Check out Jeff Riggenbach’s article on Gary Chartier and Conscience of an Anarchist.
Tag Archives | Left-Libertarian
Jim Crow Returns to Alabama
This past Thursday the Alabama legislature put on their white hoods and enacted the harshest anti-immigrant regime in the country, one even more tyrannical than Arizona’s ethnic-cleansing laws.
As in Arizona, the new edict “allows police to arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant if the person is stopped for some other reason”; but it also “requir[es] schools to find out if students are in the country lawfully,” “requires all businesses to check the legal status of workers using a federal system called E-Verify,” “makes it a crime for landlords to knowingly rent to an illegal immigrant,” and in a flourish of pure petty malice, “mak[es] it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.”
The old Jim Crow laws enforced discrimination based on the colour of a person’s skin; the new Jim Crow laws enforce discrimination on the basis of a person’s birth on the wrong side of an imaginary line. Though of course racist motivations are not exactly absent.
To make sure that racism and misogyny continue to march hand in hand, the legislature also passed an abortion ban on the same day. Well heck, if the state can treat immigrants as second-class persons, why can’t it do the same to women, and force them to use their bodies as incubators for unwanted fetuses?
If only we could get some Republicans in power! They’re for smaller government, you know.
I Agree With Gingrich
The word is that Newt Gingrich has scuttled his chance at the GOP nomination by interrupting his campaign for a two-week cruise in the Greek isles.
Well, duh. If I had to choose between cruising the Greek isles and campaigning to be president of the u.s., I’d make the same choice he did.
Reap Artist
Warner Bros. is being sued for using a copy of Mike Tyson’s tattoo in a movie without the permission of the original artist. If the case goes against Warner, they may have to have the tattoo digitally altered when they release the dvd.
Warner is a victim of censorship here, plain and simple. But given that Warner makes money by threatening similar censorship against everyone else, it’s hard to feel sympathetic. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
Addendum:
Oh, this is too good to be true. The artist who claims Warner Bros. stole his tattoo design is being charged with stealing it in turn from the Maori. (CHT Stephan.)
The Copyright Infringements in the Rue Morgue
In his introduction to Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin trilogy, Matthew Pearl offers in passing an interesting thought on copyright:
The brilliant resolution Poe designs for “The Purloined Letter” – that the letter in question is right in front of our eyes the whole time, which is why the police cannot find it – is also a perfect formulation of the odd version of “theft” that exists perhaps exclusively in the area of the law protecting artistic creations, which is known as intellectual property: that something can be stolen and in plain sight at the same time or, odder still, that in copyright law, for something to be considered stolen it must be in plain view. (p. xv)
(I think the connection to “The Purloined Letter” is a bit of a stretch, but never mind.)
Cordial and Sanguine, Part 6
My third post (yeah, been crazy busy lately) at Bleeding Heart Libertarians is now up: “Prison Break.”