen polling data. Here’s the basic picture, though:

McCain wins Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Romney wins Massachusetts (of which he is the former governor), Idaho and Utah (the Mormon vote).

Huckabee wins Arkansas with a combination of evangelical and favorite son votes.

Surprised / Not Surprised

- Surprised if I’m wrong and McCain wins Idaho or Utah. Not surprised if I’m wrong and McCain wins Massachusetts.

- Surprised if I’m wrong and Huckabee wins Georgia. Not surprised if I’m wrong and Huckabee wins Idaho or Kansas, or loses Arkansas. Not surprised if he wins nothing at all.

- Surprised if Paul carries any states. Not surprised if he picks up some delegates, especially in California, or if he places a respectable second in Alaska, New Mexico or Utah.

Bonus pick for tomorrow

Maine is McCain’s.

Update policy

I won’t change any of these picks between now and the vote (or, it goes without saying, after). They’re written in virtual stone and I’ll stand or fall with them. However, I may update with percentage predictions and such. I’ll either do that down here at the bottom, or in this color if I place them inline in the original post.

The quote of the day feature is back!

“It’s no secret that after 9/11, the administration authorized the use of waterboarding, and that the technique was used on a number of detainees in 2002 and reportedly stopped in 2003. But the administration has never explicitly admitted that.

In fact, when Dick Cheney, seduced into loose talk by a friendly interviewer, confirmed that “a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives,” the White House furiously backpedaled, and Tony Snow did his best to proclaim that “a dunk in water” had not been a reference to waterboarding, but just “a dunk in the water.”"

~ Paul Kiel

Thanks, Tony. I feel much more reassured now.

I just handed in a paper for a class on philosophy of action that I attended last semester. The class was given by Anton Leist, who recently edited Action in Context.

In my paper I demonstrate how praxeology, as defined and explored by Mises and Rothbard in Nationalökonomie, Human Action and Man, Economy, and State, bears many similarities to analytic philosopher Donald Davidson’s views on action, which he discussed in his paradicmatic paper “Actions, Reasons, and Causes” and subsequent papers.

A close reading of Mises and Rothbard, and particularly of Human Action, suggests that both praxeology and Davidson’s philosophy of action share the view that all actions are caused by teleological reasons and that those reasons are constituted by certain beliefs and desires concerning the action in question. This belief/desire model is widely discussed by contemporary writers on philosophy of action and is accepted by many, among others by Michael Smith in “The Possibility of Philosophy of Action“.

Hermeneutician (at least that’s what my professor called him) Frederick Stoutland criticized this approach in his German-language paper “Reaktives Handeln und das Überzeugung/Wunsch-Modell“. When translated into English, this title would read “Reactive Action and the Belief/Desire Model”. Stoutland rejects both assumptions set forth by the belief/desire model.

First of all, says Stoutland, not all actions are caused by teleological reasons. There can also be, for example, reactive actions which we carry out simply because we have been trained to do so. Most of the time, when we see a stop sign we stop our cars not because we feel the desire to follow traffic rules and because we have the belief that by stopping our cars we can do so, but because we’ve been trained to do so. Stoutland argues such reactive actions could only be understood and described by a Wittgensteinian rule-following model.

Secondly, according to Stoutland, it isn’t even true that teleological actions are constituted by beliefs and desires. Beliefs and desires are merely necessary conditions for a certain action to take place under certain conditions. This second point of critique would require some further explanation which can’t be given here.

In any case, in my paper I come to the conclusion that Stoutland’s criticism of the belief/desire model also applies to Misesian and Rothbardian praxeology. Unfortunately, the prescribed maximum lenght of 12 pages didn’t allow me to analyze what this means for praxeology. Because I’m contemplating expanding my paper (and maybe trying to get it published somewhere) I will quickly outline the conclusions I’ve reached on this so far.

I think Stoutland’s second point of criticism doesn’t harm praxeology that much. The conclusions Mises and Rothbard draw from their views on action concerning the subjectivity of value still hold true even if it should turn out that beliefs and desires don’t constitute teleological reasons but are merely necessary conditions for purposeful action (a concept which in Stoutland’s eyes and contra Mises and Rothbard wouldn’t necessarily be pleonastic). I’m also convinced by Roderick Long’s paper “Anti-Psychologism in Economics: Wittgenstein and Mises” that the praxeological conclusions reached about purposeful action are of a universal, a priori nature.

However, I think the consequences for the praxeological project would be devastating if Stoutland were correct in asserting the existence of reactive actions (among other, non-purposeful, actions). Mises and Rothbard, who claim that there are only two categories of behavior, (purposeful) action and involuntary reflexes, would be impelled to assert that a car driver’s stopping her car means that she places more value on stopping her car than on not stopping it. This might be true, but if her stopping the car is a reactive action, there is, according to Mises’s and Rothbard’s considerations on value, no way for us to know. Thus, think of the almost infinite amount of actions that we carry out each day which seem to be of a similar reactive character as stopping one’s car at the sight of a stop sign. While reflexes and similar non-purposeful behavior can in all likelihood be neglected, I think a comprehensive economic analysis would need to take these reactive actions into account. However, this would also imply that apodictic economic analysis is impossible since a Wittgensteinian analysis of specific reactive actions would require an analysis of the specific social context in which these actions takes place.

Anyway, my question to anyone who might read these scattered thoughts is, are there any critiques of praxeology which take a similar line to the one I outlined above? It seems to me that the popular Objectivist and hermeneutical critiques of praxeology mainly focus on the supposedly Kantian/neo-Aristotelian form of praxeology and not its content. (However, I must admit that I’m not at all well-read in the hermeneutical tradition within the Austrian School.) Or more broadly asked, is there any literature on praxeology which takes into consideration the contemporary debates within the “mainstream” of philosophy of action? The only thing that comes close to what I’m looking for is this lecture given by Roderick Long about G. E. M. Anscombe.

This is my latest at the Partial Observer. Excerpt:

[E]ven when the answer is explained, people often don't see it because they have developed a perspective, a point of view at odds with the reality.

Here are examples: If more people had guns, there'd be less crime. The country would be more secure if it didn't intervene in foreign conflicts. Welfare programs create more poverty. Legalizing drugs will lead to less crime with no increase in drug addiction. Business regulations hurt workers and consumers more than they help. Employer-provided health coverage is a bad deal for workers. A marketplace where multiple currencies are exchanged will be to the advantage of consumers. Israel would be more secure if the United States cut off aid. There would be greater social harmony if anti-discrimination laws were repealed. Greater federal involvement in education leads to worse educational performance.

For many people, these assertions don't sound like they could be true. What's more significant, however, is people don't want them to be true.

Not understanding basic economics is dangerous because you’re vulnerable to political con games foisted by unscrupulous politicians.

Economics properly conceived is just common sense about human activity. An examination of the proposed economic stimulus will make this clear.

The rest of my op-ed, "Political Stimulus," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Not understanding basic economics is dangerous because you’re vulnerable to political con games foisted by unscrupulous politicians.

Economics properly conceived is just common sense about human activity. An examination of the proposed economic stimulus will make this clear.

The rest of my op-ed, "Political Stimulus," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Apparently this is the 148th anniversary of the song called among it's many variations "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". The tune was written, around 1855, by South Carolinian William Steffe. The lyrics at that time were alternately called "Canaan's Happy Shore" or "Brothers, Will You Meet Me?" and the song was sung as a campfire spiritual. The tune spread across the United States, taking on many sets of new lyrics. Thomas Bishop, from Vermont, joined the Massachusetts Infantry before the outbreak of war and wrote a popular set of lyrics, circa 1860, titled "John Brown's Body" which became one of his unit's walking songs. According to writer Irwin Silber (who has written a book about Civil War folksongs), the original lyrics were not about John Brown, the famed abolitionist, but a Scotsman of the same name who was a member of the 12th Massachusetts Regiment. An article by writer Mark Steyn maintains that the men of John Brown's unit had made up a song poking fun at him, and sang it widely. Bishop's battalion was dispatched to Washington, D.C. early in the Civil War, and Julia Ward Howe heard this song during a public review of the troops in Washington. Whatever the accuracy of Silber's and Steyn's accounts, the lyrics heard by Howe were about John Brown the abolitionist. Her companion at the review, the Reverend James Clarke, suggested to Howe that she write new words for the fighting men's song, and the current version of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was born.

(Via Austro-Athenian Empire 2008-01-29.)

Come on, guys. You’re making this too easy. Seriously.