Saturday, May 20, 2006

Property Values


Property is theft.

La propriété, c'est le vol!


Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right of Government.
****

Some of us see property ownership as the ownership of self. By extension, ones possessions are self, being not the value of the object but the life required to invest in the ownership of such. Proudhon's analysis of property goes in a different direction, into feudalist communitarianism, the neo-feudalist version of which we see in practice throughout modern European states today. They, like Marx, reduce property to commodity fetish. And thus, property crime (against others) is made trivial, denounced not for its assault on the person of property, i.e. the live-giving consumer but as an assault on those who expropriate! Look thus: if yoots burn 10,000 cars in France from Oct. to Nov. 2005, it is a right revenge of the alienated and marginalized in a racist society reclaiming their dignity in the face of exploitation and discrimination against the entrenched power of the ruling mode of producers, (not the elites but the working classes!) Property is reduced to commodity fetish if it's the property of the workers stolen or destroyed by the (Muslim) lumpen-proletariat. The property owning masses, the French middle-classes, for example, are "products of production" in a specifically non-egalitarian and ostentatious way. A car is obviously a private possession. In a neo-feudalist community there cannot be social cohesion if one "values" ones own possessions as commodity fetish. Rather, one must value "Other" at ones expense, literally, and apologize for the exploitation and racism that privileges the native worker over the immigrant vandal. What is a car compared to a Human life? When seen from a communitarian view a car is a fetish value, a mistaken understanding of its innate value. All commodities should be held communally, cars and everything else, as decided by the gnostic wisdom of the Philosopher Kings. Those who own are thieves. Those who steal and destroy are freedom fighters. Those who protect their commodities are harmful of the whole of society of which they are in a privileged position by virtue of race. They are, by dint of accident, exploiters by racist existence. To steal from thieves and to re-appropriate for the general community is therefore to the good. 10,000 burnt cars is a social lesson in communitarianism and good citizenship.

Below we will see a different view of social engineering: from the communitarian feudalism of the relations of ownership to the new social relations of capitalism we willl see a social engineering project taught by capital punishment. To teach a communitarian world the value of private property, the hangman worked over-time to show that "this is not yours in a captialist economy-- even if in the communal society you came from 'property is theft.' "

Today we are seeing a reversal of the lessons the hangman taught.
****

From Publishers Weekly

In 18th-century Britain, most victims of capital punishment were hanged for property crimes-some as petty as the pilfering of spoons. A brutal and benighted age, we like to think, but to the author of this epic social history (originally published in 1991, it's now in its second edition), the gallows were an indispensable tool in inculcating the primary lesson-"Respect Private Property"-of a modern capitalist economy. Historian Linebaugh, co-author of The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, explores how the disruption of a traditional economy of regulated guilds and agricultural commons by a capitalism built on cash wages and competitive markets worked itself out as crime and punishment. Customary forms of payment-in-kind, in which workers took part of the wood they sawed, the silk they wove, or the cargo their ship ferried as wages, were criminalized as theft of the owner's property; capitalists developed new methods of workplace control to circumvent workers' attempts to appropriate the fruits of their labor; and romantic criminal figures like the highwayman expressed working-class resentment at the economic transformations that forced them to steal to live. Linebaugh draws on diverse sources, including judicial archives, family budgets, dietary customs and the writings of Locke and Milton to paint both micro-historical character studies of condemned souls and a panorama of class struggle in proto-industrial Britain. The results are as teeming-and sometimes as confusing-as the London street itself, and the broad Marxian abstractions Linebaugh invokes do not always clarify things.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521457580/002-2562850-5470419?v=glance&n=283155
****

Chapter 30: Impact of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. The Creation of a Home Market for Industrial Capital

Commentary

The most general point being made in this chapter is that the clearing of the lands which, along with the bloody legislation, produced a proletariat available for work in capitalist industry, also created a market for the goods being produced by that industry. Hitherto, because most people produced what they needed, the market (or demand) for manufactured goods was quite limited. It was restricted to the wealthy with money to spend or to local exchange, often under conditions of barter or reciprocity within a community. Marx argues that the rise of a waged working class also meant the rise of a class of consumers who bought everything they needed in the market. Thus, the commercialization of production and distribution.

[....]

As we saw in chapter 28, the fact that peasants like these were thrown off the land did not automatically mean either that they would present themselves at the factory gates or that they would constitute a immediate market for capitalists' goods. The inability to produce ones own clothes does not automatically mean you have the money to buy them in the market or that buying them is the only way to obtain them, they could also be appropriated directly by those with little or no money. Along with the laws against vagabondage, aimed at creating a class of waged workers, went other laws aimed at preventing such direct appropriation of the goods produced in the factories, i.e., anti-theft laws which imposed the market as the only legitimate way of acquiring goods. These laws were every bit as bloody, perhaps more so, than those against vagabondage. In the 17th and 18th Century people were regularly hanged for petty "theft." Historian Peter Linebaugh has coined the term "Thanatocracy" for this kind of rule by death.

While this distinction between direct appropriation and buying with a wage may seem clear cut, historically it was not so neat. During the period of manufacturing it was commonplace, in many trades, for the workers to take part of their income in the form of directly appropriated means of production. For example, silk workers would appropriate extra pieces of silk cloth, shoemakers would keep excess leather, shipwrights would appropriate lumber, sailors would take tobacco being transported in their ships, etc. In each case the workers would either consume the material directly, sell it for money or they would work it up into a product (e.g., shoes) and sell that for money and thus earn extra income.

Later on, historically speaking, this kind of activity was criminalized, i.e., laws were passed attacking these non-wage forms of income and through them the real wage was lowered, making the workers poorer and the employers richer. Moreover, the struggle over such appropriation led to a variety of new methods of production: from hogsheads in shipping (to make "pilfering" more difficult) to Mirabeau's fabriques réunies in which workers could be watched over and their labor process more carefully controlled so that less "waste" would disappear.

http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/357ksg30.html

****

We have seen recently that such things as self-defence against criminality in Briatain is criminal. We see daily that murder of civilians is appeased and even condoned by the elitists in the West. This is social engineering, the reverse of public hanging in the 18th and 19th century. We are learning the object lesson that we as private individuals do not own our own lives as property. To think so is to commit theft. For that we might well be killed.

Friday, May 19, 2006

The Meaning of Words


Last evening one of our friends at our weekly meeting used a phrase that kept me awake much of the night: "...a profound spiritual commitment."

I don't know what it means.

The words themselves are based on Latin, mostly religious in use. It's a catchy phrase, full of intuitive import, and to me totally baffling. I find myself disturbed that I have no idea what to make of it.

In many instances the unexamined question isn't worth asking. I think this one is, and after wracking my empty head last night and coming up ashamed I plead for assistance from you.

What is a profound spiritual commitment?

Dhimmi Law in Iran?

Iran report of Holocaust-style badges questioned
2006-05-19 12:01:29

The National Post is sending shockwaves across the country this morning with a report that Iran's Parliament has passed a law requiring mandatory Holocaust style badges to identify Jews and Christians.

But independent reporter Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli Middle East expert who was born and raised in Tehran, says the report is false.

"It's absolutely factually incorrect," he told The New 940 Montreal.

"Nowhere in the law is there any talk of Jews and Christians having to wear different colours. I've checked it with sources both inside Iran and outside."

"The Iranian people would never stand for it. The Iranian government wouldn't be stupid enough to do it."

Political commentator and 940 Montreal host Beryl Waysman says the report is true, that the law was passed two years ago.

"Jews should wear yellow strips, Christians red strips, because according to the Iranian mullahs, if a Mulsim shakes hands with a non-Muslim he becomes unclean."

The National Post cites Iranian expatriots living in Canada as its primary source on the story.
The Post story can be read here:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=11fbf4a8-282a-4d18-954f-546709b1240f&k=32073

Derek Strikes Again: Iranian Nukes are for Pukes.


Derek responds below to a query regarding his latest work.
****

D. T. Devareaux said...


My interpretation is that both things are mutants and liberals who are taking comfort in the platitude, "At least we aren't hypocrites" in the aftermath of an Iranian attack on the west, presumably either the USA or Israel.

Precisely. I couldn't resist doing the piece after listening to an analyst on CNN discussing the merits of the Iranian nuke; namely, wouldn't it be hypocritical and unfair of us to deny the Islamic Republic of Iran nuclear technology? After all, America has nukes; India has nukes; the damn dirty Joooos have the nukes! Why not the Iranians? Never mind the doom-tongued proselytizing rumbling out of Iran for the past 30 years. Never mind Iran's proud contributions to worldwide jihad. Never mind the repeated threats to wipe an entire county off the face of the earth and to incinerate Washington with a fiery, nuclear Holocaust. Never mind Iran's contributions to the unrest in Iraq, the deaths of coalition troops and Iraqi civilians. None of that matters. What is paramount is that our foreign policy with proven belligerents must be sensitive, considerate and unequivocally non-judgmental.

Uproarious is the fact that in all other cases you can find these same backstabbers bemoaning nuclear proliferation yet here, for some unfathomable reason, with Iran they're encouraging it. I am reminded of Brian Williams' assertion that, apropos the Iranian revolutionaries of '79, our own founders could have been considered terrorists. I am reminded when Senator Kerry, during the last Presidential debate, lectured us about the need to set an example by eliminating our nuclear stockpiles; after which he tried to sell us on the virtues of his plan to provide the Iranians with nuclear fuel (they'd be trustworthy enough to return the spent fuel rods, of course; probably into the equally trustworthy hands of a steadfast U.N. bureaucrat, no doubt.) Hey, what could possibly go wrong? After all, it worked for Carter and Clinton and Kim Jong, didn't it? "Ok, naughty Communist dictator, if we give you all these nukie toy parts, you absolutely double-dog pinky swear have to promise not to make a super duper big bad bomb, ok?"

In any event, watching the CNN clip then turned into a lengthy discussion with an associate as to the legitimacy of asking such a question as, "Is it hypocritical to deny Iran nuclear technology?" Nazi that I am, I responded that such a question was "stupid and unnecessary," and that the "putative high-mindedness" of such a question represented a "dangerous waste of time." Of course, I was then accused of the jackbooted squelching of free speech; of being so narrow-minded as to be blind to the benefits of opening up policy discussions to such complex questions.

A team of U.S. commandos apprehends Osama bin Laden. During his arrest, a member of the team wonders whether bin Laden was justified or not in attacking America and whether or not he should be set free until we can be absolutely certain. Have fun walking home, solider.

What's even more nauseating is that the individual asking this question is not ignorant of the danger a nuclear Iran poses. Oh no, they're quite frightful. Nonetheless, they cannot—will not—defy their programming; instead they continue to rally behind the people and policies which helped create and continue to foster this very crisis! It's madness. It's defeatism. It's completely unnecessary but here we are: we've all become so crippled by the fetish of our own high-mindedness that making simple, prejudicial, but informed judgments about how best to insure our own survival are scoffed at as lacking "nuance." Instead, we must submit, lest we be accused of being hypocrites, the question of our very security to some perfectible process whereby our national interests must be weighed against the interests of polities that are unabashedly hostile to our own.

Well, don't let me stand in the way of your personal death wish. After 9/11 I was amazed that there were people who were convinced that "we deserved it." It really infuriated me that there was a not-insignificant-number of Americans who would so causally betray the lives of thousands of their own countrymen, unsuspectingly struck down by cowardly fanatics, in favor of attaching their loyalty to whatever illusory idea of karmic justice fit their political biases. Well, guess what? I agree with you! If you think we (and that's 'we' as in 'you;' not some other unfortunate, sacrificial slob) deserved 9/11 and that we deserve something similar yet again, I'm not going to argue with you. It's all our (i.e. "your") fault and we (remember, that means "you") deserve whatever horribly tragedy might be heading our way.

Similarly, if you think it selfish and hypocritical of us to deny the Iranians their natural right to nuclear technology (and to provide them with the benefit of the doubt that they'll use their nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, notwithstanding everything I've outlined above, to say nothing of their broader religious obligation to destroy us infidels,) then I hope that you get what you wish for. You're right. I'm wrong. Cities may crumble and flesh may burn--but by Marx's greasy carbuncles--never let it be said that we were hypocrites!

5/08/2006 3:09 PM

http://thestudyofrevenge.blogspot.com/
****

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Animal Dagmatism.


It's Thursday and we are soon to meet again in public to say the unsayable-- in public!

What do we face? We face lunatics such as the one who rails at our friend Jane for being "dagmatic" when she describes in a library the horrors of Islam. No, not just one lunatic, many. Who will stand for Jane?

Hirsi Ali is stripped of her Dutch citizenship after her friend and colleague Theo. van Gogh is murdered. Dissidents killed and exiled from the Netherlands!

Paul Belien of Belgium hounded.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer, a major northwest coast American newspaper accuses the United States government of committing mass murder of its own citizens.

Hound us, expel us, kill us, accuse us of atrocities unimaginable to the sane mind. So what! Take this path with us. Leave the rest behind.

We will meet again this evening at the Vancouver Public Library in the atrium from 7-9:00 p.m. I will wear my Israeli flag on my baseball cap. We will come adorned in blue scarves and bandanas. We will never be silent. Never!

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

The Dating Carbon Code


It's all about dating.

Years ago I wanted to go out with a Jewish girl, but she said I was so clueless I didn't even know about Hitler. So I read The Boys From Brazil. Years later I met a primatologist, and she complained I know nothing about monkeys. I got smart. I read Curious George books. Now I know a girl who's a Christian. It looks like I'm going to have to see The DaVinci Code if I want to get anywhere with her.

If I ain't rich I better be a good conversationalist.

First they came for....


Editor of Brussels Journal under attack

Dr. Paul Belien, the Editor-in-Chief of the excellent Brussels Journal blog, is under legal and media attack in Belgium for supposedly inspiring a skinhead murder spree. Dr. Belien is a journalist and founder of the Center for the New Europe, a free-market think tank. He is hated by the Euroleft… well, you know why: He's articulate, smart, courageous, and able to think straight.

Belien and his wife are also involved with the Flemish Block, a party that seeks secession from Imperial Europe. He is also a member of the distinguished Mont Pelerin Society, founded by Friedrich Hayek in 1947.

Sounds pretty intellectual, right?

Well, here's what happened:

Yesterday (May 12) Hans Van Themsche, an 18 year old high-school student who had just been expelled from boarding school for smoking in the dormitories, went berserk and set out on a bloody rampage in Antwerp. In the morning he shaved his head down to the neck. He put on combat boots and a black leather outfit and went to a store of sporting and hunting gear to buy a rifle. Dressed as a "Goth" he walked through town and shot at three people who crossed his path: a veiled Turkish woman, a two year old Flemish toddler on a tricycle and her black nanny, killing the latter two and seriously wounding the first.


As if that isn't bad enough, the Belgian version of the Screaming Left has decided that Dr. Belien must be responsible.

More at link:

http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=5148
****

Managerial socialism cannot deal with people as volitional beings. It can only deal with people as statistical material. If we refuse to protest against the managerial usurpation of our privacies as individuals, then we become increasingly managed by those who rely further on statistical models to further mold and fashion new and improved behaviouralist models of social control. As the sytstem grows its appetite for growth grows. It is a loss of power for the democracy at the gain to the system. Those who favor the system cannot favor the individual at the same time. One cannot manage free individuals. Paul Belien is a free individual. He might not remain so if we do not remain so. That is up to us as free individuals to decide the value of.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Past is Prologue. (1)

Hippies in suits are making life in the West a thing of the past. The West is a place in the mind as much as is the past. It's all dreams reified in concrete and steel and microchips but it has the force of hurricanes for all its nothingness in origin. The West is an attitude, a making real of personality and opinion. The wisp of words and the force of tongues make cities and destroy nations. Today in the West the minds that make are encased in the bony heads of hippies dreaming of communes of the sixties, thoughts swirling like pot-smoke under black lights reflecting Filmore West concert posters.

Rank-dank-rank-dank-zeeerrr-yow-waaa-waaa.

No, no, no, please. I've heard it all before, and it hurts to have to remember that I ever liked the noise of the 60s. I have a head-ache. Retune, turn down, and drop it. Yuck! No, Tom, I want Hayden.

The West is a thing of the past. It is an attitude. I want it. That's what I want, and badly. I want Hayden and Socrates. I want a clean, well-lighted place, and a stoa to sit on to think. I want to live in the past. I don't want to live in the 60s anymore, managed and tended and infantalised by hippies in suits; I want the past of the past as it was before the hippies took over and wrecked the things that are our Modernity. I want those things not simply for myself and my sense of right and wrong but universally. And I will get this life of the past. I will get it because I'm not the sole person who craves it. I am one among the majority. I want to live in the past: I want to restore Modernity. I want Paine. I'm merely one of most. Quake, you rotten hippies....

The remainder of this rather lengthy piece (part one) is at Covenant Zone below.

I've been away for nearly a week due to a nasty injury, and now that I'm back I will take this opportunity to thank Charles for his fine work and dedication in keeping us informed and entertained. I will also thank those commentators who wrote in, they being perhaps the best fun of blogging.

Finally, I wish to send my personal best wishes to our friend American Crusader. Get well soon, mate.

Regards, Dag.

http://covenantzone.blogspot.com/

****