“The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” — George Mason
U.S. Invites War with World: Intellectual Privilege, Jurisdiction, and Property Rights
Alumni, Peter Anthony Tariche
Cross posted on Peter’s blog.
Recently the United States Customs and Enforcement(ICE) agency has shutdown more than a hundred .com and .net websites, under the grounds these websites are under U.S. jurisdiction.
Erik Barnett, Assistant Deputy Director for ICE, claims the United States has jurisdiction over all .com and .net websites because all Domain Name Service(DNS) indexes are “routed” through Verisign, a United States based company. In this article, I will outline three protests against the over-expansion of ICE’s power: jurisdiction, international law, and constitutional law. And, ultimately, I will question the very nature of intellectual privilege that has lead to these abuses. First, let us debunk the argument the United States has jurisdiction over all .net and .com websites.
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Sacrificed on the Altar of the Regents
Alexander Kreedman
After increasing tuition nine times over the last ten years, undergraduates in the UC system will now be paying more than 200 percent what their contemporaries ten years ago had paid, in order to pay for a bigger UC bureaucracy. Since 2000, the UC administration has also increased in size by more than 200 percent.
At the UC Regents upcoming meeting on July 12-14 in San Francisco, the Regents plan to discuss an additional 9.6% tuition increase. If this tuition increase is passed, it will raise costs for an instate student from $11,124 to $12,200 for the coming academic year.
In March 2011, the President of the UC Regents, Mark Yudof, told students to be prepared for a possible mid-year tuition increase of 32% for 2011-2012 if state funds are not restored. At the current rate of tuition increases, it has been estimated that instate student tuition could hit $25,000 by the 2015-2016 academy year.
To understand the effect of this increase on a UCSD undergraduate, the cost of fall tuition alone in 2003-2004 was $2,035.50 while in 2011 it will have increased to $4,352.56.
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A Classically Liberal General Critique of Marxism
Ankur Chawla
***Editors Note: This paper discussing Marxism was submitted as a final paper in Spring 2011 at UCSD and was later permitted to be republished on the California Review.
The twentieth century has seen many opposing philosophies that attempt to reconcile economic productivity with democratic ideals such as equality and freedom (which we will attempt to define over the course of this essay). Perhaps chief among these opposing viewpoints are those of Marxism and classical liberalism. Liberalism in this sense is meant to mean economic and even social freedoms which eschew most government oversight, whereas Marxism is generally defined as a social philosophy grounded in ideals such as class equality and social welfare. It is important to note that although there are many different variations of liberals and Marxists, we will stick to these general definitions for the sake of simplicity. This essay will attempt to make a general liberal criticism of Marxist class analysis by critiquing two fundamental Marxist arguments: (a) that the leisure class necessarily dominates the working class, and (b) that the free market is a fundamentally repressive institution. This analysis will in large part concern economics, which both perspectives would use as a necessary premise for their social philosophies. We will use the works of liberal scholar Milton Friedman and Marxist scholars Thorstein Veblen and Herbert Marcuse to further make sense of this argument.
Capitalism: A Poem
Kara Henderson, Staff Writer
I love Capitalism
It’s way better than Marxism
It’s slogan should be “Yes, I can
I don’t need the man!”
Marx was a goon
He wanted all your money by noon
Capitalism is the best
It let’s me invest
In whatever I want
Marx can only taunt
At his misguided theories
That make me so dreary
Capitalism is the best
It made everyone move west
Away from Marx the goon
Who wanted redistribution to the moon!
Frustrated About H.R. 1540
To All of the “Honorable” Congressmen and Congresswomen who Abrogated your Duty to the Constitution of the United States,
I can’t believe you have voted to pass H.R. 1540. You have officially effectively given the executive branch the U.S Congress’s most precious and limited power! The right to declare war without the consent of the people represented by the Congress was never granted in the Constitution! Precedents made decades ago do not excuse your part in this! Have you no decency? What about your oath! I hope you lose your seat! Woe to you!
Sincerely,
Brent Casillas
Guest Contributor
The Black Hole of the UCSD Libraries
Alexander Kreedman
***Editors Note: This article was printed in the May issue of the California Review
This article is the second in an ongoing series to inform and educate the undergraduate population at UC San Diego regarding the health and longevity of the library system and how stopping services and closing down facilities affects the average student.
