In Honor of the March for Science
I think the progressives really have no sense of self-awareness or irony. For years, a standard talking point among climate skeptics was that government funding made it very lucrative to exaggerate the possible influence of humans on global temperatures. Naturally, the “pro-science” community recoiled in horror at the very suggestion at such a crass motivation. The only time funding matters is when it’s funding coming from Big Oil or Big Tobacco.
Yet when the Trump Administration proposes large cuts in government grants, NPR runs a story warning that researchers may now engage in “sloppy science” even fudging data to keep their labs open. OK fine, but if NPR is going to run this, I hope they don’t pooh pooh the idea that other scientists might exaggerate the danger of climate change to win grant money. Make up your minds, folks.
Most of the article is about how at least some scientists are willing to cheat to score grants and/or advance their careers, thanks to “strong career incentives to bend the rules””, The first sentence is the only one that REALLY tries to tie it to a “funding crunch for scientific research”.
Its purpose is obviously to box the reader into thinking about “the terrible consequences of less funding”. To be sure, the report NPR cites does mention issues with the “hypercompetitive” nature of funding, but it also mentions a number of other things, like tenure and the result-oriented nature of NIH grants that discourage less-certain research.
From this, expect to hear that even climate skeptics should be in favor of more federal funding of science, since that would mitigate one of the incentives to exaggerate claims!
Of course, the trouble with this argument is that it discounts the other disincentives, as well as dismisses out of hand the notion that the state is more likely to fund research justifying what it already wants to do anyway. That’s something only the Heritage Foundation does, after all.
“For years, a standard talking point among climate skeptics was that government funding made it very lucrative to exaggerate the possible influence of humans on global temperatures.”
I think the point here is not that the skeptic talking point was exaggeration, but outright hoax. Trump has said so several times. If there were reasonable discussion about exaggerated results in particular instances that would be fine, but the accusation is that the climate scientists are perpetrating a hoax on a massive scale to secure funding.
Any area of wide concern attracts a lot of attention. This gives the genuine scientists a really great opportunity to shine if everyone elese is lying. If the scientific consensus was based on a distorted or exaggerated picture to secure funding, there would be a great opportunity for genuine researcher to scoop the field and be proved right.
The laws of economics suggest that self interest would prevent the continuation of a hoax on this scale.
So while the incentives of scientists is an area of genuine concern, in an area with such competition as climate research we can be reasonably sure that competiton between the research groups keeps them pretty much honest.
After all, it would look really bad for BEST if GISTEMP kept out-performing them. As it is, all independently produced series are pretty similar.
Competition between researchers will improve the truthfulness of the results if any only if the incentive structure is such that truth is rewarded. If the incentives are such that politically correct — rather than factually correct — outcomes are more lucrative, then competition will encourage that instead. That is, in fact, the whole point of the argument against government interference with incentive structures.
We had a discussion here recently about the failure of airlines to take up the auction system for overbooked seats. My conclusion was that although companies are seeking to maximise profits, individually they may fail to do so. So prejudice and inertia resulted in several companies failing to take a profit increasing opportunity. I suggested that perfect competition would have resulted in the adoption of the idea sooner. Nothing revolutionary there.
We have a similar picture here. We can assume that the scientists are truth seekers – they want to be right. However, individually they may fail, just as the airlines failed to exploit the opportunity. The question then becomes, do we have a cartel, or do we have competition?
Looking at the airlines we see there were very few players
“By the 1930s, the Big Four—Eastern Air Lines, United Air Lines, American Airlines, and Trans World Airlines (TWA)—dominated commercial air transport. These companies had garnered exclusive rights from the federal government to fly domestic airmail routes, and Pan American (Pan Am) held the rights to international routes. The hold of these four airlines on their lucrative contracts went virtually unchallenged until deregulation in 1978.”
Before 1978 we had just 4 big players. It was quite possible for them to retain non-profit maximising behaviors without being out competed.
Compare that with climate science today. Wikipedia lists pages and pages of climate scientists. There are tens of thousands of papers pubilshed and there are hundreds of research groups across the world.
It looks like a competitive environment to me.
Clearly it is not perfect competition, but then nothing is perfect. The environment is sufficiently competitive that even of assume many infuential players are either misguided or dishonest, they will soon be shown to be wrong in this fast moving field.
Even if much of the funding is Governental, there is still competition because many dffferent Governments are involved and they fund many different institutions. Do you think University of East Anglia wouldn’t love to be the authors of the breakthrough paper that showed NASA to be wrong? That would ensure lots of funding for themseves, even if it cut off funding to lots of other places.
When Wegener was trying ot get his ideas on Continental Drift accepted there was not an international endeavour to look into the evidence. There were relatively few individuals and groups researching this aspect of geology. Nonetheless, the idea was eventually accepted, and quite quickly once a mechanism was proposed.
Helicobacter pylori was a challenge to recieved wisdom about baceria living in the stomach. In fact there had been hardly any research into this, because the accepted wisdom was accepted. It did not take very long for the idea to be accepted when evidence was presented because the environment was competitive.
There has never been an occassion when a concerted scientific effort has led us away from the truth. In all cases where correct ideas have been rejected it was due to lack if research and evidence. The effort going into climate research is overwhelmingly likely to take us closer to the truth than further away from it.
They could have been a bit more honest and called it the “March for Government Science Funding”.
You mean how like you lie about how “the owners couldn’t be too unreasonable, because frequent physical punishments would reduce the health of the slaves” even though we’ve sent you plenty of evidence to the contrary?
You have no integrity and no honor and no morals.
Nobel Prize winner Robert Fogel co-authored Time on the Cross, which argues that the “plenty of evidence to the contrary” you speak of is actually not all that abundant. So it’s not as if only a complete moron, or a moral reprobate, would believe such a thing. You believe the contrary because you must believe it, you just know it has to be true, before the evidence.
Liar liar pants on fire. I’m pretty confident one or more of us sent some of the evidence to you too. You are on the list of libertarians to be shamed into helping to abolish slavery. Amazing that we’ve had no success on that front yet. Libertarians must be pro-slavery.
http://zerobin.i2p.xyz/?e366ad962b11022e#kZD6Px+JpnU0c1L7BZxXucMuf28SGb/NA0l4gaq11Rs=
Of course libertarians are pro-slavery. It said so in the New York Times, after all!
One person gave the guy in the New York Times a chance to prove he was genuinely against slavery. He disappointed and linked an article in which he slandered the fair trade movement, which is a portion of the abolitionist movement. This was after he was given three sources documenting how slaves in the Ivory Coast are beaten for running away. I believe at least one of those sources is included in the above link.
We e-mailed dozens of libertarians. We didn’t find one abolitionist among them.
I would suspect that libertarians were completely amoral, but one guy said he found a single libertarian who agreed to boycott nuclear weapons. That’s not an impressive showing. It would be easier to find an anti-nuclear Democrat or Republican, or an anti-slavery Democrat or Republican for that matter.
Libertarians should rename themselves the Totalitarian party. It would be more honest.
You should go back to calling yourself Aisling, it’d be more honest. Give me Harold’s obtuseness over your moral grandstanding any day. Send me a link to the companies you boycott so I can see where I need to start shopping to counter-boycott you.
I was just thinking that myself, Dan. Whatever Harold may be, at least he’s not this doofus.
It’s too bad for these commies that they’ve convinced themselves that marketing is evil, since, man, they could do with a bit of instruction.
Libertarians call people who oppose this ‘commies.’ LIBERTARIANS ARE PRO-SLAVERY!
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“In the morning at 5 o’clock I wake up, then start to work. Then at night at 12 o’clock we stop working. … Here, you know, here, they [the fingers] are cut. The loom is so tight, then we do like that. Then this finger moves, and here it’s cut. And here also it’s cut. … He had one big stick. … Then if we are not working he beats. … Okay, I’m working I’m working, don’t beat me.” – Slavery: A Global Investigation https://vimeo.com/39383629
These are the people who SHOULD be called libertarians.
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“There were martyrs to the cause of abolition then, and sadly there are martyrs today. In India, antislavery workers are threatened, beaten, falsely imprisoned, and sometimes killed. In Pakistan, Nepal, and across North and West Africa, they face the same violence. The work of many liberators is disrupted by the need to find safety when the thugs come. On the front lines of liberation, these workers must run for cover every few weeks or months. We can do better than this. We know that when people around the world learn about a prisoner of conscience locked up in a dictatorship, the attention, letters, and pressure brought by average citizens can save the prisoner’s life. When a school or church or town “adopts” a person held unjustly and keeps the bright light of public attention focused, torture and disappearance are much less likely to happen. The liberators who are risking their lives around the world need this same protection. Since they cannot always rely on the normal protections of the police, and sometimes the police are a threat, they need our help. We must identify them by name and do what is necessary to ensure their safety as they bring slaves to freedom. Yes, there will always be risks—theirs is a dangerous job—but we need to help make it as safe as possible.”
– Kevin Bales, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves
This is why slaves in India are not helped by being enslaved.
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“But my father needed some money. He asked his landlord—for whom he had worked his entire life—for some money. The landlord gave him the money but took me in return. He asked my father, “What would your child do in school?” and “How will he feed himself?” He said, “Remove him from school, send him here to look after my cattle and I will give him one meal a day.” That is how I was taken out of school when I was seven years old and I was not allowed to study beyond my first standard. I continued working with the landlord. I got married and my wife and I worked in the fields and at home. Through marrying me, my wife also became a bonded laborer to my landlord. From dawn to midnight, we used to fetch water, clean the utensils, wash clothes, collect firewood and remove cow dung. We also had to prepare the ground for sowing the seeds, transplanting the saplings, nurturing the plants, harvesting the field, and finally husking the grains. The other agricultural laborers, who were lucky not to be bonded, worked much less and earned much more than me.”
“Once, to earn a bit more, I went to work with another landlord. This angered my landlord. He sent his henchmen to fetch me. They brutally assaulted me and verbally abused me during the journey back to my landlord.”
– Keshav Nankar, New Slavery, Second Edition
These are the people who SHOULD be called libertarians.
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“Nine members of the anti-slavery organization Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in Mauritania (IRA) have been in incommunicado detention since their arrests. They were charged on 12 July with rebellion, use of violence, attack against the police and agents of justice and membership of an unrecognised organization. They are at risk of ill-treatment while in detention.”
“Amadou Tijane Diop, the third vice president of IRA-Mauritania and Abdallahi Maatalla Seck, Coordinator of Section Sebkha, were arrested by police on 30 June at their home in Nouakchott. The police searched Amadou Tijane Diop’s house and seized his personal documents and laptops. According to his family, he suffers from a heart condition for which he may not be receiving adequate medical treatment while in detention. In the following days, seven other members and supporters of IRA-Mauritania were also arrested, some at their workplace, others at home. Balla Touré, external relations officer, and members Jemal Beylil, Salem Vall, and Moussa Biram were arrested on 1 July. Hamady Lehbouss, spokesperson, Khatri Rahel Mbarkek, President of IRA peace committee, and Ahmed Hamady, treasurer , were arrested on 3 July after organising a press conference calling for the release of their colleagues.”
“None of them has been allowed access to their lawyers or families since their arrest. A member of the national committee of torture prevention mechanism, who was seeking to confirm their whereabouts and their conditions of detention, was also denied access to where they were being held. The nine anti-slavery activists were arrested after communities who were living in a slum in the area of Gazra in Nouakchott for at least 20 years resisted being forcefully moved to another neighbourhood. None of the activists arrested participated in the organisation of the protest neither were they present at the event. The nine activists were transferred to the prison of Nouakchott on 12 July after being charged with rebellion, use of violence, attack against the police and agents of justice and membership of an unrecognised organization.”
– Amnesty International https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AFR3844032016ENGLISH.pdf
These are the people who SHOULD be called libertarians.
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“The Mauritanian anti-slavery campaigner Biram Dah Abeid, head of the initiative for the resurgence of the abolitionist movement in Mauritania, has been in custody since 13 December, charged with assaulting two police officers.”
“Human rights organisations have condemned his arbitrary detention and the harassment Abeid has suffered in his struggle against slavery. He was arrested with five other campaigners, on leaving hospital after treatment for head and leg injuries.”
“He had been beaten up by the police a few hours earlier, on the outskirts of the capital. Since then he has been in prison awaiting trial. He is in the high-security jail in Nouakchott, which is mainly used to hold Islamic extremists.”
“The International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organisation Against Torture have condemned “the assault and arrest of Abeid, the only purpose of which is to punish his activities upholding human rights in Mauritania”.”
– Christophe Châtelot https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/04/mauritania-slavery-campaigner-human-rights
These are the people who SHOULD be called libertarians.
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“It is a long, dusty drive through the mountains and valleys of Dagestan before the brick factory comes into view, its gassy haze hanging low on an otherwise empty horizon. Somewhere in this maze of kilns and clay is a man who claims he has never been paid for his work and cannot escape. Zakir Ismailov and Alexey Nikitin, activists from the Russian anti-slavery organisation Alternativa, have helped free workers like this many times. They have a standard plan: enter the factory quickly, find the person who needs rescuing, and get out before trouble starts.”
…
““It’s dangerous – really dangerous,” said Zakir, 35. “There have been occasions when people have come to the local shop where I buy food, and asked the shopkeeper to tell me that if I don’t stop saving workers from brick factories, they will kill me and blow up my family.””
– Kate Hodal https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/apr/01/slave-saviours-men-risking-their-lives-to-free-brick-workers-in-dagestan
“With rule of law the young woman would suffer 100% of the consequences and the rapist would suffer no consequences at all. With rule of law the young woman still suffers, but the rapist suffers punishment, and thus makes an example to discourage others.”
The penalty for obtaining evidence of rape can be higher than the penalty for actually committing rape.
https://www.rt.com/usa/358728-anonymous-trial-steubenville-rape/
“”You get 16 years for forcibly entering your way into a computer, but you get one year for forcibly entering your way into a woman,” Lostutter said. “I think that’s the precedent the government is setting here.””
Not every law is automatically correct, but the basic Anglo-Saxon system of laws that most Western countries are built from work pretty well.
Now you keep finding examples of where people have knowingly done the wrong thing (both legally and morally) and then get all upset over bad consequences. Regarding Aaron Swartz breaking into a computer to look for evidence, there’s a standard rule that law enforcers cannot themselves be above the law they enforce. Evidence obtained illegally is not admissible as evidence. This is for good reason, you don’t want police just breaking into people houses whenever they feel like it. OK, they do that already, but that’s because law enforcement in the USA has a lot of problems. There is an attempt in the USA to make police into military units… which is a whole different problem.
If Aaron Swartz had done the right thing and gone through proper channels to obtain that evidence, probably he would have been better off and also the rapist would have gotten a more serious charge.
Maybe there’s rare situations where vigilante justice is necessary, but it’s not a great idea to just have everyone go off and start break and enter all over the place in order to find evidence. Did you know that a hacker breaking into a computer can also plant evidence? I’m not saying that Aaron Swartz did that, but point is he could have, so by breaking in he actually spoils the authenticity of what he is trying to collect.
One year for rape sounds like a very unusually light sentence. With the Rotherham rapes some of the sentences have been more than 10 years (much worse situation, where police sat on their hands for years, then finally got pushed into doing something). The leader got 35 years.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rotherham-grooming-gang-sentenced-to-combined-103-years-in-prison-for-rape-and-sex-abuse-of-girls-a6897731.html
That was a situation where justice was interfered with by political correctness… but eventually it got sorted out. It did not get solved by a bunch of vigilantes.
And yes I do think that gang had the benefit of police turning a blind eye, I really hope there’s some serious cleanups.
Anglo-Saxon laws were pro-slavery.
“Sometime in the fifth century, after the Romans had abandoned Britain, Anglo-Saxon raiders from across the North Sea turned their raids into conquest and settlement and founded a society based on a triple division: nobles, freemen and slaves.”
…
“The three broad divisions of Anglo-Saxon society as it took shape in sixth-century England were nobles, freemen, and slaves. The Anglo-Saxons had not, of course, introduced slavery into Britain; it had existed under the Romans and Celts. As Roman control broke down, however, the island itself became a source of slaves, seized in raids by Saxons, Scots, and Irish. St. Patrick is perhaps the most famous example, but far from the only one. Raiding and trading continued after the Anglo-Saxons took control of much of the island.”
…
“Imma’s story shows, too, how warfare, endemic in England, first between tribes and then between emerging kingdoms, provided a steady supply of slaves for centuries after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. Furthermore, the boundary between the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons was long contested. The mutual relations of Celt and Saxon are shown by the way the word “wealh” changed in meaning from Celt or Welsh to slave. When the Anglo-Saxons gained the upper hand at the end of the eighth century, the Vikings attacked from Northumbria to Devon and everywhere in between, raiding, trading and seizing, using, and selling slaves. The strife eased at the end of the ninth century, when Alfred fought the Danes to a standstill, but flared again when the Danes returned at the end of the tenth century, first under Sweyn Forkbeard and then under his son Cnut. The resulting chaotic conditions supported a continuing slave trade.”
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“Slaves were created in other ways as well. Many people were born into slavery. Law codes set slavery as the punishment for various offences such as working on Sunday or some cases of theft; slavery in these instances functioned as a de facto prison. Evidence that such slaves were common is abundant, not merely because law codes explicitly stated such a penalty, but because wills sometimes singled out penal slaves for grants of freedom. In addition, economic hardship often led to slavery. In times of penury, a father might sell a child, and whole families could end up as slaves as an alternative to starvation. Thus, in a tenth-century manumission document, Geatflaed freed “all those persons whose heads she took in exchange for their food in those evil days.” Birth, punishment, and poverty, together with war and raids, maintained the supply of slaves in Anglo-Saxon society.”
– Pat Dutchak https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/pi/article/viewFile/1430/970
“If a man buys a maiden, the bargain shall stand, if there is no dishonesty.”
…
“If a man forcibly carries off a maiden, [he shall pay] 50 shillings to her owner, and afterwards buy from the owner his consent. If she is betrothed, at a price, to another man, 20 shillings shall be paid as compensation.”
– Laws of Æthelberht https://archive.org/stream/lawsofearliesten00grea#page/14/mode/2up
“there’s a standard rule that law enforcers cannot themselves be above the law they enforce”
Law enforcers always seem to be above the law. It’s part of what makes legal systems so incredibly confusing if you try to take them at face value.
How can the same organization who enforces the theft of entire orchards under eminent domain and similar laws also be responsible for arresting a shoplifter for the theft of a mere apple? If murder is against the law, why do the police not go stop the military from bombing people? If breaking into computers is illegal, why has the NSA never been prosecuted for this?
Moral codes, even ones I disagree with, can sometimes make some degree of sense, especially if they aren’t riddled with double standards. Legal systems never seem to make any sense if taken literally, for all of them seem to be riddled with double standards.
Deric Lostutter is the one who hacked computers to obtain evidence of rape. Aaron Swartz downloaded numerous PDF files from JSTOR using an MIT account.
https://www.rt.com/usa/358728-anonymous-trial-steubenville-rape/
Also, the US government was not showing much interest in prosecuting this case.
“When the young woman tried to press charges, she was dismissed and her character attacked by the football-crazy town.”
…
“One of the homes where the girl was assaulted allegedly belonged to the prosecutor, who has a son on both the football and wrestling teams and had allegedly pressured the victim and her family not to press charges.”
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“In 2015, the school’s technology director William Rhinaman pled guilty to deleting files related to the rape, Refinery 29 reports.”
It must be nice to be able to rationalize redefining words at will when you want to claim that a philosophy you don’t like is in favor of a thing you don’t like.
“Pro-voluntary transactions between willing parties without government interference” just doesn’t have the same acerbic ring as “pro-slavery,” does it?
Libertarians call this ‘voluntary transactions.’ LIBERTARIANS ARE PRO-SLAVERY!
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“Antonio Martinez stood in the hot sun, exhausted from a cross-country journey, and waited. Just 21 years old, he had traveled from Mexico to the U.S. with the promise of a well-paid construction job in California. But now he stood in a field in central Florida, listening to one man pay another man $500 to own him.”
““I realized I had been sold like an animal without any compassion,” Antonio thought at the time, more than 10 years ago.”
“He was right. In modern times, in the United States, Antonio had been sold into slavery in Florida’s tomato fields.”
“These slaves often work for 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week. They are kept in crampt and dirty trailers, constantly monitored, and have wages garnished to pay a debt invented by the trafficker to keep victims enslaved. Many victims face threats to themselves or their families, regular beatings, sexual harassment and rape. They can’t leave, can’t seek help. They are in every way trapped.” – Amanda Kloer, CNN
http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/21/your-tomato-possible-ties-to-slavery/
Libertarians call this ‘voluntary transactions.’ LIBERTARIANS ARE PRO-SLAVERY.
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“He invited us to his home to meet 19 young men who had recently been freed from slavery on a cocoa plantation.”
“These are the children you’ve been told about, there are 19 of them. They’ve just been released with the help of Ivorian authorities. These young people were living in true slavery. They worked from dawn until after dusk. Today they look well as they’ve all had haircuts; before they looked pitiful.”
“Why is this boy ill?”
“He just arrived 6 months ago, so he was in the ‘breaking in’ period. Sadly for him his body could not resist the beatings.”
“After one of the young men finally managed to escape, the Consul lead a raid on the plantation, to liberate those still enslaved.”
“They were totally isolated from the world. They were unrecognisable when we found them – from another world. Around 8pm the shed is locked by one of them who had been made the boss. Each one had an old tin to use if they wanted to urinate. There was no question of them leaving the hut during the night. When they ran away they had to be caught by the others. When they are caught they are beaten both morning and evening on the first day. When they can’t take any more they are left. When their wounds have started to heal they are sent back to work. Then they are watched until they become ‘smoother’ – until they accept their fate.”
“The Consul has arranged for they boys to go home to Mali to be reunited with families that may have given up hope of ever seeing them again. For now, they are staying at Consul Mako’s home, beginning to recover from years of psychological as well as physical torture.”
“Our master used us as slaves. He took us there and never paid us a penny. He said if anyone escaped he would be caught and killed. No one dared challenge him, he was too powerful. We were all terrified of him, no one dared escape. If you ran away, he would catch you, tie you up, beat you, then lock you in a hut. They would tie your hands behind your back. Then one person would beat your front and someone else your back.”
“When you’re beaten, your clothes are taken off, and your hands tied. You’re thrown on the floor, and then beaten, beaten really viciouosly. Twice in a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.”
“How did they beat you?”
{visual demonstration}
“How old is this one?”
“He’s 18 now.”
“18 now. You’re body is covered in scars. Can you tell us what happened to you now?”
“The work was too hard for me. I couldn’t do it, so I ran away. Then they caught me, brought me back, and beat me.”
“When we were rescued he had been beaten so much he couldn’t walk. After you were beaten your body had cuts and wounds everywhere. Then the flies would infect the wounds, so they’d fill with pus. You had to recover while you worked.”
“In the time that you were working at the plantation, was anybody killed?”
“When he beat somone to the point that he couldn’t move, he took him out of the plantation. He took the person away. We never saw that person again.”
“Was anybody here paid any money for their work?”
“None of us has ever been paid.”
“And how many years did you work on the plantation?”
“I worked there for 5 years, 5 years and 5 months.”
“When you think back on what you had to do these last 5 years, what does it make you feel?”
“When I think of all that suffering, it hurts my heart deeply. I want to say so much, but I just can’t find the words.”
“The cocoa goes into making chocolate. Have you ever tasted chocolate?”
“Mmm-mmm. We have never eaten chocolate.”
“In the rest of the world, millions and millions of people eat chocolate. What would you tell those people?”
“If I had to say something to them, it would not be nice words. They enjoy something I suffered to make; I worked hard for them, but saw no benefit. They are eating my flesh.”
– Slavery: A Global Investigation https://vimeo.com/39383629
Antonio Martinez no doubt knew from the start that he was getting involved in an illegal venture and putting his life in the hands of criminals.
If the USA had an operational border security, these criminals would be restricted in their ability to make money. Hopefully young Mexicans like Antonio will decide it’s smarter to make an honest living.
When immigration controls go up, slavery goes up.
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“A by-product of the Trump administration’s stance on tightening immigration in the US is that companies with supply chains relying on low-skilled, migrant labour will face increasing risks of modern slavery. According to the Outlook, stricter deportation rules for 8 million undocumented migrant workers will push them further underground, while a US-Mexico border wall would increase criminal trafficking fees, leaving migrants more deeply mired in debt and vulnerable to exploitation.”
https://maplecroft.com/portfolio/new-analysis/2017/03/09/us-migrant-clampdown-land-grabs-and-slavery-blind-spots-among-top-human-rights-risks-business-verisk-maplecroft/
Appeal to the law is not a moral argument. Laws can be pro-slavery.
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“In a cramped room behind the Nepali embassy in Qatar, a large group of migrants have sought shelter from their employer, who failed to pay them for months and is refusing to issue them with the exit permits they need to leave the country.”
“We haven’t been paid between three to eight months. I haven’t been paid for 10 months. After 17 months, I still don’t have my ID card. I came here legally, but now I am illegal.”
“Without ID cards migrants are effectively illegal aliens and can no longer move about freely.”
…
“His ordeal has been so stressful that he has lost all his hair.”
“For two months we had to beg for food. Until now I haven’t even sent one rupee home to my son. We were suffering a lot. But still the manager came and beat me at 2am. We went to the police, but they wouldn’t do anything.”
“We want to leave here safely by any means possible. We have problems. We don’t want to leave without our money. But it’s not worth staying here and risking our lives. We want to live.”
– The Guardian, Revealed: Qatar’s World Cup ‘slaves’, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/revealed-qatars-world-cup-slaves
There can indeed be bad laws, and in such a situation free people should work peacefully to remove those bad laws. Have you brought forward an example of a bad law? I don’t think you have.
You bring examples of Western democracies where slavery does happen. All of these countries already have made slavery illegal, they also made trafficking in people illegal and when I look through your examples I see a close connection between trafficking and slavery. If you do your research you will find various other crimes also closely linked to people trafficking such as opioid shipments, rape, gang rule, territory battles, etc.
Well the evidence you bring up is just one person’s opinion about what might happen. It’s hardly empirical.
Maybe your argument is that there’s no point having any law because 100% enforcement is not possible, but then if you would be consistent you would also be arguing that laws against slavery are useless. Is that really what you want to argue?
Empirically, Western governments have done a lot to reduce slavery. Criminals are caught and punished on a semi-regular basis. Obama deliberately opened the US Southern border, handing excellent profits to criminal trafficking gangs. I have no idea why you would support this.
Now there’s some examples from the Middle East, and personally I don’t agree with the laws in places like KSA and Qatar (I think they have a religious and tribal system and I’m not religious and I’m not fond of tribalism), but then I don’t live there either. The concept of national sovereignty is a good concept… it keeps the piece, it allows cultural differences, and it avoids war. This requires stable borders and it requires citizenship to be meaningful.
If the US government would stop shipping weapons into the Middle East, I’d be very happy with that… I doubt they are listening to my opinion, but if you want to campaign on that point I can get behind you. Might improve the lives of many more people that your silly anti-chocolate campaign.
Now morality… I understand this is different to law, although on a good day there would be considerable overlap. Morality is both the foundation of good law and a superset of law. Law can protect one person from another person, it cannot protect a person from themselves.
The foundation of all morality is individual responsibility. I would go one step further and say that without individual responsibility, no moral action is possible. This is also one approach to understanding the evil of slavery… the slave is deprived of being a moral agent by being deprived of the ability to make individual decisions. If you prefer a property rights perspective, as owner of your own body you should also be able to make decisions relating to your own body… and the inescapable implication of this is that some people will make poor decisions and they will have to accept the bad outcomes.
When you oppose slavery you automatically accept all of the errors and foolish behavior where people fail to act in their own best interests.
I would emphasize that two parties can both be responsible. If a young woman engages in what she knows is high risk behaviour, walking naked, alone and drunk down a dark back alley… and she gets raped, of course in this situation the rapist is guilty (both morally and under criminal law) and simultaneously the young woman made some bad decisions which had bad consequences. Law does not make individual responsibility go away, it merely formalizes the rules around that.
With rule of law the young woman would suffer 100% of the consequences and the rapist would suffer no consequences at all. With rule of law the young woman still suffers, but the rapist suffers punishment, and thus makes an example to discourage others. It’s not a perfect world, but this method has been proven to work.
That’s a typo… first sentence should be “Without rule of law” otherwise it would be illogical.
I blame Bob, because nothing is my fault, and because I know it yanks his crank.
“If the US government would stop shipping weapons into the Middle East, I’d be very happy with that… I doubt they are listening to my opinion, but if you want to campaign on that point I can get behind you.”
There’s a campaign. War tax resistance. Boycott the US government!
http://nwtrcc.org/
“Many people think if you refuse to pay taxes you’ll end up behind bars, but this is actually very rare. Of the tens of thousands of people who have resisted war taxes over the past 75 years, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, or NWTRCC, knows of only 30 who have done time.”
https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/protecting-war-tax-resistance-strengthens-antiwar-movement/
The moral argument for war tax resistance.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/71/71-h/71-h.htm
“It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, “I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico—see if I would go”; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.”
“The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves—the union between themselves and the State—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?”
“How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see to it that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divided States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?”
…
“Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less despondent spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her—the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.”
Also, boycott nuclear weapons:
http://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/
“There can indeed be bad laws, and in such a situation free people should work peacefully to remove those bad laws. Have you brought forward an example of a bad law? I don’t think you have.”
Slavery is legal in Qatar. Specifically, many immigrants in Qatar are not allowed to leave the country or switch employers without employer permission, and may be arrested as “absconded workers” (i.e. escaped slaves) if they attempt to do so. Additionally, there is no enforcement of the contracts that were used to lure them into the country. Oh, and many are dying of heart attacks.
Qatar has the highest per-capita income in the world, but the slaves are paid far less than their contracts specified or in some cases nothing at all.
Qatar is hosting the World Cup in 2022 and FIFA and their associates are taking full advantage of Qatar’s slave system to build the World Cup cheaply.
The situation in Qatar has been documented by the Guardian, Journeyman Pictures, ESPN, and Amnesty International.
“I would emphasize that two parties can both be responsible. If a young woman engages in what she knows is high risk behaviour, walking naked, alone and drunk down a dark back alley… and she gets raped, of course in this situation the rapist is guilty (both morally and under criminal law) and simultaneously the young woman made some bad decisions which had bad consequences.”
There is a distinction between acting immorally and acting unwisely. The rapist in your example acted immorally, but the woman only acted unwisely. Injustices often befall those who act unwisely, and even those who do act wisely, it is impossible to prevent such things, but an estimate of the likelihood of such injustice occurring should not be conflated with moral penalties.
Additionally, it is a failure of mainstream feminism to choose almost exclusively as example for heavy media coverage situations where the woman engaged in unwise behavior has so much faith in law enforcement that she does not really believe that her behavior is risky. Mainstream feminism seems to prefer to avoid talking about situations where the woman knows the risk and takes it anyway because there is something else she is more afraid of (e.g. a refugee woman fleeing a warzone), a woman who is more afraid of the police than of the rapist (e.g. a woman who does not wish to be deported back to a warzone), or a woman who is simply in a bad situation she can’t easily escape (e.g. in the Congo).
There is a documentary entitled “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness.” The woman in it risked being murdered to marry the man she loved. She also survived the murder attempt by turning her head just as the gun was being fired, so it grazed her cheek instead of killing her, and pulled herself out of the river. It is not the sort of story told by mainstream feminism.
“All of these countries already have made slavery illegal, they also made trafficking in people illegal and when I look through your examples I see a close connection between trafficking and slavery.”
The essence of trafficking is to remove the person geographically from family, friends, and neighbors who might help them. (Or in some cases, just grab an orphan or someone who doesn’t have a safe place to be anyway.) In this process, they might cross international borders legally, illegally, or not cross international borders at all (“domestic trafficking”). The end result is more or less the same: the slave generally cannot find anyone who will help, and people who care about the slave cannot find him or her.
Immigration controls aggravate this problem by making someone who wishes to migrate more dependent on others to arrange transportation. Having to rely on a coyote makes the situation more dangerous than it would be if the immigrant could simply walk or drive across the border on their own. If the immigration is legal, being dependent on an employer through the US’s H2-A or H2-B visa systems or worse Qatar’s kafala system makes the situation more dangerous than if the immigrant could simply obtain a visa on their own or if no visas were required.
Also, domestic trafficking has been linked to the foster care system.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/malika-saada-saar/stopping-the-foster-care-_b_4170483.html
To discourage people from leaving the safety of their communities, there are several things far more effective than passing laws against migration. First, don’t bomb them or otherwise take destructive action against the community. Second, former slaves will often testify about the danger involved and discourage others from believing false recruiters. Since false contracts are a huge problem, libertarians are giving people terrible advice when libertarians say that all sorts of problems can be solved with contracts. Contracts are not to be trusted. They are not enforced unless you are rich enough to afford good lawyers already. Third, members of the community may start their own businesses (reparations money to former slaves can help with this) so that people can earn a living within the community and not feel desperate enough to be easy for false recruiters to take advantage of.
There’s no moral reason to prohibit peaceful migration across imaginary borders. Migration is simply unwise when better options exist and when there is a lack of safe migration options.
Hey,
I tried emailing you (or your colleague?) and you didn’t answer. If you guys want to make the case that there is an underground slavery system alive and well in the world today, I am quite willing to let you author a guest blog post here. If you want to say libertarians are oblivious or even part of the problem, that’s fine too. But I don’t want you posting random excerpts on posts that have nothing to do with the topic.
So email me at rpm@consultingbyrpm.com to discuss details if you want a guest blog post here.
LIBERTARIANS FOR SLAVERY! LIBERTARIANS FOR WAR! LIBERTARIANS FOR TORTURE!
By the way, here are our demands.
http://zerobin.i2p.xyz/?d940299e843c4e04#Fn4h5BsLD2kFdS4jaRuokF9gtC1anLw/TXgfNs6gfkY=
I’ll say it again: I invite you guys to send me a blog post, laying out your view that there is widespread human bondage, and what steps you think people should take in order to help these (effectively enslaved) people. I’m even fine if you want to say libertarians are hypocrites when they claim to oppose slavery if they do XYZ in the real world.
What I don’t understand is that when I keep making this offer to you, you ignore it, and instead give me a list of “demands” that includes other people changing their behavior.
Suppose Paul Krugman said to me, “Bob, if you want to have a guest post on my NYT blog about Austrian business cycle theory, and how Keynesians are part of the problem, I’ll run it.” Then suppose instead of me taking him up on this offer, instead I listed a bunch of demands, including Krugman getting Dean Baker to stop criticizing austerity. Wouldn’t that be weird?
“to say libertarians are hypocrites when they claim to oppose slavery”
You are not even claiming to oppose slavery. From the example you gave of allegedly freeing slaves: “Further, if you don’t live up to my expectations, you won’t be punished; I will simply return you here.” Forcing someone to work by threatening to send them to a place they’ll be tortured is still enslavement. You are literally arguing that slavery is freedom. To repeat: DAMN YOUR ORWELLIAN CORPORATE TOTALITARIAN DEFINITION OF FREEDOM.
“what steps you think people should take in order to help these (effectively enslaved) people”
Why would we want to discuss that in any detail with people who want to actively support slavery? From above: “Send me a link to the companies you boycott so I can see where I need to start shopping to counter-boycott you.” Going into detail about anti-slavery efforts would be like giving you an instruction manual on how to increase the prevalence of slavery. We’ve probably already given you too much, but at least the response from many libertarians here has helped reveal them for the pro-slavery warmongers they are.
“Suppose Paul Krugman said to me”
Have Paul Krugman and his allies made fun of people tortured and killed during Mao’s regime, made fun of a specific libertarian’s experiences with being tortured in a communist or socialist regime somewhere, said the people who died under Mao’s regime deserved it for their law-breaking activities, said the protesters against Mao were more violent than Mao himself, asked for your anti-communist tactics for the express purpose of countering them, insisted that all anti-communists were Nazis, and advocated for drinking the blood of libertarians?
“and instead give me a list of ‘demands'”
If you met even one of those demands, it would be a step towards proving that you perhaps it is safe to regard you as more than an enemy with whom we have no common ground, an enemy actively engaged in violence-by-proxy against slaves, war victims, etc., and advocating that others do likewise, with no interest in self-examination. If you like, start with number 3. As for your blog, our blogger person is tired of writing blog posts and articles that will just be dismissed by you with some comment about how you’re too busy with your “day job” to pay attention. If you genuinely want debate, then enough with blog posts and articles that you and yours won’t really read anyway. Watch a documentary about slavery (Slavery: A Global Investigation is a good one to start with) or something and then come try to have a Socratic dialogue with one of us on IRC or some other instant messaging thingy thingy. Then if you want post the dialogue on your blog.
“that includes other people changing their behavior”
We do not ask you to force other people to change their behavior, simply that you tell them they should change their behavior. You already spend loads of time telling the government to it should change it’s behavior. Do you expect us to believe that you have less of a chance of convincing your fellow libertarians to change than of convincing the government to change?
Anon wrote: “As for your blog, our blogger person is tired of writing blog posts and articles that will just be dismissed by you with some comment about how you’re too busy with your “day job” to pay attention.”
OK, so if these blog posts and articles exist, give me some links. I will link to them.
I see that the slavery documentary is on YouTube; I’ll post it. As a helpful suggestion, when you are leaving comments on blogs asking people to watch a documentary, put a hyperlink to the YouTube version so people realize it’s free. Up till now I assumed you wanted me to order a DVD from Amazon, since you weren’t linking.
https://pastebin.com/eGjfwugn
“OK, so if these blog posts and articles exist, give me some links. I will link to them.”
You already did. It didn’t do any good. Most of your “libertarian audience” here is morally decrepit.
“As a helpful suggestion, when you are leaving comments on blogs asking people to watch a documentary, put a hyperlink to the YouTube version so people realize it’s free. Up till now I assumed you wanted me to order a DVD from Amazon, since you weren’t linking.”
Looking at the list of slavery stories we’ve been sending you, we sent you the Vimeo link at least twice, maybe more depending on how many people sent you those stories. The link is also on his page a few times. Here it is again:
https://vimeo.com/39383629
The NGO Free the Slaves publishes documentaries like that for free, because they are awesome like that.
Looking at the list of slavery stories we’ve been sending you, we sent you the Vimeo link at least twice, maybe more depending on how many people sent you those stories.
Let me explain what happened. About two months ago, my spam filter starting intercepting comments that had no context. They would be excerpts of people talking about getting beaten up / raped / etc., and then a link to a source. I had absolutely no idea what these comments were about. I thought it was some weird auto spam thing.
You can choose not to believe this, but libertarians actually think they are working to free people. So if you just send excerpts from escaped prisoners, it’s not that a libertarian would think, “Ah, this must be about my hypocrisy.” I had no idea what you guys were even doing until about last week, at which point I started inviting you to do a guest blog laying out your case.
“About two months ago, my spam filter starting intercepting comments that had no context.”
You should also have been receiving e-mails. In fact, we have a list of e-mails for over 100 libertarians.
The plan was that since you were apparently too busy with your “day job” to handle reading anything long, to dribble information at you (about two stories per day I think) in the hopes the information would sink in over a period of months, years, decades, whatever it takes.
I believe this list is relatively up to date. You should catch up if you haven’t been reading them.
http://zerobin.i2p.xyz/?838841f78071001b#GCVTgNJ3dL1+JtTIGpMfYG6iVAEjQoes8IJxffrm9nY=
“You can choose not to believe this, but libertarians actually think they are working to free people.”
No we don’t. There might be a few good apples, but for the most part libertarians are actually totalitarians in disguise. Even when we have actual conversations with libertarians, they do everything from crying about what they call “tax slavery” (but then delete comments recommending war tax resistance) to making fun of torture victims.
Tom DiLorenzo said it best: https://lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/anti-science-march-science/
Thomas DiLorenzo’s piece is one of the worst I have seen. Wrong, logival fallacy or simple assertion with no evidence in every respect.
An example is this:
“Estimates of the elasticity of demand for a product or service do not “settle” anything, not to mention far more complex economic relationships. The same is true of climate science and all other sciences.”
Comparing elasticity of demand with gravitational constant or charge in a electron is very poor analogy, and demonstrates the vacuity if his arguments.
“Comparing elasticity of demand with gravitational constant or charge in a electron is very poor analogy, and demonstrates the vacuity if his arguments.”
Your comments are the worst I have seen. Take this one for example, he was comparing using estimates for elasticity of demand to say the science is settled with using studies based on statistical analysis and probabilities in climate change to say the same thing. Nowhere does he mention gravitational constants or charges in an electron. But maybe you weren’t intentionally strawmanning him, and your reading comprehension is just awful.
“he was comparing using estimates for elasticity of demand to say the science is settled with using studies based on statistical analysis and probabilities in climate change to say the same thing.”
He was not. Let us look in a bit more detail.
“Furthermore, the world is constantly changing, so that statistical relationships that existed years ago are often vastly different today… Estimates of the elasticity of demand for a product or service do not “settle” anything, not to mentio [sic] far more complex economic relationships. The same is true of climate science and all other sciences.”
What is he trying to say?
“Estimates of the elasticity of demand for a product or service do not “settle” anything…”
Is that because the estimates are so poor nobody can agree, or because the elasticity itself is not fixed?
“The same is true of climate sciences and all other sciences”
This is wrong. Either because the estimates are good enough or because they do not shift.
Whichever way you look at it the statement does not help his argument.
Can you explain how he said something different? I agree he probably meant something different, but how can we possibly know what that was? We have to fill in so many blanks that we have no idea if our assumptions are what he intended.
“I agree he probably meant something different, but how can we possibly know what that was?”
Most of us can simply read what he wrote and understand it with no problem. For some reason you seem to have a lot of trouble with reading comprehension. I don’t think I’ve come across someone who struggles with understanding the message people are trying to express as much as you do. It leads to these long drawn out absurd conversations where everybody spends the whole time arguing with you over what the person was actually saying versus the crazy way you interpreted it. It’s quite annoying.
You didn’t actually show how or why what DiLorenzo said is wrong
All you did was disagree with it with unnecessary rhetorical flourishes
Replying to Dan also as there is more room here.
Dan “Most of us can simply read what he wrote and understand it with no problem.”
I see that s your problem, as I explain below.
MF – It is either factually incorrect or a non sequitur. That seems to cover it.
Lets look at the section in detail.
At the start he says “the overwhelming majority of whom have no education or credentials whatsoever in “science” of any kind.”
No education whatsoever in science of any kind? Overwhelming majority? Does he have any evidence that the marchers did not take science in school? Or is he just spouting made up nonsense? He obviously does not mean what he says because it would be an extraordinary claim. Maybe he means that majority are not practicing scientists? That would not mean much as it is fairly obvious and has little significance. Maybe he means the average level of scientific knowledge in the marchers is less than in the general population? That would require some evidence, and he seems to have none.
Maybe he wants to put the idea that the marchers have less than average scientific knowledge, but has no evidence that this is the case, so makes up a hyperbole to provide deniability? If challenged, he can say it was an obvious exaggeration. That is my favored interpretation.
Dan – what do you think he was trying to say here?
“But to real scientists nothing is ever “settled” ”
This is wrong. When we launch a satellite we do not investigate whether the Earth is round. That is accepted, or settled if you like. The doctor prescribing antibiotics does not speculate if infectious disease is caused by bacteria or miasma because that is settled. It is clearly wrong that to real scientists nothing in science is ever settled. Otherwise they would never get anything done because they would be repeating previous work.
So he starts with an incorrect statement, or a non sequitur if we are to interpret this as meaning there is no such thing as a real scientist..
Since he is obviously wrong here, so Dan, what do you think he was trying to say?
He then uses uncertainty about the value of variables to suggest that there can be no certainty about anything. What do you think he meant here?
Dan says “I don’t think I’ve come across someone who struggles with understanding the message people are trying to express as much as you do.”
So it is my fault if someone fails to express a coherent message? I pointed out that just about everything in the article was wrong in some way. That still stands.
I think the message he wants to get across is that climate science is all bad, climate scientists are all engaged in a massive conspiracy and the marchers are all ignorant hypocrites. However, nothing he said establishes the veracity of what I assume to be his position.
Are you under the impression that I would like to have one of those long drawn out absurd conversations with you? I did that once with you over the gay cake commentary. I’m not going through that nonsense again. No thanks
Dan, I started with a simple explanation. Your reading comprehension was not up to the task of understanding that “all other sciences” includes physics, so I explained.
I am happy to leave it there.
Dan, my hope is that people here will realize that engaging Harold is pointless and unproductive. He is obtuse on purpose to get others in those long, drawn-out conversations that go in circles. Life is too precious to waste time on Harold.
Richie, have you been talking to my wife?
“I think the message he wants to get across is that climate science is all bad, climate scientists are all engaged in a massive conspiracy and the marchers are all ignorant hypocrites. However, nothing he said establishes the veracity of what I assume to be his position.”
U.N. Official Admits: We Redistribute World’s Wealth by Climate Policy
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2010/11/18/u-n-official-admits-we-redistribute-worlds-wealth-by-climate-policy/
““This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy.”
“Is this quote from a) a climate change skeptic, or b) an official from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?”
“… EDENHOFER): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. …”
“… (NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy. …”
“… (EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
To keep on the subject of DiLorenzo, none of which he mentioned.
On your point, there are two issues.
1) Is the quote acurate?
The original is in german, and I must rely on translation. There is always great scope for misinterpretations in translations, so we do have to be very careful.
The translation I have seen puts it more like this:
“We have to free ourselves from the illusion that climate issues are purely environmental policy ones. For many countries it is all about concrete economic interests by now. They are only indirectly concerned with problems like desertification or the melting of glaciers, because climate policy extends today into many political areas. One thing has become increasingly clear: In the near future climate policy could redistribute the world’s wealth.”
How so?
….Climate policy has to make sure that the majority of the fossil reserves remain in the ground and are not used. Exactly that will diminish the income and wealth of the owners of oil and gas.”
I think the de facto part in some translations is essential. He seeems to be saying that environmental policy de facto redistributes wealth from fossil fuel reserve owners to everyone else. He does not seem to say from countries with fuel reserves, but the owners.
He does not seem to be saying that the purpose is re-distribution, but that re-distribution will be an effect.
There also seem to be different versions in german about, but here is one in print.
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/members/edenh/media/suddeutsche-zeitung-23.11.2010
Maybe a German speaker can translate better than Google. Any offers?
To conclude point 1, it is plausible that he meant nothing of the sort and this is simply a mis-translation.
2) If it is accurate, does it prove that climate science is all bad, climate scientists are all engaged in a massive conspiracy and the marchers are all ignorant hypocrites?
No, clearly it does not. He is one man.
The different versions are different interviews. One linked to was with Süddeutsche Zeitung.the other one was with Neue Zürcher Zeitung. They seem very similar.
“He does not seem to be saying that the purpose is re-distribution, but that re-distribution will be an effect. ”
Figueres: First time the world economy is transformed intentionally
http://www.unric.org/en/latest-un-buzz/29623-figueres-first-time-the-world-economy-is-transformed-intentionally
“However the official, Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, warns that the fight against climate change is a process and that the necessary transformation of the world economy will not be decided at one conference or in one agreement. …”
“… “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history”, Ms Figueres stated at a press conference in Brussels.
“”This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.“”
*Takes a bow*
HEY SHILL. Big Oil are governments, so if you support Big Oil then you are pro government, and warfare. Just look at Nigeria
Sellouts like you just demonstrate why so-called anarchocapitalism is a contradiction in terms. Real anarchists like Jeremy Hammond hate Big Oil.
Fucking neoliberal apologists disguised as anarchists.
I know what you mean! I just put my checkbook away from making my annual coerced donation to Big Oil. Nearly half my income went directly to Big Oil! Then my friend was smoking pot and got thrown into a cage by Big Oil. Terrible!
Then the CEO of BP bombed Serbia over Kosovo, based on propaganda. I can’t believe that happened.
Then my uncle wanted to try a potentially life-saving drug that was available in Europe, but Big Oil wouldn’t let him!
Then Shell confined a whole bunch of Japanese people in concentration camps. I couldn’t believe that happened.
Real anarchists should be like Henry David Thoreau and boycott taxes in protest against war and slavery. Thanks to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, boycotting war taxes is now safer than ever before in the USA!
“It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, “I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico—see if I would go”; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.”
“The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves—the union between themselves and the State—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?”
“How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see to it that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divided States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?”
…
“I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”
“I meet this American government, or its representative, the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year—no more—in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with—for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel—and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well that he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he will treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborlines without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name—if ten honest men only—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the State’s ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question of human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister—though at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a quarrel with her—the Legislature would not wholly waive the subject of the following winter.”
“Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less despondent spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her—the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.”
…
” I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did nor for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.”
– Henry David Thoreau https://www.gutenberg.org/files/71/71-h/71-h.htm
Also someone said to pass this on.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Transnational_corps/DrillingKilling_OilNigeria.html
“The Niger Delta is on fire. The explosion of a gas pipeline in Nigeria’s oil-producing region in October killed more than 700 people. It is also fueling the rage of millions in the delta who want an end to the pollution caused by the oil companies and compensation for their oil-rich land. A third of the country’s oil production has been shut down by unprecedented acts of resistance, infuriating transnational oil corporations and their Nigerian military business partners.”
“Three years after Ken Saro-Wiwa’s execution for exposing the relationship between Shell and the regime, it has come to light that US oil giant Chevron played a major role in the killing of two delta activists earlier this year. The corporation facilitated an attack by the feared Nigerian Navy and notorious Mobile Police on a group of people from a delta village called Ilajeland who had occupied one of Chevron’s offshore drilling facilities. Among their demands: clean drinking water, electricity, environmental reparations, employment and scholarships for young people.”
“On May 28, after occupying the facility for three days, villagers thought they were waiting for Chevron’s final response to their demands when helicopters swooped down. “We were looking at these helicopters thinking…people inside these helicopters might have been Chevron’s reps who are actually coming to dialogue,” said one of the activists, known as Parrere. “They were about to land when we heard shooting of tear gas and guns.” The Nigerian military shot to death two protesters, Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu, critically wounded a third man, Larry Bowato, and injured as many as thirty others. Bowato says, “When they shot these guys, I was rushing there to rescue [them]…it is then they shot me.””
…
“Q: Who authorized the call for the military to come in?”
“Omole: That’s Chevron’s management.”
So the government police killed 2 people, making an on-the-spot death penalty for the crime of trespass … that’s harsh.
While the activists sabotaging the gas pipeline killed 700 random bystanders delivering an on-the-spot death penalty for just being there minding your own business. Hmmmm… that’s worse than harsh, that’s just bloody minded.
Yeah, and frustrating the hopes and dreams of the innocents caught up in the violence. But it’s the cause that matters most, am I right?
Careful, Tel. One of these tough guys might call you a shill. Maybe even in all caps.
He says to tell you that there were that activist saboteurs did not cause the explosion, that the article says no such thing, and that you are a liar who completely made that up out of thin air. He says that assuming you’re a libertarian, the fact that you just blamed non-existent saboteurs for the sins of a murderous corporation proves that libertarians are in fact corporate totalitarians in disguise. Also that multiple websites say the exact cause of the explosion was unknown, but that a helicopter appeared there shortly before the explosion so that is suspicious. Others think it was due to shoddy maintenance by Chevron, and even Chevron is only blaming it on alleged thieves, not activists. Also that it’s not trespassing when Chevron like all governments has no right to be there to begin with.
I agree that libertarians are just corporate totalitarians is disguise, regardless of whether you personally are a libertarian or not.
We’ve e-mailed dozens of libertarians and haven’t found a single abolitionist among them. Instead, we’ve heard that people who are beaten for running away are actually there voluntarily, that beating and chaining and locking people up doesn’t count as slavery, and that it’s a violation of free trade to ask corporations to eliminate slavery from their supply chains and boycott if they don’t. NOT ONE ANTI-SLAVERY LIBERTARIAN HAVE WE FOUND!
Libertarians truly are corporate totalitarians.
We also drink the blood of hippy activists. Not for any healing properties, mind you, but because we think it’s funny, and we consider hippy activists to be unowned property.
“… and that it’s a violation of free trade to ask corporations to eliminate slavery from their supply chains and boycott if they don’t.”
You’re not helping the slaves by boycotting the products they make.
When you boycott their factory jobs out of existence, they’ll go back to back breaking field labor, prostitution, and such.
Congratulations:
How Can Sweatshops Help The Poor Escape Poverty? – Learn Liberty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxBzKkWo0mo
Also:
[Time stamped, Duration: about 3 1/2 minutes from time stamp]
Story of Stuff, The Critique Part 2 of 4 – Lee Doren
[www]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZzHU3ZfTtY#t=8m21s
This is why slaves in India are not helped by being enslaved.
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“She was just a schoolgirl when she found herself in Bombay, along with thousands of other girls who are beaten, locked in tiny cages or hidden in attics. Some are forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a day under the watchful eyes of madams and pimps.” “It can take 10 years for a woman to buy her freedom — if she doesn’t first succumb to AIDS, other STDs, complications from repeated abortions, malnourishment, malaria, or TB. Most don’t make it to the age of 40.” – Rebecca Raphael http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=132685
This is why slaves in the USA are not helped by being enslaved.
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“On arrival, Maria was dragged into hell. Sandra Bearden used violence and terror to squeeze work and obedience from the child. From early morning till midafternoon, Maria cooked, cleaned, scrubbed, and polished. If Maria dozed off from exhaustion, or when Sandra decided she wasn’t working fast enough, Sandra would blast pepper spray into Maria’s eyes. A broom was broken over the girl’s back and a few days later, a bottle against her head. At one point, Bearden tortured the twelve-year-old by jamming a garden tool up her vagina. That was Maria’s workday; her “time off” was worse.”
“When Maria wasn’t working, Sandra would chain her to a pole in the backyard without food or water. An eight-foot concrete fence kept her hidden from neighbors. After chaining her, Sandra would sometimes force Maria to eat dog feces. Then Maria would be left alone, her arms chained behind her with a padlock, her legs chained and locked together till the next morning, when the work and torture would begin again. Through the long afternoon and night Maria would fade in and out of consciousness from dehydration, and in her hunger she would sometimes scoop dirt into her mouth. Like most slaves in America, Maria was in shock, disoriented, isolated, and dependent. To maintain control, Bearden kept Maria hungry and in pain.”
“About one-third of the handful of slaves freed in the United States each year come to liberty because an average person sees something he or she just can’t ignore. Luckily, one of the Beardens’ neighbors had to do some work on his roof, and that probably saved Maria’s life. Looking down over the high concrete wall into the Bearden’s backyard, the neighbor saw a small girl chained up and whimpering; he called 911.”
“The police found Maria chained hand and foot, covered in cuts and bruises, and suffering from dehydration and exposure. She was too weak to walk and had to be carried to freedom on a stretcher. Her skin was badly burned from days in the sun. (In Laredo, Texas, the average summer temperature is ninety-eight degrees.) Photos taken at the time show one of her eyes bloodied and infected and thick welts and scars on her skin where the chains had cut into her. She had not eaten in four days. The district attorney said, “This is the worst case I’ve ever seen, worse than any murder. It’s tragic all the way around.” Later, at Bearden’s trial, the policeman who found Maria wept. “She was shaking and crying and had a scared look in her eyes. She was in severe pain,” Officer Jay Reece testified. He explained that he had tried to remove the chains from Maria’s arms with bolt cutters but couldn’t. As he tried to move her arm to cut the chains, she twisted and whimpered because she was in so much pain. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Reese said, and sitting in the witness box, this policeman began to cry.”
“It is hard to imagine, but Maria was one of the lucky slaves. In America, most slaves spend four to five years in bondage; Maria’s enslavement lasted only seven months. Sandra Bearden was arrested, and the Mexican government brought Maria’s parents up from Vera Cruz. Her father blamed himself for what had happened. “We made a decision that we thought would be good for our child, and look what happened. I made a mistake, truly, and this is all my fault,” he said. Unlike most slaveholders in America, Bearden was caught and convicted. Like most slaves, Maria got nothing, except the fare for the twelve-hour bus ride home. She had just turned thirteen.” – Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter, The Slave Next Door
This is why slaves in Italy are not helped by being enslaved.
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“Once she was in Turkey, away from her family and friends, her documents were taken from her and she was sold to the first of a series of Albanian pimps. Over the next year she was resold several times, forced into prostitution, paid nothing, and brutally beaten. Ultimately she was smuggled into Italy, where she was picked up by the police and handed over to a non-governmental organization providing support. Angela’s story is common in that she did consent to be taken to Italy for a job as a waitress. Normally such a false offer includes the promise of a valid work and residency permits.” – Kevin Bales, Understanding Global Slavery
This is why slaves in the Congo were not helped by being enslaved.
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“Cutting off hands was a common practice by the Force Publique, the police authorities of the Belgian Congo, to prevent theft and to terrorize the planters into harvesting more rubber. Deeply shocked to learn this, Alice and her husband John sent the photo back to Britain with a comment, “The photograph is most telling, and as a slide will rouse any audience to an outburst of rage.””
“Many at home dismissed the photo as an anomaly, practiced by a few bad apples. The Harrises sent back a few more photos. One showed two anonymous Congolese men — flanked by John Harris and his friend Stannard — holding the severed hands of their friends Bolenge and Lingomo. Another showed a young boy Epondo with his mutilated hand (below, rightmost) . The couple also toured Europe and America on a lecture tour denouncing Congo atrocities. They showed photos showing chicotte (whip made from hippopotamus hide) being used on laborers and and female hostages held in chains by a forest guard.”
https://iconicphotos.org/tag/alice-and-john-harris/
This is why slaves in Haiti are not helped by being enslaved.
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“Jean-Robert Cadet was born in Haiti, the son of a wealthy white businessman and a black mother who died when Cadet was only four. His father sent the young Cadet to a former mistress to become a restavec, a child slave. Restavec is a French term that means “staying with,” a term that disguises the reality of slavery. Under his master’s control, Cadet was forced to perform a range of menial tasks; if he made any mistake, he was beaten severely. Unfortunately, this incident of slavery is not unique—there are more than 250,000 restavec child slaves in Haiti. For the most part, these are children of the very poor who are given to well-off families in the hope that they will be given an education and a chance at a better life. Once handed over, most of the children lose all contact with their families and, like the slaves of the past, are sometimes given new names. In many ways, the restavec children are treated worse than the slaves of the past since they cost nothing and their supply is inexhaustible. They receive very little food or food of poor quality. Their health is usually poor and their growth stunted. Girl restavecs are worse off because they are sometimes forced to have sex with the teenage sons of their owners. If they become pregnant, they are thrown into the street. At maturity, most restavec children are thrown out and have to make a living any way they can—shining shoes, gardening, or as prostitutes.”
“As a restavec, Cadet served the family but was not part of it. He slept under the kitchen table or on the back porch. Though a small child, he received no affection or care from his owner. His sole possessions were a tin cup, an aluminum plate, a spoon, and the rags he was given to wear. In the stress and abuse of his situation, Cadet became a regular bed-wetter, which only increased the punishments he was given. Once Cadet’s only friend, another restavec child named Rene, stole two dollars and bought food that he then shared with Cadet. When he was caught, he was whipped severely and then forced to kneel on hot rocks so that he would confess with whom he shared the food. When he did not implicate Cadet, he was sent to the police station for a beating; he returned terribly injured and then disappeared.” – Kevin Bales, New Slavery: Second Edition
This is why slaves in Qatar are not helped by being enslaved.
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“They promised me $600 a month. But in Delhi [in transit], they tore up my contract and threw it away. On the plane I saw my new contract was for just 900 riyal a month. It was for a construction job. Even then, I didn’t get paid for five months. I took a loan to come here, [but without a salary] I couldn’t pay it back. That’s why I ran away.”
…
“In a cramped room behind the Nepali embassy in Qatar, a large group of migrants have sought shelter from their employer, who failed to pay them for months and is refusing to issue them with the exit permits they need to leave the country.”
“We haven’t been paid between three to eight months. I haven’t been paid for 10 months. After 17 months, I still don’t have my ID card. I came here legally, but now I am illegal.”
“Without ID cards migrants are effectively illegal aliens and can no longer move about freely.”
…
“His ordeal has been so stressful that he has lost all his hair.”
“For two months we had to beg for food. Until now I haven’t even sent one rupee home to my son. We were suffering a lot. But still the manager came and beat me at 2am. We went to the police, but they wouldn’t do anything.”
“We want to leave here safely by any means possible. We have problems. We don’t want to leave without our money. But it’s not worth staying here and risking our lives. We want to live.”
– The Guardian, Revealed: Qatar’s World Cup ‘slaves’, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/revealed-qatars-world-cup-slaves
This is why slaves in Canada are not helped by being enslaved.
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“She is blunt about what would happen if she refused to have sex with anybody.”
“”If you’re not beat up, then you would get raped by a few of them at once,” explains Little.”
– Paula Newton http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/23/world/canada-indigenous-sex-trafficking/index.html
This is why slaves in the USA are not helped by being enslaved.
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“Everything seemed normal until they reached Rose’s new home in America. Then the trap closed.”
“The husband and wife showed Rose the jobs they wanted her to do. Soon the jobs filled her day completely, rapidly taking control of her life. Up at six in the morning, Rose had to work until long past midnight. When she began to question her treatment, the beatings began. “They used to hit me,” Rose said. “I couldn’t go for three days without them beating me up.” The smallest accident would lead to violence. “Sometimes I might spill a drink on the floor by mistake. They would hit me for that,” she said. 1 In a strange country, locked up in a strange house far from home, Rose was cut off from help. If she tried to use the phone, she was beaten; if she tried to write a letter, it was taken away from her. “It was just like she was lost in the middle of a forest,” said Louis; “she was completely isolated.””
“Under the complete control of others, subject to physical abuse, paid nothing, working all hours, this fourteen-year-old schoolgirl had become a slave. The promise that she could go to school in America was just the bait used to hook her. In Cameroon her parents received no word from her, only occasional reassuring messages from the family who had enslaved their daughter. The beatings and constant verbal attacks broke Rose’s will, and her life dissolved into a blur of pain, exhaustion, work, abuse, and fear. Rose lived in slavery for two and a half years.”
– Kevin Bales, Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves
This is why slaves in Senegal are not helped by being enslaved.
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“One child is being whipped by an instructor for not earning him enough money. Tears run down another’s face. There are prison-bar windows. A shackle on a boy’s ankle.”
“Supposed teachers demand the students spend their days on the streets begging for money. If the students don’t bring back $3 to $4 per day — which is nearly impossible given the number of students asked to do this and the limited resources of people in Senegal — then the students often are beaten or raped, according to Cruz. The photographer told me students also are forced to memorize verses from the Quran and can be beaten for failing to do so.”
– John D. Sutter, http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/17/opinions/cnnphotos-sutter-senegal-slavery/index.html
This is why slaves in China are not helped by being enslaved.
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“”These people have not been convicted yet,” Wang says. “That is a very abusive situation.””
“”Nobody got paid anything,” he says. “If you didn’t work, you didn’t get food.””
“Or you got beaten.”
“Foster says a group of inmates ran the cell. They spurred workers with punches, kicks or worse.”
“”There was one particular leader during the month of July that was particularly sadistic,” says Foster. “Actually, he had braided a few of the Christmas light cords together. He would come up behind inmates that were working slow and slash them across the back. I can remember him very clearly, him doing it to this boy, who was in my estimation mentally retarded. And he would deliver blows that — right before my eyes — you would see the welts develop.””
– Frank Langfitt, http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/05/29/314597050/u-s-teacher-i-did-seven-months-of-forced-labor-in-a-chinese-jail
This is why slaves in Qatar are not helped by being enslaved.
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“His basic salary is stated to be 1100 rials, about 300 US dollars a month. It says he will be provided with decent accommodation, food money, and a ticket home after the 2-year period.”
“Then when we land here the first day, they are in airport, they take all the passport, and they say tomorrow morning you have to arrive in office to sign-in. We we go to the office, they change, another contract, and it’s this one. The basic salary here is 500. You see? Leave salary right here is 100. And this one food allowance is 100. So total salary is 700.”
“So if you were given this contract in Kenya, 700, would you come here?”
“No. No no no no no no no no no not anybody come here. But we land here then, so it’s difficult to go.”
…
“We secretly recorded one health worker. We cannot show the footage, and have changed his voice for his protection.”
“We’ve heard there’s a lot of people dying from heart attacks?”
“Labourers you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course.”
“Why’s that?”
“Too much work.”
“Are they being worked to death?”
“Yes, yes. Also, we have human trafficking here. So too many problems. You know, in the world, who is poor like this, no one cares.”
…
“Our boss is from Kerala, India. He takes part of our salary. If we are paid three thousand, there will be one thousand for us, one thousand for him and one thousand for the company. That’s why he doesn’t allow us to leave. I’d like to do anything else but this. That’s the problem with our boss, he can do whatever he wants with us. His name is Kunhu Kunhu.”
…
“They gave me another contract. 600 rials, basic. And then, I refused. I said, “I’m not signing the contract.” I want to leave. But in the office, they said, “if you don’t like to sign, we’ll cancel it. We’ll give the paper to cancel it.”
“Cancel what?”
“Cancel the contract.”
“And then what will happen to you?”
“I don’t sign it. Because I do not have the money to buy a plane ticket home.”
…
“We’ve been in Qatar two weeks now and quite frankly we’ve found enough evidence of human rights abuses and the breaking of Qatari laws to fill this car. But we’ve focused on four companies. And we’ve printed off some of the evidence that we’ve found. Here’s some contracts that workers have signed promising much more than they’re given. We also have photos of some of the horrendous conditions that they’re living in.”
…
“The company is called Marco.”
“These workers were promised decent pay, accommodation, food allowances, and a paid ticket back home every two years. When they arrived, their passports were taken and their salaries drastically cut. Every promise has been broken. They took out huge loans to come here and now struggle to send any money back home.”
…
“Some of the people here want to leave, but every time they go to the office to ask, they don’t permit them to leave.”
…
“In every camp we’ve been to we hear the same problems. Terrible accommodation, where I’m standing right now there’s a pungent smell of sewage. Workers are being paid far less than they were promised and they don’t have their passports so they can’t go home. But in every camp, we hear new problems as well.”
– The Hidden Brutality of Qatar’s FIFA World Cup Preparations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdrAd-44LW0
This is why slaves in India are not helped by being enslaved.
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“Sitara says she was routinely beaten at the brick kiln. Her mother Chamela tears up when she recalls watching her daughter being beaten. “What can you do when you’re in debt?” she says. “Her life was stolen from her.”” – Arwa Damon, Barbara Arvanitidis and Clayton Nagel, http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/07/asia/india-school-slaves/index.html
This is why slaves in the United Kingdom are not helped by being enslaved.
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“The jury rejected Gilder’s account after the youngster testified that ‘Leanne pimped me out because she got money over me getting raped’.”
– Damien Gayle http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2182031/Leanne-Gilder-jailed-Mother-pimped-schoolgirl-14-60-plying-crack-cocaine.html
This is why slaves in Singapore are not helped by being enslaved.
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“She lied to me and told me we were going away and we would be happy. I trusted her but she took me away to be sold instead.” – Janet Lim http://news.asiaone.com/news/diva/no-anger-towards-mum-who-sold-her-slave?page=0%2C1
This is why slaves in the Ivory Coast are not helped by being enslaved.
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“The plaintiffs in this case are three victims of child slavery. They were forced to work on Ivorian cocoa plantations for up to fourteen hours per day six days a week, given only scraps of food to eat, and whipped and beaten by overseers. They were locked in small rooms at night and not permitted to leave the plantations, knowing that children who tried to escape would be beaten or tortured. Plaintiff John Doe II witnessed guards cut open the feet of children who attempted to escape, and John Doe III knew that the guards forced failed escapees to drink urine.”
– United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit https://d3bsvxk93brmko.cloudfront.net/datastore/opinions/2014/09/04/10-56739.pdf
This is why slaves in Cambodia are not helped by being enslaved.
————————————————————————————–
“The girl, Kieu, was taken to a hospital and examined by a doctor, who issued her a “certificate of virginity.” She was then delivered to a hotel, where a man raped her for two days.”
“Kieu was 12 years old.”
“”I did not know what the job was,” says Kieu, now 14 and living in a safehouse. She says she returned home from the experience “very heartbroken.” But her ordeal was not over.”
“After the sale of her virginity, her mother had Kieu taken to a brothel where, she says, “they held me like I was in prison.””
“She was kept there for three days, raped by three to six men a day. When she returned home, her mother sent her away for stints in two other brothels, including one 400 kilometers away on the Thai border. When she learned her mother was planning to sell her again, this time for a six-month stretch, she realized she needed to flee her home.”
…
“”Svay Pak is known around the world as a place where pedophiles come to get little girls,” says Brewster, whose organization, Agape International Missions (AIM), has girls as young as four in its care, rescued from traffickers and undergoing rehabilitation in its safehouses.”
“In recent decades, he says, this impoverished fishing village – where a daughter’s virginity is too often seen as a valuable asset for the family – has become a notorious child sex hotspot.”
“”When we came here three years ago and began to live here, 100% of the kids between 8 and 12 were being trafficked,” says Brewster. The local sex industry sweeps up both children from the neighborhood — sold, like Kieu, by their parents – as well as children trafficked in from the countryside, or across the border from Vietnam. “We didn’t believe it until we saw vanload after vanload of kids.””
– Phnom Penh http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2013/12/world/cambodia-child-sex-trade/index.html
This is why slaves in India are not helped by being enslaved.
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“Shagir: The brick kiln owner and his supervisor threatened to throw me in the kiln furnace.”
…
“Sanjafi: They took me to work at a brick kiln. I saw people’s thatched huts were being torched and they threw my things in the fire. … One laborer in our group died from being beaten so badly at the brick kiln.”
“Sitara: The slave owner locked us in the office and forced my brother to lick up his spit. We were veru afraod amd threatened. We worked four to five years at that brick kiln.”
“Gopal: We were in very bad conditions. Four to five months we were in slavery, we couldn’t run away. My wife was in critical condition, and even then the brick kiln owner refused to pay us.”
– Face to Face with Slavery – The Movie https://vimeo.com/171953205
P.S. My DiLorenzo comment was to the original post, not a reply to Tel.
Amusing infographic from 4chan on climate “science”:
https://i.imgur.com/kR55xGE.png
Your average liberal:
http://i.imgur.com/IS2B4np.jpg
There is vastly more money in creating and promoting research that says global warming is NOT a problem than the opposite. Having a phd in a hard science after your name and a willingness to say global warming isn’t a problem/isn’t happening and you can get all sorts of funding from various private enterprises, often funneled through think tanks.
The scientists going after government grants are taking the harder route and making less money than the people than the people denying it exists.
Those very public spirited people always on the lookout for truth, and also looking for government grants of course… oh and shooting at people who have the wrong opinion. Shooting is an important but often overlooked part of the scientific method.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/24/shots-fired-at-climate-skeptics-office-during-march-for-science/
That’s rich, coming from someone who just proved he doesn’t care one iota about truth by blaming activists for the very thing they were trying to protest.
Let me guess, your defense of FIFA and Nestle would be that it’s the abolitionists who are actually enslaving the workers in their supply chains? Your reasoning is just that backwards.
I’m not making a defense of anyone, but if you expect me to believe that oil companies blow up their own pipelines for entertainment then you might as well just come out in the open and call me gullible and stupid.
Your own article says “A third of the country’s oil production has been shut down by unprecedented acts of resistance” You think those acts of resistance are peaceful? A couple of guys on a street corner waving signs? Of course they are openly admitting to sabotage.
More than that, theft is rife with people drilling into the pipe, then filling containers and whatever they can carry with petroleum products. This is totally illegal and dangerous because the fumes hang around in an explosive mix. Then the pipeline owner needs to go find these leaks and patch them up again (which is also dangerous, and expensive). Now and then the thieves set fire to themselves by accident. Well, that’s the choice they made… a bad choice, with bad consequences.
“As the peaceful movement of the Ogoni grew, so did the Nigerian government’s and Shell’s brutal campaign against the Ogoni and MOSOP. In early 1993, Shell requested military support to build a pipeline through Ogoni. When plaintiff Karalolo Kogbara was crying over the resulting bulldozing of her crops, she was shot by Nigerian troops and lost an arm as a result. In a separate incident later that year, plaintiff Uebari N-nah was shot and killed by soldiers near a Shell flow station; the soldiers were requested by and later compensated by Shell. Plaintiff Owens Wiwa was detained repeatedly under false charges in 1994 to prevent him from protesting; he was beaten and threatened throughout his detentions. Michael Vizor, another plaintiff, was arrested for his political activities and upon his arrest his daughter was raped. When he would not confess to a false charge, he was beaten and tortured. Mr. Vizor’s son was also beaten and detained when he attempted to bring his father food.”
That’s from https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/assets/6.16.09%20Final%20factsheet%20case%20against%20shell.pdf
““We are looking forward to finally bringing Shell into court, where we will prove their role in the torture and murder of our clients and their pattern of human rights abuses,” said CCR attorney Jennie Green. “It’s time for our clients and their families to see justice.””
…
“The defendants are charged with complicity in human rights abuses against the Ogoni people in Nigeria, including summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrest, wrongful death, assault and battery, and infliction of emotional distress. The cases were brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). The case against Royal Dutch/Shell also alleges that the corporation violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.”
“Nigeria has been chief among Shell’s assets for many years. Critics charge that with the aim of production at any cost, regardless of the damage to the surrounding people and land, Shell disrupted thousands of lives and wreaked havoc on the environment. In the early 1990’s, the people of Nigeria began to protest. Shell made payments and provided arms to security forces that they knew to be abusive to local communities. The military government violently repressed the demonstrations and arrested and bribed witnesses. Nine leaders of the demonstrations were murdered, including the aforementioned well-known activist and writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa.”
https://www.earthrights.org/legal/royal-dutchshell-go-trial-complicity-torture-and-murder-nigerian-protesters
“Here I want to be clear that property damage is not necessarily violence. The firefighter breaks the door to get the people out of the building. But the husband breaks the dishes to demonstrate to his wife that he can and may also break her. It’s violence displaced onto the inanimate as a threat to the animate.” – Rebecca Solnit
https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/if-a-tree-falls-explores-the-ground-between-martyrdom-and-terrorism/
Blowing up 700 people would be violent sabotage if activists were responsible for that, but: no one other than you seems to have alleged that.
“One such pipeline ran through the town of Jesse, where it became commonplace for residents to steal oil from the pipeline to supplement their meager incomes. This was known as “bunkering” and was taking place on October 18, when a helicopter was dispatched to disperse the people assembled at the pipeline. Just after the helicopter arrived, a massive fireball shot up 100 feet into the sky. The exact cause of the explosion remains unknown.” – History.com
Oil thieves and activists are not the same things. And then there’s the helicopter.
“As US consumers worry about the rising cost of gas, Nigerians are paying a much heavier price. A pipeline explosion in the Niger Delta yesterday killed an estimated 250 villagers near the southern Nigerian town Warri. This explosion occurred just miles from the Niger Delta town of Jesse, where about 1,000 people died in a similar explosion in 1998. The Delta is crisscrossed with more than 3,000 pipelines. Many of these are old and leaky and go unfixed by multinational oil companies that use them to extract their wealth from Africa’s most populous country.”
“When these explosions happen, the corporate media, the Nigerian military regime and the oil corporations accuse “thieves and vandals” of being responsible. The press accounts almost always leave out the fact that many of the Delta’s pipelines are rusty and corroded and go unrepaired by oil companies like Shell, Chevron and Mobil. These accusations of “thieves and vandals” against the people of the Delta are being used to create an increased military presence there.”
– Democracy Now
So there were possible oil thieves, a helicopter, and leaky, rusty, corroded pipes. That’s three suspected causes other than activist saboteurs, something even the oil companies did not allege.
OK, you just explain to me about these “unprecedented acts of resistance” that have shut down one third of the productive output of the whole industry.
You allege corrosion and poor maintenance without any evidence of that. It’s pretty easy to keep a pipeline in good shape, happens all over the world, I find it very difficult to believe that corrosion is a cause of these problems. Perhaps a minor issue at best. No company will just allow it’s infrastructure to collapse to the point of destroying one third of their output. That’s ridiculous.
The thieves drill the pipe, which creates dangerous leaks. That’s property damage, and it gets innocent bystanders killed (burned to death, which is not a fun way to die). No libertarian can support such things, and don’t even start comparing it to a fireman entering a burning house which is an outrageous attempt at moral equivalence where no equivalence exists.
Remember, I want an explanation as to the details of those “unprecedented acts of resistance”.
Even I’d like to know what you imagine these acts to be. Anything remotely plausible would be interesting.
Today I learned that Tom Woods, in his very limited free time, enjoys feeding the trolls.
Looks like Consulting By RPM needs a spam filter.
Until today I had no idea that “Anonymous” had become a synonym for implacably stupid, dishonest and obnoxious.
I haven’t read this blog in ages and it seems to have deteriorated even further than what I remember. When did this site become the bete noire of the philosophically pretentious but intellectually pathetic elite of the Antifa movement?
What ever happened to the halcyon days of Lord Keynes vs Major Freedom arguing ad infinitum about some mind numbingly arcane aspect of monetary theory?