Category Archives: The West

‘Deaths Of Despair’: The Most Suicidal Populations Are Amerindians And American Whites

America, Economy, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism, Psychiatry, Race, Russia, The West, The Zeitgeist, Welfare

Suicide rates are declining everywhere except for the big exception: America, where it is 12.8 per 100,000, “well above China’s current rate of seven.”

And, in particular, among white Americans and native Americans.

“There are parallels between the rise in suicide in post-Soviet Russia and the ‘deaths of despair’ in America identified by Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton, economists at Princeton University,” observes The Economist.

Suicide rates among white Americans are higher, and have risen faster since 2000, than among any other group except native Americans (see chart). The same trend can be seen among the middle-aged. At the turn of the century, older people were much more likely to kill themselves than those in their 50s, but that is no longer true. Rates among people in rural areas are higher, and have been increasing faster, than those among people in towns and cities.

The Economist is slightly more candid than the likes of the neocons and lite libertarians mentioned in the post, “Immigration: A Look-Away Issue For Neocons & Lite Libertarians“:

For working-class misery, neoconservatives and lite libertarians [economic reductionist all] blame everything BUT mass immigration, diversity, loss of community and sense of place. Anything but the truth …

MORE: “Defeating despair: Suicide is declining almost everywhere …”

INTERVIEW: ‘Writer Ilana Mercer Takes On The Cato Institute’s ‘Left-Libertarianism’

Culture, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, The West

INTERVIEW: Big League Politics interviewed me on my paleolibertarianism under the headline: “Writer Ilana Mercer Takes On The Cato Institute’s ‘Left-Libertarianism.’” I didn’t think I took CATO on, but was just pointing out sharp distinctions, in reply to correspondent Seth Segal’s sharp questions. But OK. <g>

BIG LEAGUE POLITICS: Being a preeminent paleolibertarian thinker today, how would you define paleolibertarianism and how does it differ from standard paleoconservatism?

ILANA MERCER: First, let’s define libertarianism. It’s concerned with the ethics of the use of force. Nothing more. This, and this alone, is the ambit of libertarian law.

All libertarians must respect the non-aggression axiom. Libertarians don’t initiate aggression against non-aggressors, not even if it’s “for their own good,” as neoconservatives like to cast America’s recreational wars of choice. If someone claims to be a libertarianism and also supports the proxy bombing of Yemen, or supported the war in Iraq; he is not a libertarian, plain and simple.

As to paleolibertarianism, in particular. And this is my take. It’s how I’ve applied certain principles week-in, week-out, for almost two decades. So, some will disagree. In my definition, a paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the just-mentioned libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which all decent people should live, will crumble. …

… Read the rest. “Writer Ilana Mercer Takes On The Cato Institute’s ‘Left-Libertarianism’” is on Big League Politics.

Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari Steps Into The Anti-State Void Opened Up On The Organized* Right

Conservatism, Criminal Injustice, Donald Trump, Free Speech, Intelligence, The State, The West

With his piece, “The Rise Of The Western Dissidents,” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari steps into the anti-state void opened up on the right, and openly and honestly fingers western governments—the Trump Administration, included—in creating their own imperiled dissidents.

It’s a disgrace. (See my “Assange Is Us”)

those who rightly believe the west is superior to authoritarian regimes must now contend with a troubling trend — the rise of the western dissident.

Chief among them is Julian Assange, who for a half-decade has been forced to live in the tiny Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has claimed political asylum since 2011. Assange claimed that he would be extradited to the U.S. to face charges over his work at WikiLeaks if he left the embassy, and was routinely mocked as paranoid for doing so.

This week, we learned that Assange was right and his critics were wrong. …

Thanks to a clerical error by the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, reporters were able to confirm the existence of sealed criminal charges against the WikiLeaks founder. …

WikiLeaks behaved precisely as any responsible publisher handling sensitive material should, redacting information that could cause harm. The redactions only stopped when they became pointless. Assange is unlikely to have won more than a dozen journalism awards if he were completely reckless in his publications. …

…the only reason Assange is being targeted is that he tangled with the highest levels of the western establishment. In that, he is far from alone.

In the late 2000s to early 2010s, western governments targeted all manner of individuals associated with Assange and the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, including Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda, and The Guardian newspaper.

These days, however, a new class of western dissident has emerged — the populist dissident. …

Who would have thought that the highest court in Europe, home of the enlightenment, would uphold a case in which a woman was prosecuted for blasphemy against Islam?

Who would have thought that Britain, the birthplace of liberalism and the free press, would ban an independent journalist from its shores for satirizing the same religion?

Who would have thought that Germany, whose living memory of the totalitarian Stasi is just three decades old, would put its largest opposition party under surveillance …

… The REST: Bokhari: “Rise of the Western Dissidents”

* This writer is anti-state, but is also unaffiliated and independent.

Australia Enforces Immigration Laws Against … Local Pacific Islanders …

IMMIGRATION, Law, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, The West

The Economist: “Australia is kicking Kiwis out, and New Zealand is unhappy about it.”

In 2014 a conservative prime minister, Tony Abbott, tightened deportation rules. Any foreigner sentenced to a year in jail now fails a “character test” and has to leave the country. Kiwis may live and work freely in Australia. Since about 650,000 do so, the rule hits them the hardest. Since the law was changed, at least 1,200 New Zealanders have been cast back across the Tasman Sea. Oz Kiwi, an advocacy group, estimates that around 170 New Zealanders are currently in detention centres awaiting deportation, more than any other nationality.
… Australia makes no concessions for those who came as children but never changed their passports. Neither does it for juvenile offenders, or petty criminals with short sentences that cumulatively add up to 12 months, even if those were suspended. Historic crimes were once ignored, but the law now works retroactively, counting ancient infringements committed overseas as well as recent ones in Australia.

Some prior offenders are stopped at airports.
… New Zealanders of Maori or Pacific Islander descent are disproportionately affected by the changes, because they are more likely than average to have convictions. About 60% of New Zealanders who have been deported from Australia since 2014 are “brown”, as Joanne Cox of Oz Kiwi puts it. Citizenship is reserved mostly for the skilled and relatively wealthy: only about 8.4% of New Zealanders who arrived in Australia in the decade after 2001 got passports. The rate for Maoris was below 3%.

Paul Hamer, a researcher at Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand’s capital, suggests that Australia’s souring mood has been fed by “dissatisfaction” at New Zealand’s openness to Pacific migration. It threw open its doors to the region at a time when Australia still banned all but white immigrants (today it sets annual quotas for newcomers from the Pacific). People of Pacific Islander descent are 8% of New Zealand’s population. Politicians in Canberra, the Australian capital, have complained for decades that such migrants exploit a “backdoor” to Australia.

… conservative coalition government under Malcolm Turnbull is so concerned about border control that last year it rebuffed New Zealand’s offer to resettle asylum-seekers from detention centres run for Australia’s benefit in Nauru, a tiny Pacific island state, and Manus island, part of Papua New Guinea. Almost 1,600 “boat people” remain in the controversial camps, with no idea of when they might be released. (“Australia is kicking Kiwis out, and New Zealand is unhappy about it”)

Does Australia do anything about non-indigenous immigration, say from China, India, the Philippines and Vietnam? Or, is enforcement just against the Pacific Islander Maori, who are, face it, indigenous to the region, to New Zealand? What about Muslim, South-Asian migrants?