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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by Arwon |
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Arwon Bazu                  Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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Blah blah blah, pre-birth potentiality of life != life. Blah blah blah, if abortion equates to murder then that justifies killing pro-abortion supreme court justices and blowing up abortion clinics as acts of heroic resistance aimed at stopping a holocaust. Blah blah blah cheap attempts at emotional blackmail don't constitute an argument and neither do strawmen. I think that about covers it. (edited by Arwon on 02-06-07 12:21 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| We have plenty of abortion threads elsewhere for people with their obsessions to threash it out in!
Why can't we talk about the folly of jailing drug users and prostitutes in this thread? |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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Originally posted by John Kenneth Galbraith If we are going to have free trade, meaning free movement of goods and services and finance and capital across borders, in order to take advantage of comprative advantage and so forth, then this should be extended to free movement of labour as well. Things like borders and passports and visas and immigration controls actually constitute barriers to free trade just like tarrifs and currency controls. They are also a barrier on human freedom... as a British economist named Philippe Legrain puts it: “Immigrants are not an invading army, they come in search of a better life. They are no different to someone who moves from Manchester to London, or Oklahoma to California, because that is where the jobs are. Except that a border lies in the way.” It's pointless and counterproductive to advocate free trade if you're not willing to open your borders to workers from other countries as well. Then you just get a situation where companies and investors can cherry-pick where they want to operate, and move across borders easily, but the people, the workers, remain trapped in whatever stretch of dirt they happen to have ben born in, hypocritically barred from reaping the benefits of free movement even as they're offered to other economic players. The result is that the losers of economic globalisation remain trapped where they are, unable to go to where the growth and jobs and higher productivity is. Open borders can benefit both origin and destination countries. Skilled migrants, of course, bring economic benefits and the argument for that is clear, but even those at the lower end bring benefits. Migrants spend money and create jobs, same as anyone... their consumption fuels economic growth. And, their impact on wages at the bottom end of the economy has repeatedly been shown to be no more than a few percent loss, and even then, only in certain industries where they're dirctly competing with natives. As with other areas of globalisation, there are some groups of losers who must be borne in mind, but they're not the whole story. And the benefits for the origin countries are massive, too. In the Philipines for example, according to their government: "Overseas employment has built more homes, sent more children of the poor to college and established more business enterprises than all the other programmes of the government put together." In order for free trade to truly exist, there must be open borders and free movement of labor. Good luck convincing "pro free trade" governments of this, however. (edited by Arwon on 02-06-07 12:44 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| It's sort of "well isn't that an interesting thing" or something. It means just what I choose it to mean. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| I know, and I'm shouting about cars because I want to talk about Brazilian ethanol. | |||
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Arwon Bazu  Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| But the difference is, Klansmen don't kill millions of people.
If one believes that abortion equates to murder, then one necessarily believes that millions of helpless people are being murdered every year. That's a full-fledged holocaust with government sanction and the complicity of many many citizens. If abortion truly was murder, resistance to this abortionist regime could then easily be justified as heroic, every bit as heroic as partisan violence in countries occupied by murderous regimes. You could kill 3 people (the right supreme court justices) and save millions of lives. It's cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty to equate abortion to murder simply to achieve a more effective rhetorical flourish, when clearly one doesn't truly believe it. Abortion is certainly squicky and some people don't like it, but equating it to the murder of a full-fleged living person is absurd, not to mention degrading to real living people dying real deaths every day. It's a hysterical, hyperbolic claim utterly without merit. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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Originally posted by Silvershield My main point isn't necessarily the literal one, that you should support these things. The much more important part of my argument is that, if abortion were truly equivalent to the murder of a human being, my suggestions wouldn't sound absurd. They'd be within the realms of legitimate debate and controversy, like waging wars and assasinations to prevent genocide, or violently resisting a murderous regime. They'd be a defensible position some philosophical views. Which they're not. The very notion I'm suggesting is lunacy, but that's not because of anything so facile as "Christians hate killing people". The mere fact that the notion of a resistance movement against the abortion holocaust sounds insane and absurd illustrates very clearly that the argument that "abortion equates to murder of a human" is bollocks. (edited by Arwon on 02-06-07 08:01 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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Originally posted by Koryo I have no idea if Fox was bleating about it, but there was a lot of hysteria in the right wing blogosphere and such, about the fact that he was going to swear on a Koran and that UNDERMINES AMERICA or somesuch bollocks. This sort of garbage, which along with the comments underneath, taught me that Keith Ellison is from Iraq and should be sent back there, that a true Christian would not marry a Muslim, that the Koran = Mein Kampf and that attending Wayne State University causes students to become Muslim. (edited by Arwon on 02-07-07 05:55 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| Well I don't literally believe all this is achievable, it's a hypothetical debate. I am, however, broadly in favour of free trade, though not to a fundamentalist extent. Things like the infant industry argument are strong exceptions.
I do think we need much more open borders, and much freer movement between them. Work permit programs should be aggressively expanded to allow more normalised movement across borders (wouldn't it be better for everyone if Mexicans could come and go without having to hide and be marginalised?) More later, I need to finish work and go home now. --------------- EDIT. Apparently I can't double post. How annoying. Now, the main concerns exp Economics is pretty straight-forward, really. The ONLY really negative effect that stands up to even mild scrutiny is the concern over downward pressure on wages at the bottom end of the labour market. But even this is dodgy and possibly spurious, mostly because actual evidence suggests the impact isn't all that big, and one can argue that we can accept some economic losers in the name of greater economic prosperity over all--you know, the same argument that's made in favour of globalised free trade? As I said previously, most estimates place the impact on low-end wages at something like 4%, which is obviously an issue, but it's hardly catastrophic. Moreover, even then, evidence is scanty. For example, when you consider that there's no demonstrable correlation between unskilled wage-levels in different cities with very different levels of immigration (say, Los Angeles vs Indianapolis) you have to wonder whether the presence or absence of illegal immigrants is making an appreciable difference to wage levels (link to a paper with the evidence that this is the case") or is it simply more a case of there being low wages in certain areas and immigrants filling those positions. Further, it can be argued that as long as immigrants and natives dominate different sectors, there may not be any impact at all. These dudes from Bologna and UC Davis argue that since, for example, most Mexican workers are in gardening, housework and construction, while low-skilled natives are in other fields, they're not really competing and the impact on wages has only been about -0.4%. These studies probably aren't perfect but overall, they present a quantified level of impact which isn't particularly huge... the big seemingly obvious idea that immigrants drag down wages doesn't bear out all that easily. Nor do they remain an underclass. I'm going to rip this bit from an Economist article because, well, it saves me paraphrasing a succinct argument. The upshot is that Mexicans are socially mobile and that by the second-generation they're doing quite well.
To me, blaming immigrants for labour problems with sluggish wage growth smacks of easy scapegoating and distraction--if I were a good Marxist I might call it "mystification" c(:. It's so easy. Blame the foreigners for all the problems and maybe you'll stop labour from organising more effectively and demanding better conditions and stronger legal protections. The fact is, conditions for American labour have been getting worse and more unequal for several decades (real wages have barely risen at the bottom end since the 70s) and it's important not to overstate the impact of immigration relative to other factors. And to, of course, see the benefits too. Cheaper stuff to buy, for everyone, even the poor! How do people think they get a 10 dollar pizza delivered, for example? Worry about the impacts of immigration seem, basically, similar to worries about globalisation... economic uncertainty with an unequal distribution of winners and losers and the benefits more diffuse and harder to see than the costs Now. KULTUR. This is the main ballgame, let's be honest. Opposition to Immigration is mostly not an economic issue. It doesn't matter how much economic evidence you amass to the contrary, regarding second-generation assimilation and social mobility, "Mexicans are lazy, don't assimilate, and steal welfare benefits" is a perception that persists regardless of evidence that they work hard, do assimilate (or their children do) and go where the jobs, not welfare benefits, are. Farbeit for anyone who thinks this to present evidence about, say, illegal immigrant Mexican employment rates and unemployment benefits versus the general population. Countering these gut-instinct cultural arguments is difficult because long-winded econometrics aren't as compelling as easy rhetoric. Let us not forget, however, that there was a time that the same or similar arguments have been levelled against everyone from the Irish to the Jews to the Japanese the Italians. The Irish are stupid and violent, the Japanese don't assimilate, the Italians bring their dangerous anarchist ideology with them. I find Koryo's argument about language interesting, as I do most questions of language policy. Why is a monolingual country so massively desirable versus una nación bilingüe? Isn't that just fussy and pedantic? Why shouldn't governments recognise basic reality? One in 10 people in America speak Spanish (30 million out of 300)... that's practically on par with Canada and French, certainly higher than the proportion of speakers of many official languages any number of bilingual or multilingual countries in Europe. Language policy should follow social reality, not try to lead it... since it can't lead, anyway. People DO learn English, the language is NOT under threat. Virtually every second-generation migrant in America speaks English and this has always been the case, there's no assimilation problem in that regard. But Spanish is going to co-exist with that as a language of a growing portion of the population. Don't forget, it's really, really easy for children in a bilingual environment to be bilingual. 70 percent of the world is bilingual. They do it without thinking. English and Spanish can, do, and will, co-exist comfortably just as multiple languages coexist comfortably in a majority of the world's countries. Combine this with the evidence that Latinos do in fact have intergenerational social mobility and do in fact assimilate like all other groups always have, and I'm not seeing a problem here. Unless we're going to actually ban the language or just stop Spanish-speakers from coming, which no serious person would suggest, that's unavoidable. The "monolingual country" horse probably bolted when y'all took the southwest from Mexico. Why pretend otherwise? I don't see how the mere presence of hispanohablantes is this big affront or imposition on English-speakers, especialy since, as stated above, by the second generation, everyone speaks English too. America's ability to have an identity rooted in institutions and ideals rather than ethnic or cultural identity markers (freedom and economic opportunity as core aspects of American identity rather than, say, English, Christianity and whiteness) has always been a great strength versus other places like Europe, where the debate over immigration is a lot more neutoric and obsessed with cultural ephemera (see also: headscarves controversies). Spanish-speakers can be Americans very easily, and they can do it without ceasing to identify with their heritage and place of origin. This is a great strength and I wish Americans were better at recognising this. It makes their immigration debates notably less racist and xenophobic than elsewhere. Concern (okay, outrage and fury) over immigration is often very selective. Perception is EVERYTHING, evidence counts for distressingly little. In places like Australia and England, where fury towards immigration is as strong as in America (and very unfortunately conflated with refugee and asylum issues as well), the majority of illegal immigrants are actually students and tourists who overstay their visas. Yet angry redneck Australians aren't telling all those Europeans to GO HOME. Compared to hysteria over Muslims and other Asians, Britain hardly noticed half-a-million East Europeans that've arrived in the last few years. In Spain, a country which has something like 600 000 illegal immigrants, the much-publicised boat-arrivals from Africa into the Canary Islands makes up just 20 000--the VAST majority are actually Latin Americans who come via plane and walk straight into jobs. Surely, then, border policy shouldn't be rooted solely in the manifestly wrong-headed notions people hold about immigration levels and their impact, any more than governments should institute counterproductive protectionist policies to assuage populist sentiment? You'll note that I'm not really making much distinction between legal and illegal immigration. This is because that's largely a matter of border policies and inadequate bureaucracies. If there's a lot of illegal immigrants, that means there's economic reasons for them and it's too difficult to get things like work visas and so forth, and that's worse for everyone. America and Mexico are a prime example here... America NEEDS immigrant labour and legal immigration is either too low or too difficult to meet those needs. So you get illegality from this inadequate and politicized bureaucratic infrastructure. This makes the immigrants more exploitable and less secure, gives them no incentive to pay tax (yet despite this, 2 thirds of illegal immigrants in the United State pay income tax) and less incentive to seek a secure life and eventually assimilate. It makes it harder to maintain links back home, harder to send remittances that might help spur economic growth back home (economic growth which would, over time, reduce the push factors driving so many people abroad). In short, more legal immigration would be better. The principle should be "as open as possible". And the vast majority of first world countries fall well short in the current fad for "Fortress" polkicies. Australia, for example, is so hysterical over immigration that we imprison refugees on pokey little islands and don't even have temporary work permit programs with our Pacific neighbours. So, more open borders means, in practice, largely means making sure there's paths to legal residency, citizenship, access of rights, and general normality. This also means periodic amnesties as part of this normalisation. And of course, it means actively working to end to the idea that "Them" is some big threat, and appreciate that immigration is valuable and beneficial to both origin and recipient countries. Even if it's got that scary bogey-word "illegal" attached to it. (edited by Arwon on 02-07-07 06:03 AM) (edited by Arwon on 02-07-07 11:03 PM) (edited by Arwon on 02-07-07 11:14 PM) (edited by Arwon on 02-07-07 11:24 PM) |
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Arwon Bazu  Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| It's a self-serving argument from Apple's perspective, since most online sales resulting from abolishing DRM would be through their Itunes store, but it's also a correct argument.
He's right, DRM hasn't worked since most music is copyable anyway (from CDs) and it's mostly the big dinosaur record companies keeping DRM in place. I'm sure Apple resents the bad press, it runs counter to the pseudo-hippie image they're trying to maintain. DRM-free sales would most likely increase total sales, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce the overhead of trying to implement DRM effectively. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| Yeah but I didn't mention Fox. I wouldn't put it past them to make a hoopla about swearing in on the Koran but I kinda live in a different country and haven't seen Fox News since 2004 when I was last in Americaland. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| Well I'm very very in favour of schools teaching a compulsory second language from a very young age, as a general principle. Obviously in most of the US Spanish is the way to go, both in terms of available teachers and utility. Unfortunately, though, learning a language in school doesnt guarantee skill with it... ultimately that comes down to the individual students and their environment, language aptitude and so forth.
FWIW most white Americans who speak a bit of Spanish seem to speak with GOD-AWFUL accents, but that's probably just my bias. I'm sure Australian accented Spanish sounds pretty absurd too. As for teaching in first-language Spanish. Bilingual education is probably the best bet in environments where there's a bilingual environment outside the classroom. I guess the main point is, they shouldn't not teach in Spanish just on misguided nativist principle. I don't know enough about educational and linguistic theory to know whether kids aged 5-10 can comfortably juggle two languages, but I suspect they're good enough that it isn't a zero-sum English OR Spanish game. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| Where do you live, incidentally? I think we're talking about two different things at the same time here: Teaching Spanish as a foreign language to kids with no outside exposure to the language is one thing, and using Spanish as a language of instruction among those who can understand it, is another. I'm in favour of the former because I'm in favour of aggressively teaching second languages as a general principle and because it's sensible to give kids a bit of grounding in a useful language, should they decide to go further with it (and out of a feel-good sense of multiculturalism and mutual respect if nothing else).
However, I'm more talking about the latter because the issue raised was teaching in Spanish to people for whom Spanish is their first language, or at least one they're fluent with. Believe me, I'm aware that languages are difficult to learn from school alone (I'm two years into Spanish at uni now, but I find it really difficult to follow any spoken Spanish and forget most of it a month after semester finishes... hopefully my year studying in Spain will get me close to fluent), but in a country which is 10% Spanish-speaking, there's kids who're exposed to a lot of the language in the first ten or so years of life, and they'll tend to pick it up to virtually native fluency. It's here that it's viable and effective to encourage bilingualism by teaching in both languages. You said "it's far better to know one language solidly than have a less-than-solid understanding of two languages" but hat's not how bilingualism (from a young age) works, as demonstrated in most parts of the world where even without much education, people can speak two languages quite comfortably if they're in a situation where they've been raised with both. This situation is becoming a reality in many parts of America, is a reality in some, and I don't think there's really anything wrong with that. It really doesn't threaten the primacy of English as people seem to worry. In such areas which are pretty bilingual anyway, schools should be strongly encouraged to make available classes where the language of instruction is Spanish (alongside English language classes of course). Bilingualism should be encouraged and it's here where I don't think any sort of zero-sum game applies. KORYO: By "La Raza" I assume you mean the National Council of La Raza organisation? I ask because they're a frequent bugbear of all the anti-immigration sites and any number of pundits, whose views are a bit skewed and whose opinions you obviously need to take with a bit of a grain of salt. All I'm saying is that calling a major national advocacy and anti-discrimination group with a history of fighting for the civil rights of Mexican-Americans and other Latinos "hostile" is a big claim. (edited by Arwon on 02-08-07 05:59 AM) (edited by Arwon on 02-08-07 06:03 AM) (edited by Arwon on 02-08-07 06:10 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| Perhaps. "La Raza" is a pretty generalised term though, hard to tell since it's sort of mostly an analogue for terms like "Latino". | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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Originally posted by Koryo Maybe you can, *I* am poor! |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| A recent CSIRO report has said that Australia has the capacity to meet its entire electricity supply with solar energy, the base-load supply, cost-effectively, and within a decade or so, if the government were prepared to invest in it.
Meanwhile, Howard continues to claim solar can't meet "base-load" supplies no matter how many times he's contradicted in parliament and elsewhere, and continues to stoke a nuclear debate solely to wedge the Labor Party and tout that "coal is the future". Bah. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| Finally saw this, and loved it. Was amused by the constant swearing which wasn't translated into the English subtitles, and my inner Spanish history geek was giddy at the Falangist uniforms and the "yoke and arrows" insignia and all that lovely fascist rhetoric.
People lamenting the fantasy aspects being secondary are missing the point. The time and place was deliberate, very deliberate. Spain in 1944 was a harsh and desperate place to live. The movie is primarily a parable about fascism, and life under fascism both in terms of collective horror and the impacts on the individual psyche... and this is reflected in the nature of the promises and demands made by the faun to Ofelia which, otherwise, looked a bit random and pointless. The juxtaposition, for example, of the food-lines and rationing versus the banquet she wasn't allowed to touch lest she trigger the wrath of that beast... was obvious and striking. Likewise, when the faun, in giving Ofelia a second chance, demands unquestioning obedience, he is directly parralleling the Doctor's final words to the captain about obeying for the sake of obeying. And when the faun demands the blood of an innocent, this is pretty directly in keeping with fascist ideas about the ends justifying the means and about sacrifices for the greater good. Meanwhile: Here's some reading on the Spanish Maquis resistance to the Francoists and Nazis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_maquis Interesting stuff. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| It was kinda galling to a lot of people when Guardian readers wrote to people to tell them who to vote for. It must be a lot more galling (and embarassing to us) when the the leader of a country takes a shot at a US senator.
Upshot: Terrorists are praying for Obama to win. One part of why this is awful is the appalling lack of ettiquette displayed by noted Bush-fanboy Howard (who is no doubt displeased at the idea of taking orders from^H^H^H^working with a Democrat and... ye gods, a BLACK MAN). Leaders of countries DO NOT lecture other countries about who to vote for. It's poor form when American leaders do it, it's poor form when Australian leaders do it. The other part is the annoyingly pig-headed mindset that whatever the terrorists might want, we HAVE to do the opposite, and that's the way to go about life. Terrorists like clean water? ARSENIC IN THE RESERVOIRS. Yeah. Obama's comeback was cool though :
OOOOH, SNAP. God I hope Labor wins the election this year. (edited by Arwon on 02-11-07 10:04 PM) (edited by Arwon on 02-11-07 10:05 PM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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| Fuck I hope so. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6320 days Last view: 6319 days |
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Right-on, Texas Republican John Cornyn! (edited by Arwon on 02-11-07 11:30 PM) |
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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by Arwon |
