Secession lagniappe

Grab-bag of pieces on the Civil War and reasons for Southern secession.

How the South skews America

Buchanan on civil disobedience in polarized times

Brief and nothing new here, but linking anyway:  The United States of Secession

Amidst all the recent pieces on American cultural fault lines (see last lagniappe as well), I’m linking to an interesting one from back in 2013.  Here’s the full version, the abbreviated one via WaPo, and the book. The gist of the project:

Colin Woodard, a reporter at the Portland Press Herald and author of several books, says North America can be broken neatly into 11 separate nation-states, where dominant cultures explain our voting behaviors and attitudes toward everything from social issues to the role of government.

Excerpt from Randy Barnett’s forthcoming book on the real meaning of the Declaration of Independence.

S.C. Senate votes 37-3 to take down the Confederate flag. The House followed suit, and down it went.  Makes me think of this.

Small Mississippi towns removing state flag

Trinity county in upstate CA will consider a State of Jefferson vote.

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The Kurdish HDP took 13% of the vote in Turkey’s parliamentary elections in June, landing seats in the legislature for the first time ever.  Meanwhile in Syria, the Kurdish YPG and YPJ continue to consolidate territory in their battle against ISIS. Recent gains are highlighted below in red.  This control is helping form a contiguous strip of Kurdish-run territory along the northern border of Syria.

Recent territorial shifts in Syria and Iraq, via Foreign Policy

Recent territorial shifts in Syria and Iraq, via Foreign Policy

Both the election results and the Kurdish Syrian “statelet” have irked Turkish President Erdogan, who had this to say about the latter:

“I am saying this to the whole world: We will never allow the establishment of a state on our southern border in the north of Syria.  We will continue our fight in this regard no matter what it costs“

A particularly helpful Foreign Affairs summary of the Kurdish momentum concludes:

In Turkey, the PKK-sympathetic HDP will be an increasingly powerful advocate for granting the Kurds some semblance of autonomy within the nation. As the cease-fire between the PKK and Ankara continues, it is becoming more and more possible that the Kurds can achieve their dream of autonomy through democratic means. Whether the PKK’s ambition to establish autonomous Kurdish regions on both sides of the Turkey-Syria border is ever realized, the progress it is making toward that goal has already altered the political maps of Turkey and the Middle East.

Countering some of the above enthusiasm is a good Q&A on how battling ISIS is actually delaying Iraqi Kurdistan’s progress.  Fair enough in the short term, but the opposite is quite possible down the road if Kurdish sacrifices are recognized with greater international support for statehood.  Make no mistake, the Kurds are doing the globe a huge solid, which has already been enough in the eyes of some influential Western lawmakers.

Important news on numerous fronts:  Turkey just bombed ISIS as well as PKK positions in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Where are all the moderate Syrian rebels?

The Vatican signed its first treaty with Palestine, which it will not show to an angry Israel.  Related: The Death and Life of the Two-State Solution.

Tibet’s Tough Road Ahead

More violence in East Turkestan.  Turkish protests form against Chinese treatment of Uighurs.

Pushing for statehood in Delhi

Sarawak independence celebrated, despite the Inspector General of police trying to squash it for fear of secessionist motives.  Local government downplays secession.

Quebec’s separatism as a lesson for the SNP, who is again causing ripples with talk of another referendum

Greece voted “no” a few Sundays ago, presumably to current austerity terms, by a healthy margin.  Interestingly the polls were way off beforehand.  For all the antics and high-stakes jockeying, it looks as though the Greek people may get a package very similar to what they already had, and thought they were rejecting.  Greek 10 year govt bond yields are back down in the 10-12% range.  Difficult to see how this whole episode doesn’t put Syriza down in history as one of the worst governments ever in modern Europe.

Catalan leaders on same page: will push for independence if parliament’s election goes their way.

The Brexit Ramp

Russia taking a second look at the legality of Baltic independence from the Soviet Union.  Yikes.

“Surging” Siberian nationalism

Ukranian Right Sector nationalists, Putin, and Transcarpathia

Activists for a Romania-Moldova unification

Serbian PM pelted with stones at commemoration of Srebrenica massacre

Republika Srpska will hold a referendum on the authority of Bosnia’s national court.  That is big news.  Surprise, surprise: the E.U. and the U.S. disapprove and Russia, well, doesn’t.

ISIS is recruiting in Bosnia.

Hargeisa: Inside Somaliland’s Would-Be Capital City

Burundi remains on the brink as a controversial vote for a third term for Nkurunziza is a go

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Is nationalism on the rise more generally?

It turns out that “globalization” hasn’t doused, let alone put out, the embers of nationalism. It has inflamed them. Global and regional frameworks — from the EU to the UN to seemingly stable balance-of-power standoffs –– are under assault amid a renewed obsession with national identity.

Patri Friedman on NRx and anti-entryism

Defining exit

Fascinating piece on Cold War era Russian mapmaking

Soviet map of San Francisco circa 1980

Soviet map of San Francisco circa 1980

More city-states please

Sanctuary cities?

Against marriage privatization

Evaluating the charter school movement 25 years later

(Image sources 1 & 2)

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Anarchy in Athens

anarchyinathens

Greece had been in the news since its financial crisis began, then it return to news when the far left party Syriza won the elections. Syriza provoked mixed feelings, some American conservatives were supporters and some Greek anarchists were enemies. The government of Alexis Tsipras put Yanis Varoufakis in the key position of Minister of Finance. Varoufakis is a self-described libertarian Marxist and a Professor of Economics in the University of Athens. His works on game theory had made him known in the international academic community.

The mandate of Tsipras was twofold because it implied maintaining membership in European Union without implementing austerity measures. Both Tsipras and Varoufakis have tried to deal with the pressure from the Troika but there were some differences. After the referendum that was a victory for SYRIZA, Tsipras call that a victory for democracy but Varoufakis resigned. There were several speculations over what was the real reason for Varoufakis to resign, the most interesting is that the libertarian-Marxist had developed an emergency strategy that will use bitcoin as the Greek currency, which sound more an anarcho-capitalist idea to deal with the crisis. The SYRIZA government had generated discontent among its members because under the pressure of Germany and the Eurozone, it announced the austerity measures. Obviously, anarchists are telling I told you so.

Now even Bernie Sanders is talking about Greece and Ron Paul too. The radical left, the populist right and hardcore libertarians agree that the large international organizations like IMF or the World Bank that supposedly promote “free markets,” actually promote crony capitalism which is why the benefits of a corporate global hegemony mostly go to the rich and well connected. One could accuse these institutions of the problems in Greece but the question remains of what to do. As someone who studied philosophy as a major, I remember hearing a lot that the origin of democracy was in Greece. It was a land of great philosophers, writers, artists and athletes which bring democracy to Western Civilization. But one have to wonder by the realities of the present, when we say “democracy”, if we are speaking of the same Greeks.

Left-libertarian philosopher Roderick Long had a wonderful text about it called Libertarian Athens in which he argued that democracy in the Greek sense was a form of direct democracy closer to what the New Left called participatory democracy than to elections which is what most people thinks when we talk about democracy. The reason is that Athenian democracy wasn’t based in majority rule (electoral democracy) or minority rule (oligarchy) but in debate between free men of Athens. Direct democracy sometimes is called anarchism. In the anti-globalization protests in Seattle in 1999, when there were people chanting “This what is what democracy looks like”, they were right. Democracy isn’t the oligarchy by the corporate and political elite that we see today.

aBack to Greece, when a lot people speak about the country going in an anarchist direction they confuse the chaos and the masked protesters with I think a much deeper concept of anarchy. Bitcoin despite not becoming the official Greek currency is popular in Greece, generally crypto-currencies are associated with anarchism and to a large extent, they are right this is some form of anarcho-capitalism. For another thing, there are now worker-controlled TV stations now, which is some form anarcho-communism. I wouldn’t be surprised if some workers of the collectivized TV use bitcoin because in the end, anarchism is more than capitalism or communism.

I’m not predicting an end of the Greek state, but I think in the long run not only Greece but several countries around the world where governments push authoritarian practices against is citizens will face a backlash. Crypto-currencies are one way, but also black markets, which for example are very popular in Latin America. Anarchism seem to me as a noble idea that could well represented by a teenage girl in High School in West Virginia protesting against the American foreign policy or a scholar in political science from Yale fighting his social democratic colleagues. If we think that the limits for a state in the concept of Aristotle should be the city, one have to wonder where is the legitimacy of the modern Greece. Maybe Greek anarchists need to start reading their own history with other eyes, maybe us too.

Conservatives should embrace sanctuary cities, not demonize them

From my article in Taki’s Mag today:

Understandably, the concept of cities ignoring the rules has incensed law-and-order conservatives. But they should take a step back and think through the issue. From a limited-government standpoint, doesn’t more local autonomy make sense? Aren’t decisions made at the local level better than those at the state or federal level? By slamming sanctuary cities, conservatives are wasting a great opportunity. Wouldn’t the country be better off if San Francisco became its own communist republic and left the rest of us be? Let them have their sanctuary, and the accompanying lawlessness it engenders. It’s their problem to deal with, not America’s (or, by extension, my wallet’s).

Conservatives could even start championing their own sanctuary cities. El Rushbo has it right: If liberals are going to have cities where they flout the law, conservatives should have them too. Think of them like conclaves of what Rod Dreher calls the “Benedict Option.” If liberals can have communities that welcome illegal immigration, open drug use, and sodomy, why can’t conservatives have communities that uphold traditional marriage, ban destructive substance abuse, and maintain a faith-based culture? If ISIS can do it, so can we.

Read the rest here.

(Image source)

Jim Webb and #BlackLivesMatter

At first sight, Jim Webb doesn’t sound like the kind of candidate that could capture the Democratic nomination. He talks a lot about bringing disenfranchised poor whites from Appalachia into the Democratic Coalition, but for now the Democratic Party relies on a coalition of urban progressive whites and ethnic minorities. He was and still is in my opinion the biggest challenger of the status quo of American Politics, he is better than both Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders on foreign policy, but it should be said that he is a realist, not a non-interventionist, which could explain why he could sound a little hawkish with respect to Iran.

Webb was among the first to talk about criminal justice reform when he was in the Senate. There are reasons for that, most Democrats since McGovern until recently had been afraid to talk about the subject, since they were afraid to be portrayed as soft on crime, but someone like Webb who had an accomplished military record could take on these issues without being portraying as a hippie. But even with his background some advisors were afraid of Jim Webb pointing to issues like criminal justice reform in his campaign for the Senate back in 2006, now with the irruption of #BlackLivesMatter, things could be different

The problem of Jim Webb in today’s Democratic Party is not necessarily that the party has gone so far to the left. Obama opposed single-payer healthcare and supported trade deals like the TPP. The problem is that the left had become tribalist, the confrontation between Latinos and Afro-Americans over the California Democratic Senate nominee show us that very well. Jim Webb has strong record of talking about justice for minority communities, however I think he would be dismissed by #BlackLivesMatter for his cultural conservativism. This is a mistake. Both Jim Webb and conservatives like Rand Paul have been good on the issue of criminal justice reform, but liberals don’t like to give them credit.

People think that ethnic minority politicians should be the ones talking about these issues but the fact is that a lot of them have already endorsed the corporatist and militarist Hillary Clinton. I think that if Webb focused on those issues, minority Democrats and progressive whites could support him. I would never have imagine that a Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration could be better on those issues than a socialist like Bernie Sanders, but the fact is that political courage has characterized the political career of the former Senator. A soldier in his fight for justice started a crusade that for some had been seen as quixotic, now the entire country is talking about it.

Bernie Sanders versus the progressive left

Bernie Sanders Rally: Photo by Melissa Fossum

When Bernie Sanders made his entry into the Democratic field, few people would had imagine that he could become a real challenger to Hillary Clinton, but now he is the champion for the liberal wing of the party. Bernie Sanders, the 73 years old self-described socialist elected as an independent to the House and Senate representing Vermont, wasn’t as popular as liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren but he had a good record of siding with the unions and bashing income inequality. So one would assume that the progressive left would be on board with him, but there are exceptions, both in and out of the party.

From the independent left their major distrust for Sanders is his foreign policy, which is relatively hawkish. The Green Party had mixed feelings about Sanders, but there were some that last year were trying to convince Bernie to run as a Green. Now the feeling is of distrust toward Sanders, most greens and independent progressives fear that an endorsement of Hillary Clinton from Bernie would siphon progressive votes into a militarist and corporatist candidate. Green Party members and allies said that Bernie Sanders isn’t Eugene Debs and they are right, but some on the Trotskyist left think otherwise. Some on the independent left might prefer the Green Party nominee Jill Stein over Sanders but still say some good things about him, while others basically called him a neocon of the left.

If people on the independent left, the Green Party or some Trotskyist outlet distrust Bernie is because he isn’t one them. But why the progressive left in the Democratic Party be against the most progressive candidate of this election cycle. The answer is #BlackLivesMatter and the recent Netroots conference prove that. Bernie Sanders is considered by black and brown liberal activists to be soft on the issue of racial inequality — that’s why they interrupted his speech. His answer that he was active in the Civil Rights movement and that he marched with MLK didn’t calm the angry crowd, neither the fact that his other answer for solving racial tensions was to speak about economics. The hashtag #BernieSoBlack mocked a campaign supposedly out of touch with racial justice topics. The criticism of Sanders has even been made about his white supporters.

I’m a socialist and for me the fight against racism is vital part of politics, but I feel deeply troubled by the attitude of the protesters. Matt Bruenig had alredy made the case that Bernie Sanders had already spoke on issues like racial justice so why are the activists so against the old socialist, but mute about Hillary Clinton, who supported the racist tough on crime legislation of his husband. I’m not by any standard a fan of Bernie, my libertarian socialist tendencies made doubt about his bureaucratic social democrat ideals, but I think than if they want to talk about racism why not to question the role of Hillary Clinton in the Libyan War which prompted a humanitarian crisis that affects mostly poor black Africans?

I was surprised to known that even the two time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party and longtime antiwar activist David McReynolds was disgusted with protesters over the Netroots event. It would be wise bring back to discussion of police unions, which Bernie Sanders and most progressives are usually in favor of. And the fact that he represents a mostly white state doesn’t excuse him from the responsibility of talking about these issues. But even with that said, Sanders is not a Nazi or any kind of racist, and if Sanders hasn’t been the best friend to black communities, is Hillary Clinton any better? She may have a more diverse campaign team, but is a staunch supporter of the racist War on Drugs.

I wonder who the black and brown liberal protesters are going to vote for, the man who had been active in the civil rights movement his entire life, or for the wife of a governor that honored the Confederate Flag. I wrote that liberal identity politics were responsible for the death of the New Left ideals of decentralism and anti-imperialism. Liberal identity politics today is a powerful ally to the neoliberal status quo, because it is very difficult to find a perfect progressive. Liberals are in large part responsible for building the racist Prison Industrial Complex, and with self-defeating strategies like those favored by some activists their cause will be lost. Stop wasting the time attacking a man relatively good on the issue of race and confront the fact that a racist Empire should be the subject in question.

Recently in an interview, Ron Paul said that Muhammed Ali inspired him, and that he would have liked to be as brave as him for resisting the draft. Ron Paul is right, Ali was a brave man but it wasn’t only his refusal of being part of the Army — he talked about an Empire abroad and at home whose victims are mostly people of color.

An open letter to Silicon Valley

Dear Silicon Valley,

Get out.

No seriously. Leave the country, or stop furtively trying to tinker with it through the Democratic Party.

As a conservative, I’ve had it up to *here* with your quest to redefine humanity through technology and idealistic visions. Haven’t any of you watched Terminator? You’re creating Skynet, and don’t seem to have any qualms about it. The time has come for you to vacate America and leave us sensible people to our traditional ways.

Now, I realize my demands might sound mad, hysterical even. But this is no joke. Silicon Valley is poisoning the country. It’s time for you to break off and form your own techno free-for-all land of fake girlfriends and endless pornography. I implore you to expedite the process before you further corrupt America’s impressionable minds.

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