Category Archives: Technology

James Damore Confronts The Hags of High Tech (& Loses)

Affirmative Action, Business, Feminism, Gender, Political Correctness, Technology

NEW COLUMN: “James Damore Confronts The Hags of High Tech (& Loses)” is the current column, now on Townhall.com. An excerpt:

Of the many men who toil in high-tech, few are as heroic as James Damore, the young man who penned the manifesto “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” In it, Damore calmly and logically exposed the tyrannical ideological edifice erected to perpetuate the myth that, in aggregate, women and men are identical in aptitude and interests, and that “all disparities in representation are due to oppression.”

 …

… In high-tech, almost nothing is as politically precious as a woman with some aptitude. There’s no end to which companies will go to procure women and help them succeed, often to the detriment of technically competent men and women who must do double duty. Their procurement being at a premium, concepts such as “sucking it up” and soldiering on are often anathema to coddled distaff.

A woman in high-technology can carp constantly about … being a woman in high-tech. Her gender—more so than her capabilities—is what defines her and endears her to her higher-ups, for whom she’s a notch in the belt.

While male engineers—and, indubitably, some exceptional women—are hired to be hard at work designing and shipping tangible products; women in high tech, in the aggregate, are free to branch out; to hone a niche as a voice for their gender.

Arisen online and beyond is a niche-market of nudniks (nags): Women talking, blogging, vlogging, writing and publishing about women in high-technology or their absence therefrom; women beating the tom-tom about discrimination and stereotyping, but saying absolutely nothing about the technology they presumably love and help create.

Young women, in particular, are pioneers of this new, intangible, but lethal field of meta-technology: kvetching (complaining) about their absence in technology with nary a mention of their achievements in technology.

The hashtag “MicrosoftWomen” speaks to the solipsistic universe created by females in high-tech and maintained by the house-broken males entrusted with supporting the menacing matriarchy. Are these ladies posting about the products they’ve partaken in designing and shipping? Not often. Women in high-tech are more likely to be tweeting out about … being women in high-tech. Theirs is a self-reverential and self-referential universe. …

… Read the Rest. The complete column, “James Damore Confronts The Hags of High Tech (& Loses),” is now on Townhall.com.

This column can be read also on Unz ReviewDaily Caller, American Thinker, and others, where The Mercer Column usually appears. And it’s always posted, eventually, on IlanaMercer.com, under Articles. Please share.

UPDATED II (4/24): Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed

Business, Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, Labor, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Technology, Welfare

Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed” is the new column, trending on Townhall.com. An excerpt:

Billionaire businessman Marc Cuban insists that the H-1B visa racket is a feature of the vaunted American free market. This is nonsense on stilts. It can’t go unchallenged.

Another billionaire, our president, has ordered that the H-1B program be reformed. This, too, is disappointing. You’ll see why.

First, let’s correct Mr. Cuban: America has not a free economy, but a mixed-economy. State and markets are intertwined. Trade, including trade in labor, is not free; it’s regulated to the hilt. If anything, the labyrinth of work visas is an example of a fascistic government-business cartel in operation.

The H-1B permit, in particular, is part of that state-sponsored visa system. The primary H-1B hogs—Infosys (and another eight, sister Indian firms), Microsoft, and Intel—import labor with what are grants of government privilege. Duly, the corporations that hog H-1Bs act like incorrigibly corrupt rent seekers. Not only do they get to replace the American worker, but they get to do so at his expense.

Here’s how:

Globally, a series of sordid liaisons ensures that American workers are left high and dry. Through the programs of the International Trade Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, and other oink-operations, the taxpaying American worker is forced to subsidize and underwrite the investment risks of the very corporations that have given him the boot.

Domestically, the fascistic partnership with the State amounts to a subsidy to business at the expense of the taxpayer. See, corporations in our democratic welfare state externalize their employment costs onto the taxpayers.

So while public property is property funded by taxpayers through expropriated taxes; belongs to taxpayers; is to be managed for their benefit—at least one million additional immigrants a year, including recipients of the H-1B visa, are allowed the free use of taxpayer-supported infrastructure and amenities. Every new arrival avails himself of public works such as roads, hospitals, parks, libraries, schools, and welfare.

Does this epitomize the classical liberal idea of laissez faire?

Moreover, chain migration or family unification means every H-1B visa recruit is a ticket for an entire tribe. The initial entrant—the meal ticket—will pay his way. The honor system not being an especially strong value in the Third World, the rest of the clan will be America’s problem. More often than not, chain-migration entrants become wards of the American taxpayer.

Spreading like gravy over a tablecloth, this rapid, inorganic population growth is detrimental to all ecosystems: natural, social and political.

Take Seattle and its surrounding counties …

… READ THE REST. “Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed” is now trending on Townhall.com.

UPDATE (4/22): A poignant observation on Townhall.com, where the column is now trending:

This article is spot on. The insane importation of h1b workers from India by Microsoft and Amazon has changed the Seattle area beyond recognition. The author’s contention that each visa is just a meal ticket to move the whole clan over is spot on. Everywhere you look in this area, trees are being cut down to make room for more development. All new homes now have 3 levels, with a finished basement intended for the grandparents who moved here to take care of the grand kids while both parents work, since Obama also allow the spouses of H1bs to work. Indians are taking over all the jobs in this area. Every new home buyer is either Indian or Chinese, both move the whole clan over. All the schools here are now at least 50% Asian, some are 90% Asian, esp. the elementary schools.
We need a 20 year moratorium on immigration, not just the H1b but its close cousins, H2b, H3, H4, J1, OPT, L1 and the EB5 all need to be cancelled for 20 years. Immigration is the colonization tactic of the 21st century. The US is being colonized by the third world. Most of the Mexicans and Asians are wildly liberal and vote Democrat, esp. the Indians. Republicans are dead if they continue to allow this stream of migration. They need to wise up in a hurry and stop this third world invasion.

UPDATE II (2/24):

On Ricochet.com, Jamie Lockett responds:

“Wouldn’t the real libertarian response to this be an immigration system unregulated by government and depended on economic necessity?”

MY REPLY: “A clear-thinking libertarian addresses reality. Would I like to see a world governed by private property? Indeed. Until that happens—if—I am obliged to address the reality I addressed in the column and call out the bluff of the H-1B visa by pointing to the existence of the 0-1 visa. I am not advocating for these systems; I’m illustrating how the immigration industry—corporations, lawyers, lobbyists and other clientele—stick it to American workers. I hope you are not suggesting that instead of addressing reality, I pontificate about my purist preferences.”

Robert McReynolds, aka JamieLockett: “Well, I don’t think I could of said it any better really.”

Africa BC And AC (Before And After Colonialism)

Africa, Law, Private Property, Propaganda, Technology, The West

“Africa BC And AC (Before And After Colonialism)” is the latest column, now on The Daily Caller.

From their plush apartments, over groaning dinner tables, pseudo-intellectuals have the luxury of depicting squalor and sickness as idyllic, primordially peaceful and harmonious. After all, when the affluent relinquish their earthly possessions to return to the simple life, it is always with aid of sophisticated technology and the option to be air-lifted to a hospital if the need arises. Is there any wonder, then, that “the stereotype of colonial history” has been perpetuated by the relatively well-to-do intellectual elite? Theories of exploitation, Marxism for one, originated with Western intellectuals, not with African peasants. It is this clique alone that could afford to pile myth upon myth about a system that had benefited ordinary people.

What is meant by “benefited”? Naturally, the premise here is that development, so long as it’s not coerced, is desirable and material progress good. British colonists in Africa reduced the state of squalor, disease and death associated with lack of development. To the extent that this is condemned, the Rousseauist myth of the noble, happy savage is condoned. Granted, Africa’s poor did not elect to have these conditions, good and bad, foisted on them. However, once introduced to potable water, sanitation, transportation, and primary healthcare, few Africans wish to do without them. Fewer Africans still would wish to return to Native Customary Law once introduced to the idea that their lives were no longer the property of the Supreme Chief to do with as he pleased. …

… When all is said and done, the West is what it is due to human capital—people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy. Human action is the ultimate adjudicator of a human being’s worth; the aggregate action of many human beings acting in concert makes or breaks a society. Overall, American society is superior to assorted African and Arab societies because America is still inhabited by the kind of individuals who make possible a thriving civil society. …

Read the rest. “Africa BC And AC (Before And After Colonialism)” is now on The Daily Caller.

High-Tech Traitors Are Social Justice Warriors 1st; Businessmen 2nd

Business, IMMIGRATION, Technology

“High-Tech Traitors Are Social Justice Warriors 1st; Businessmen 2nd” is the current column, now of The Daily Caller. An excerpt:

“More than 100 companies, including most of high-tech’s biggest names,” have threatened to “move jobs outside the United States,” unless they get their way.

What do they want? They want President Trump to give up on “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” the POTUS’s Executive Order, currently being refined to withstand legal challenges from these and related special interests.

Where will America’s “tech titans” go? Presumably to the banned countries, without whose high-tech talent our companies cannot do business. Or, so their antics imply. Washington State, which led the charge against President Trump’s “travel ban” on Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Libya and Iran is home to some of these powerful, high-tech traitors.

Why the strong language?

I’ve yet to hear of a single coveted Syrian, Yemeni, Somali, Sudanese, Iraqi and Libyan needed right away in Redmond for his exceptional, technical know-how. (I know of one highly productive, much older Afghani. He acquired his degree under … Russian occupation and has been in the US for decades.)

The only case tech traitors can reasonably make for Muslim high-tech talent, invisible to the naked eye, are the Iranians. They’re well-represented in our state’s tech sector as top talent. In adding Iran to the travel ban, President Trump is clearly appeasing the neoconservative snakes slithering around his administration. They’re fixing for a fight with Iran, stupidly collapsing the distinction between the Iranian State (sponsor of terrorism), and the Iranian people (who’re not the reason the Eiffel Tower is being walled-off by bullet-proof glass).

Were our tech execs remotely honest, they’d make the case for their Iranian talent. No more.

Don’t pretend you’ll relocate in order to employ Syrians, Yemenis, Somalis, Sudanese, Iraqis and Libyans to fabricate your (stunning) Surface Pro 4 Tablets. For their importation, American taxpayers will be the ones to foot the bill in blood and treasure. Allow the president to protect America from what is a generally an unproductive, atavistic, immigrant cohort.

Oh, and if I hear more indignant hyperbole about Steve Jobs’ illustrious Syrian lineage, I’ll hit the roof. Apple’s founder  was not raised by his Syrian biological father, who deserted him. (Like members of the men-only refugee club, whose members left their women, children and elderly behind to … the sentence is yours to complete.) …

…  The truth is that tech traitors are true believers, radical leftists; social justice warriors, vested in the engineering of tribalism (“multiculturalism”) and racial favoritism (“affirmative action”) in the workplace. …

… READ THE REST.  “High-Tech Traitors Are Social Justice Warriors 1st; Businessmen 2nd” is now on The Daily Caller.