Category Archives: Art and Ideas

George Harrison: My Sweet Lord

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A great devotional song, probably the greatest in Western pop culture, by the humble genius George Harrison, a man with the looks of a movie star and the character of a monk.  Harrison was a favorite devotee of the great evangelist of Krishna consciousness, Srila Prabhupada, and an important figure in the spread of Hinduism in the West. Devout and reclusive, he was the least known of the Beatles and the most musical, as well as the best trained.

An excerpt from the letter linked above from Prabhupada to Harrison:

“By Krsna Consciousness movement we want to broadcast this information that if anyone reposes his loving propensity upon Krsna, he will immediately feel full satisfaction, as much as he feels full satisfaction by supplying food in the stomach. Otherwise, everyone will be frustrated.

Please try to understand this simple philosophy by critical analysis, and I hope by the grace of Krsna you will be a great servant of His in fulfilling His desire that He may be known by His Holy Name in every village and every city all over the world, and thus the people will become happy.”

Kr-shn is regarded by many students of comparative religion as a precursor of Christ.  Both names sound strikingly similar. And both religions – Hinduism and Christianity –  say that the “good news” of the loving nature of consciousness (being) will reach the ends of the earth in the time of Kali or the “dark” times (literally a redundancy, as Kal = time/black).

Rousas Rushdoony: What Jesus taught about taxes

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Rousas Rushdoony gives the traditional Christian understanding of the great subversive parable of Jesus, regarding the payment of tribute to Caesar, notwithstanding the attempt by some to use Jesus to support libertarian beliefs.

Rushdoony’s understanding is supported by the readings of others (per Wikipedia):

Mennonite Dale Glass-Hess wrote:

It is inconceivable to me that Jesus would teach that some spheres of human activity lie outside the authority of God. Are we to heed Caesar when he says to go to war or support war-making when Jesus says in other places that we shall not kill? No! My perception of this incident is that Jesus does not answer the question about the morality of paying taxes to Caesar, but that he throws it back on the people to decide. When the Jews produce a denarius at Jesus’ request, they demonstrate that they are already doing business with Caesar on Caesar’s terms. I read Jesus’ statement, “Give to Caesar…” as meaning “Have you incurred a debt in regard to Caesar! Then you better pay it off.” The Jews had already compromised themselves. Likewise for us: we may refuse to serve Caesar as soldiers and even try to resist paying for Caesar’s army. But the fact is that by our lifestyles we’ve run up a debt with Caesar, who has felt constrained to defend the interests that support our lifestyles. Now he wants paid back, and it’s a little late to say that we don’t owe anything. We’ve already compromised ourselves. If we’re going to play Caesar’s games, then we should expect to have to pay for the pleasure of their enjoyment. But if we are determined to avoid those games, then we should be able to avoid paying for them.[13]

Mohandas K. Gandhi shared this perspective. He wrote:

Jesus evaded the direct question put to him because it was a trap. He was in no way bound to answer it. He therefore asked to see the coin for taxes. And then said with withering scorn, “How can you who traffic in Caesar’s coins and thus receive what to you are benefits of Caesar’s rule refuse to pay taxes?”

At the same time, Gandhi, certainly saw that Jesus would have supported non-cooperation and civil resistance through non payment of taxes:

“Jesus’ whole preaching and practice point unmistakably to noncooperation, which necessarily includes nonpayment of taxes.[14]

In Rushdooney’s reading,  Jesus’ teaching is more submissive than it is in Gandhi’s. But it is submissive in a subversive way, similar to the reading of Jacques Ellul:

“Render unto Caesar…” in no way divides the exercise of authority into two realms….They were said in response to another matter: the payment of taxes, and the coin. The mark on the coin is that of Caesar; it is the mark of his property. Therefore give Caesar this money; it is his. It is not a question of legitimizing taxes! It means that Caesar, having created money, is its master. That’s all. Let us not forget that money, for Jesus, is the domain of Mammon, a satanic domain!
My sense is that Jesus’ parables should not be taken out of context to support a dogmatic and anachronistic reading. They should be read in the general spirit of his other teachings.
Elsewhere, Jesus taught that worldly power and wealth were obstacles to the soul. This is hardly the same as libertarian anti-state ideology, but it is subversive and unworldly.
Rousas Rushdoony:

“6. The Tribute Money

One of the best-known stories of the New Testament is the one con­cerning the tribute money question: “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not?” Christ’s answer, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are Gods” (Matt. 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26), is one of the most familiar sentences of Scripture. The general implications have long been recognized; in the specific application, there has been much variation.

The purpose of the Pharisees is again to “entangle him in his talk” (Matt. 22:15); Luke is more specific, “And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor” (Luke 20:20-26). The Roman governor was meant. Apparently the expectation was that Jesus, in faithfulness to the law, would declare that only a theocracy was valid in Israel, not Roman rule and law. Behind this strategy were the Phari­sees and the Herodians (Matt. 22:16; Mark 12:13), a minor, political, non-religious party of the day. The Herodians favored the Roman tax and the Herodian dynasty, which they regarded as preferable to direct Roman rule. The Pharisees were normally hostile to the Herodians, but they joined forces in hostility to Jesus. If Jesus opposed the tax, He could be denounced and delivered to the Roman authorities for arrest and trial.

The question was prefaced with fulsome flattery; the questioners asked as if motivated by a tender conscience rather than a desire to entrap. They attempted to push Jesus into an answer heedless of con­sequences by asserting that “thou art true, and carest for no man; for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth” (Mark 12:14). Such an integrity, they hoped, would compel Him to deny the legitimacy of the Roman tax. “Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?” (Luke 20:22).

The Greek text makes clear that the tax was a “capitation tax,” not an indirect tax.[1] “Luke uses phoros, the wider word for ‘tribute’ as it is paid by one nation to another; Matthew and Mark use the more specific kenos or poll tax that is levied upon every individual for his own person and is thus especially galling as a mark of servitude to the Roman power.”[2]

Israel already had a poll tax, that required by God’s law in Exodus 30:11-16. Its purpose was to provide for civil atonement, i.e., the covering or protection of civil government. Every male twenty years old or older was required to pay this tax to be protected by God the King in His theocratic government of Israel. This tax was thus a civil and religious duty (but not an ecclesiastical one).

There was thus a particular aggravation in the fact that Rome also required a poll or head tax. The Roman Empire and emperor were progressively assuming divine roles, requiring religious assent, and claiming priority over religion. The poll tax was thus a particularly offensive tax, in that it seemed to require a polytheistic faith, the worship of a god other than the true God. Moreover, the Herodian tax was so heavy that twice the imperial government compelled Herod to reduce his tax demands in order to avoid serious trouble. Judas Galilaeus had earlier presented himself as the messiah and had summoned Israel, in the name of God and Scripture, to refuse to pay the tax. The Romans were merciless in putting down the rebellion (Acts 5:37).

The matter had been aggravated as early as A.D. 29 by Pilate, who for a time issued coinage “bearing the lituus, the priest’s staff, or the patera, the sacrificial bowl-two symbols of the imperial philosophy which were bound to be obnoxious to the people.”[3]These coins were later withdrawn, but they did serve to underscore the fact that their bondage to Rome had religious overtones.

The right to issue coins had religious overtones for Israel as I Maccabees 15:6 implies, and it was thus important to them. “‘Coin’ and ‘power’ were regarded as synonyms, so that the coin was the symbol of the ruler’s dominance.”[4] In the second century A.D., Bar Kochba, the false messiah, replaced Roman coinage with his own coins as a means of asserting his power. To give tribute to Caesar thus meant to acknowledge Caesar’s power; to approve of giving tribute to Caesar was to acknowledge the legitimacy of Caesar’s power. The question implicit, in the Herodian’s statement was whether any government other than God’s has any legitimacy. Christ’s assertion of His messiahship was seen by his accusers as a denial of Caesar’s right to tax (Luke 23:2), since the Messiah as King had to have exclusive sovereignty, in their perspective. For Jesus to have denied Caesar’s right to tax Israel was a mark of insurrection and would make Him liable to arrest. For Jesus to have affirmed Caesar’s right to tax would have been, in the eyes of the people, a denial of His messiahship.

The answer of Jesus was to ask for a denarius; He asked it of His questioners. As Stauffer, whose chapter on “The Story of the Tribute Money” is very important, has written:

Jesus asked for a penny, a denarius. Why? There were a great many coins in the wide Roman empire which passed as legal cur­rency, old and new, large and small, imperial and local, gold, silver, copper, bronze and brass. In no country did so many different kinds of money circulate as in Palestine. But the prescribed coin for taxation purposes throughout the empire was the denarius, a little silver coin of about the worth of a shilling. (It can only be the sil­ver denarius which is intended in Mark 12:16, Luke 20:24 and Matt. 22:19, not a gold coin as Titian supposed, in his representa­tion of the tribute scene, nor a Herodian coin, as is often asserted; for the Herodian coins were not called denarii and were not tribute coins, but were local copper coins.) Jesus knew this, and so He asked for the silver imperial tax coin, using the Latin word, the Roman technical expression, which had become current in Palestine along with the coin itself. Bring me a denarius, He said. He did not produce one from His own pocket. Why not? The point now is not whether Jesus had such a coin in His pocket but whether His opponents had. With Socratic irony, he added: “That I may see it?” Why? He had the maieutic purpose with his questioners, He wanted to deliver them, in the Socratic manner, not a priori, but a posteriori. Not their logical or moral sense, but their historical situation and attitude would bring the truth to light. Something is to be seen, and deduced, from the denarius itself.[5]

When the coin was handed to Jesus, He did not yet answer their question, “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” Instead, He asked another question: “Whose is this image and superscription?” (Matt. 22:20; Mark 12:16; Luke 20:24). The answer was, of course, “Cae­sar’s.” According to Geldenhuys,

After their acknowledgment that it is Caesar’s, the following two facts are vividly brought to light through Jesus’ masterly handling of the situation:

(1) Coins with Caesar’s image and superscription are in use among the Jews.
(2) The coins are evidently the property of Caesar, otherwise they would not have borne his image and superscription.
From these two facts it thus follows that the Jews had accepted the imperial rule as a practical reality, for it was the generally current view that a ruler’s power extended as far as his coins were in use.[6]

The practical reality was thus made clear. These men used the coins of Tiberius which carried a “bust of Tiberius in Olympian nakedness, adorned with the laurel wreath, the sign of divinity.” The inscription read, “Emperor Tiberius August Son of the August God,” on the one side, and “Pontifex Maximus” or “High Priest” on the other. The symbols also included the emperor’s mother, Julia Augusta (Livia) sitting on the throne of the gods, holding the Olympian sceptre in her right hand, and, in her left, the olive branch to signify that “she was the earthly incarnation of the heavenly Pax.”[7] The Coins thus had a re­ligious significance. Israel was in a certain sense serving other gods by being subject to Rome and to Roman currency. The point made by implication by His enemies, that tribute to Caesar had religious over­tones, was almost confirmed by Jesus, even as He proved their own submission to Caesar.

Then came His great answer: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars [sic], and to God the things that are God’s (Mark 12:17). Ac­cording to Stauffer, render here means “give back.” “That is the first great surprise in this verse, and its meaning is: the payment of tribute to Caesar is not only your unquestioned obligation; it is also your moral duty.”[8] St. Paul used the same term in Romans 13:7, “Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom. . . .”

Judea was living within the Roman Empire, gaining military and economic benefits from that empire whether it wanted them or not. Even if the benefits of the empire were outweighed by its liabilities, the people were still to render Caesar his due.

The fact still remained that two poll taxes stood in opposition, one paid to the emperor, the other to God. The imperial tax provided “for the daily sacrifice for the welfare of the Roman emperor”; it maintained the empire as a religious entity.[9] The other tax, called then the temple tax, was God’s tax for maintaining His holy order. How could both taxes be paid? According to Stauffer, “He affirmed the symbolism of power, but He rejected the symbolism of worship. But this reservation was not made as a negative statement, but rather as a positive command. ‘Render to God what is God’s’ “[10] Stauffer is right in asserting that, ac­cording to Numbers 8:13 ff., this means that “Everything belongs to God.”[11] At the time that Jesus spoke, the Biblical poll tax was being collected in the spring, in the month of Adar. More specifically, Jesus asked that Caesar’s tax be rendered to Caesar, and God’s tax be rendered to God. The early church was apparently aware of this fact. Jerome, commenting on Matthew 22:21, declared, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, namely, coins, tribute, money; and to God the things that are God’s, namely, tithes, first-fruits, vows, sacrifices.”[12] Israel’s departure from God’s rule and law had placed them under Roman rule and law; they owed to Rome the tribute due to Rome. Rome did not serve God, but neither did Israel. Obedience is due to all authorities under who we find ourselves (Rom. 13:1-7). Rome was now their master, and Rome had to be obeyed. Obedience to God requires obedience to all those whom we find ourselves in subjection to. In the temptation in the wilderness, Satan had tempted Jesus to follow a way of empire: give the people bread and miracles; enable them to walk by sight. Now, through other tempters, the temptation was offered of rejecting all empires, all earthly powers.

Christ conquered this temptation afresh with His words about the double duty of obedience to the way and to the goal of history, to the kingdom of the world and to the kingdom of God. Mark 12:17 is spoken by Christ in conspectu mortis, in the sight of the messianic death. Holy Week is the existential exegesis of His words: submission to the dominion of Caesar, submission to the dominion of God — united in the acceptance of that monstrous judicial murder by which Caesar’s most wretched creature fulfils sub contrario the work of God (Matt. 26:52 ff.; John 19:11)[13]

Let us return to St. Jerome’s words. Two kinds of taxation exist, and Christ requires our obedience to both. The world of Caesar seeks to create a new world without God, and without regeneration; it exacts a heavy tax and accomplishes little or nothing. We are, as sinners, geared by our fallen nature to seeking Caesar’s answer. We pay tribute to Caesar thus, in our faith and with our money. The answer to Caesar’s world is not civil disobedience, the final implication of which is revolution. This is Caesar’s way, the belief that man’s effort by works of law can remake man and the world.

The answer rather is to obey all due authorities and to pay tribute, custom, and honor to whom these things are due. This is the minor aspect of our duty. More important, we must render, give back to God what is His due, our tithes, first-fruits, vows, and sacrifices. The re­generate man begins by acknowledging God, the author and Redeemer of his life, as his lord and savior, his King. At every point in his life, he renders to God His due service, thanksgiving, praise, and tithe. His salvation is God’s gift; the bounty he enjoys is God’s gift and providence; the regenerate man therefore renders, gives back to God, God’s appointed share of all things.

The way of resistance to Rome chosen by Judea led to the world’s worst war and to the death of the nation. Neither the Roman imperial answer nor the Judean revolutionary answer offered anything but death and disaster. Self-consciously, the Christians followed their Lord. Justin Martyr wrote:

And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavour to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him; for at that time some came to Him and asked Him, if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and He answered, “Tell me, whose image does this coin bear?” And they said, “Caesar’s”; And again He answered them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Whence to God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men, and praying that with your kingly power you be found to possess also sound judgment. But if you pay no regard to our prayers and frank explanations, we shall suffer no loss, since we believe (or rather, indeed, are persuaded) that every man will suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merit of his deed, and will render account according to the power he has received from God, as Christ intimated when He said, “To whom God has given more, of him shall more be required.”[14]

Christ’s answer did not prevent His enemies from charging Him with “perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar” (Luke 23:2). His answer in reality had demolished all grounds for any accusation against Him.

Their duty, Jesus had declared, was “to render back” “to pay what is owing”[15] to Caesar and to God. What is due to Caesar is due to Caesar only by the providence, purpose, and counsel of God. What is due to God, what all men owe Him, is everything. Jesus set forth “God’s absolute and peculiar right in respect of every man individually and of all men collectively-an exclusive and paramount right possessed by God alone.”[16]

Those who reduce this great sentence of Christ’s to a declaration about church and state have missed the point of the incident.

[1] Plummer, Luke, p.465.[2] Lenski, Luke, p.988.

[3] Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), p. 119.

[4] Ibid., p. 125.

[5] Ibid., p.122 f

[6] Geldenhuys, Luke, p.504.

[7] Stauffer, op. cit., p. 124f.

[8] Ibid., p. 129.

[9] Ibid., p.131.

[10] Ibid., p.132.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., p. 135.

[14] Justin Martyr, First Apology, chap. XVII.

[15] Geldenhuys, op. cit., p.507.

[16] Ibid., p.508.

Jesus and the Tax Revolt – The Chalcedon Foundation – Faith for All of LifeRender Unto Caesar

Elis Regina: We are still the same as before..

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Como os nossos pais [Elis Regina]

Não quero lhe falar, meu grande amor
Das coisas que aprendi nos discos
Quero lhe contar como eu vivi e tudo o que aconteceu comigo

Viver é melhor que sonhar
E eu sei que o amor é uma coisa boa
Mas também sei que qualquer canto é menor do que a vida de qualquer pessoa

Por isso cuidado, meu bem, há perigo na esquina
Eles venceram e o sinal está fechado pra nós que somos jovens
Para abraçar seu irmão e beijar sua menina na rua
É que se fez o seu braço, o seu lábio e a sua voz

Você me pergunta pela minha paixão
Digo que estou encantado como uma nova invenção
Eu vou ficar nesta cidade, não vou voltar pro sertão
Pois vejo vir vindo no vento o cheiro da nova nova estação
Eu sei de tudo na ferida viva do meu coração

Já faz tempo eu vi você na rua cabelo ao vento gente jovem reunida
Na parede da memória essa lembrança é o quadro que dói mais
Minha dor é perceber que apesar de termos feito tudo que fizemos
Ainda somos os mesmos e vivemos
Como nossos pais

Nossos ídolos ainda são os mesmos e as aparências não se enganam, não
Você diz que depois deles não apareceu mais ninguém
Você pode até dizer que tou por fora ou então que tou inventando
Mas é você que ama o passado é que não vê
É você que ama o passado é que não vê
Que o novo sempre vem

Hoje eu sei que quem deu me deu a idéia de uma nova consciência e juventude
Está em casa guardado por Deus contando vil metal
Minha dor é perceber que apesar de termos feito tudo tudo o que fizemos
Nós ainda somos os mesmos e vivemos
Ainda somos os mesmos e vivemos
Como os nossos pais

English
As lived our parents

I don’t want to talk, my greatest love,
About things that I’ve learned from my vinyls
I want to tell you how my life was like
And about all that betided me

To live is better than dreaming .
I know that love is a pretty good thing
But I also know that any place is smaller than anyone’s life

For this reason, watch out, darling,
The danger is waiting around the corner
They won and the way is now barred to us, the youngs.
To embrace your brother and kiss your girl in the street
is what your arms, your lips and your voice are made for

You ask me what’s my new passion
I say I’m wondered at all this, it feels like a new invention
I’m going to stay at this city, I’m not coming back to the backwoods
Because I sense the smell of the new season hovering in the wind
I can learn anything through this wound, that lives within my heart

It’s been a while since I saw you in a street
With the wind blowing in your hair,
Along young people, all joined together.
Hanging up on my mind’s wall,
The memory of this is the frame that hurts me most
My pain is to realize that despite all we have done
We are still the same as before and live…
We are still the same and live as lived our parents
Our idols are still the same
And the appearances don’t disguise it at all
You say that after them, no new idols have ever existed
You may even say that I’m out-of-date, that I made up all this
But it’s you the one who loves the past and can’t see that
new times will always come

Now I’ve learned that the man who taught me of a new conscience and youth
is now sitting at home, guarded by Lord, counting coins of vain money
My pain is to realize that despite all we’ve done
We are still the same as before and live…
We are still the same and live as lived our parents
http://lyricstranslate.com

Zerohedge: Party Time Over, Fight Club Time Begins

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“Water, even when it’s polluted, is the source of life; blood, even when it’s carelessly spilled, is the symbol of life being fully lived. To put his point simply: it’s better to be wet than dry.”

—   Richard Schickel about “Fight Club”

Tyler Durden at Zerohedge says it’s time for the Paul grass-roots to grow out of politics and take their fire to the real world and the real fight: time to become self-sufficient, time to gain financial independence,  time to develop powerful networks, diversify your assets, travel or relocate abroad, if necessary, develop alternative currencies, new trading systems, new banks; counter-economics:

“It has become clear that Benton and others have been “handling” Ron Paul for a considerable portion of his campaign and attempting to divorce him from the elements of the movement which are seen as “extreme” or anti-establishment, even though these are the same elements that catapulted Ron Paul into the minds of average Americans.  My impression is that they have been targeted for surgical removal because they are impossible to co-opt for the purposes of diplomacy (submission) with the Neo-Con elites running the GOP carnival.

Rand Paul’s recent endorsement of Mitt Romney is not surprising given the parasitic nature of particular campaign organizers who buzz about him, including Benton.  The bottom line is that some people in the movement are not in it to fight for freedom, or to ensure a brighter and more Constitutional Republic.  Some are in the movement to further their political careers and ambitions, and are perfectly willing to use the energy of popular candidates to carry them to success.

Sadly, this is the ultimate weakness of the political ideal; regardless of how honest and forthright a candidate is, even a principled luminary like Ron Paul can be undermined by those closest to him if he is not careful.  Millions of people relying solely on the tenuous chance of victory of a single man in a single rigged contest is NEVER a recipe for liberty…..

Stewart Rhodes’ speech at Paulfest was the most shocking for many of the political Paulers, as well as the most necessary.  He removed the kid gloves completely as well as any feel-good rhetoric, stating that the GOP as a party was dead, and deserved to be, letting the Paul folks know that any further strategy of attempting to “infiltrate” the Republican establishment and turn it over to the side of good was a waste of time.  He also stated that it is no longer enough for the movement to play around as “intellectual warriors”, they might soon have to become real warriors.  I agree.

In my speech, I gave clear cut and tangible solutions to Paulfest attendees, including alternative markets and barter networks, commodity based currencies, micro industries and localized business models, useful trade skills, off-grid living, preparedness, and if all else fails, real revolution.  Not idealized intellectual activism under the catchy label of revolution, but fists in the air and rifles in hand revolution.  The kind that scares the crap out of most, not because of its danger, but because of its finality of purpose.  The will to fight, really fight, is frightening, especially to those who cling to the belief that one can reason with his opponents.  The cold hard fact is; some men are not men.  Some men are monsters, and reason is the last thing that will ever sway them…”

Which is the best state to move to?

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Blacklisted News has a list of the best states to live in:

“This article will take a look at each of the 50 U.S. states and will list some of the pros and cons for moving to each one.

Not all of the factors listed below will be important to you, and a few have even been thrown in for humor.  But if you are thinking of moving in the near future hopefully this list will give you some food for thought.

A few years ago when my wife and I were living near Washington D.C. we knew that we wanted a change and we went through this kind of a process.  We literally evaluated areas from coast to coast.  In the end, we found a place that is absolutely perfect for us.  But different things are important to different people.

And if I gave your particular state a low rating, please don’t think that I am trashing the entire state or all of the people who live there.”

Michael Snyder, the author, gives California an “F”:

California

Pros: Disneyland, warm weather, Malibu

Cons: high taxes, Jerry Brown, earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, gang violence, crime, traffic, rampant poverty, insane politicians, ridiculous regulations, bad schools, political correctness, illegal immigration, not enough jobs, air pollution, multiple nuclear power plants, possible tsunami threat along the coast, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Stockton, Sacramento, huge drug problem, high population density, the state government is broke, many more reasons to leave California right here

Overall Rating: F

He gives Idaho an “A”:

Idaho

Pros: awesome people live there, great potatoes, low population density, high concentration of liberty-minded individuals, low crime, Sandpoint, Coeur d’Alene, north Idaho has plenty of water compared to the rest of the interior West, beautiful scenery

Cons: cold in the winter, wildfires, short growing season, not enough jobs

Overall Rating: A

Florida comes in at C:

Florida

Pros: University of Florida Gators, oranges, low taxes, southern hospitality, Disneyworld, Gainesville, warm weather, beautiful beaches, Daytona

Cons: hurricanes, most of the state is barely above sea level, high population density, not enough jobs, multiple nuclear power plants, crime, gang violence, illegal immigration

Overall Rating: C

I would give Florida an A.

[I mean, Idaho? Potatoes? Who checks out the potatoes before they move somewhere? Say, I was thinking of flying to Hawaii, but when I checked out the potatoes, they didn’t look so good, so I canceled….]

What about the snow?

And Snyder has clearly never lived in Asia, if he thinks a roomy, uncrowded state like Florida has “high population density.”

I’d like to drop him in Calcutta.

As for gang violence, any Northern city has Florida beat.  If you don’t like humidity, insects, bungalows, and bad drivers, stay away. Otherwise, Florida deserves its reputation as a physical paradise and the perfect place to retire.

On the other hand, he is spot on about Maryland, which he gives C-.  It should have been a D, really, only its proximity to the DC jobs market, its colleges, and a few gorgeous Baltimore suburbs like Guilford save it.  Otherwise, Maryland’s disastrous policies, corrupt politicians, drug-eaten inner cities, gangs, edgy interracial relations, and high-rate of CIA-related assassinations make it another unattractive North East state.

Paul-Lehrman Connection Meaningless, Says Daily Bell (Corrections Added)

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Update: Subsequent to my posting this, the Agora disinfo agent/troll/paid basher Ryals reposts Amberger’s comments to him (rather than Amberger’s blog posts about Agora), simultaneously discrediting and neutralizing Amberger by an unsubstantiated smear (Nazi Stasi), just as he posts any substantial criticism of Agora, ALWAYS with slurs about the critics and always with OLD NEWS about Agora, usually attributing criminal behavior to the critics, for which he gives not a shred of proof.

His response fails to mention the people who really are responsible for Agora’s marketing and selling today – Myles Norin (CEO), Matthew Turner (counsel), Addison Wiggin (chief of Agora Financial, its flagship subsidiary, and also heavily involved in Oxford Group, Michael Masterson (Mark Ford), Byron King, Alexander Greene, Mike Ward, Julia Guth, and many others, whose border-line promotions were all deconstructed by Christoph Amberger. Instead, Ryals tries to discredit Amberger’s whistle-blowing. No question Ryals has some kind of tie to Agora.

To make things clearer, Agora is not solely Bonner’s company but owned by several people, some of whom no doubt have axes to grind with others. Bonner himself might have enemies within the company, for partisan, financial or personal reasons.

Notice how Ryals only focuses on the Republicans in the group, like Bonner, presumably Casey, and Robert Bauman, who specializes in the admirable field of asset protection. Now, unlike the state-worshipping fraud Ryals,  I would love to believe Bob Bauman is a really good asset protector (aka money-launderer), but, alas, if he is not what he seems (and I haven’t seen anything concrete to suggest that), he is much more likely to be an IRS/DOJ honey-pot, if I know how these things work.

That’s what I believe large parts of the  asset-protection racket really is about, when it’s not about espionage and government-related money-laundering.

That might include the over-hyped Simon Black, who also seems to be a part of the LRC-Agora crew and constantly tells people that Singapore is a great place for financial security, when anyone who even researches the matter in a skimpy way will figure out that Singapore is crawling with Mossad and CIA.

NWO resistance indeed.

Anyone boosting simplistic asset protection, or simplistic encryption like Tor (heavens!) is simply pushing people into US govt supervised encryption. But, then, maybe that’s the idea.

ORIGINAL POST

The Daily Bell argues that the Ron Paul-Lewis Lehrman connection is meaningless (links to follow):

“Worse, in our humble opinion, whenever such issues arise these days, the dissemblers come out in force to attack the world’s only apparently honest politician, US Congressman Ron Paul, for working with Lewis Lehrman.

It is true that when Ron Paul and Lewis Lehrman served (with many others) on a US Gold Commission during the Reagan years they wrote a minority report recommending a return to some sort of gold standard.

But Ron Paul certainly didn’t seek Lehrman out to write the report. He wrote it with Lehrman because Lehrman was on the committee. Ron Paul, of course, went on to call for a regime of competing currencies, which is something we’re partial to.”

Comment:

This would be a whole lot more credible if  The Daily Bell itself didn’t call out people on just as tenuous evidence, in much more black and white terms than I have ever done.

It also doesn’t help that the Bell dismisses critics of Paul as dissemblers.

Why?

What’s wrong with criticizing a politician who’s set up as the sole spokesman for libertarian issues?

Why would anti-state capitalists focus on a politician as their spokesman, in the first place?

What sense does that make?

Especially, when just a few days ago, the Bell raised no objection at all, when, in an interview on their site, Gerald Celente claimed Paul was “not a fighter” and had failed because he was not a fighter.

If that is the opinion of Paul’s friends, isn’t it natural that people on the paper-money team or outside the binary altogether (like me) would reach even more devastating conclusions?

I don’t believe most Paul critics are dissembling. I think they are genuinely disappointed and suspicious. I am too.

Three. The Bell loses credibility when it claims Paul is the “only honest politician in the world.”

That’s pure hyperbole.

I’m sure the Daily Bell doesn’t know “all the politicians in the world.” And Paul isn’t perfectly clean. There was rampant nepotism during his campaign. There was the alleged double-billing. There were other mis-steps.

They might all be minor. And the Lehrman connection might be innocuous too, but it’s not the only troubling thing that comes to mind.

Which brings me to my fourth point.

Paul has a long-standing relationship via Murray Rothbard with Agora Inc. and its founder, James Dale Davidson, about which I blogged in July (the first person to pull that little nugget up, I do believe….although, as soon as I say that, I’m sure a dozen quicky sites will pop up with the same information on them).

This is a very troubling connection, in my opinion.

The Agora Inc. network has  ties to Rockefeller-related groups, like the Peterson Institute. I blogged about that in 2009, January.

Now, I myself have once cited research produced by the Peterson.

[It’s in my piece on Krugman, at LRC, and the researcher was Anders Aslund, who was one of the advocates of privatization in the Soviet Union. Aslund was wrong about that,  although not the only one wrong, and certainly not the main one.]

But I post research from all over the place, and that is not an endorsement of the authors’ other works or of the websites carrying the research.

Agora’s ties to the Peterson Institute, however, are a bit more relevant and important than my posting or quoting someone once, casually.

The I.O.U.S.A film (a spin-off from Agora’ “Empire of Debt,” Wiley, 2005) was promoted nationally by the Peterson Institute. Some of the positions Agora supports are consonant with Pete Peterson’s interests, although I do believe most people at Agora are anti-state libertarians, whereas Peterson is no more than a  crony capitalist.

This is what I wrote in my 2009 blog post  about the Peterson connection:

“Assembling this bipartisan group of prominent enablers/theorists of empire over the last twenty years lets IOUSA claim it goes beyond partisanship. In reality it does no such thing. Omitting a context for its arguments, the film actually lends itself to being interpreted in ways quite contradictory to the tenor of the original work. At times it even subverts the book thoroughly.

IOUSA lends itself to a very anti-libertarian, statist moralizing of the debt issue: thus, spendthrift population needs to be forced to save by government. Now that really alarms me. Watch out – forced savings accounts ahead!”

Agora also promotes things like “peak oil,” which I don’t find persuasive, being a long-time believer in the abiotic origin of oil.

These positions are  accompanied by promotions throughout its marketing network from which it stands to gain financially, either directly or indirectly.

That surely calls into question the credibility of the positions of anyone deeply connected to them.

Is Paul connected to them in a serious way?

{Added, August 25: Obviously, Agora has also supported anti-war positions that have not won it popularity, so I should give them credit for that and I do.

But I also recognize that the “anti-war” position has a place in the permissible range of public opinion, as long as on crucial issues and events  antiwar advocates develop laryngitis. This strategy, devised by the intelligence services, ensures that there is “cognitive diversity” among critics of war and the police state that gives the appearance of a “liberal” political culture, while actually permitting them little impact.  It siphons off the energy, time, money, and ambition of perhaps 95% of activists and effectively marginalizes the rest. Zahir Ebrahim has written extensively about this at his depressing but honest website, Project HumanBeingsFirst.]

Besides the tie-in to the establishment via Peterson/Rockefeller and besides the commercial imperative which undermines the sincerity of its positions, there are also Rothschild connections to Agora.

First, Rothschild interests are now directly connected to Rockefeller interests, by a recent merger (which I’ve blogged a couple of times).

Second, there are also direct connections between the Rothschilds and Agora.

I wasn’t sure about some of those, a couple of years ago.

In fact, I thought the allegation that Agora was a Rothschild front was only innuendo concocted at Executive Intelligence Review by ex-Larouchite, Bill Engdahl, who often doesn’t cite his sources and has once picked up leads from me without acknowledgement, likely because I come from the right

That’s why, even though I was disillusioned with Ron Paul by then, I didn’t place much stock in the Engdahl charge, especially when it was picked up on Jennifer Lake’s blog (see this blog post of March 10 2010) and then embellished with a lot of strange errors.  I felt the whole thing had to be some kind of disinformation. I certainly didn’t make any connection to Paul.  I thought it was a ploy to muddy more concrete legal issues. One can’t be prosecuted for being a Rothschild front, after all, but one can discredit one’s detractors by posing as one, since the whole Rothschild conspiracy is beyond the pale for mainstream analysts and writers. In fact, Lake’s silly comments, which I was forced to address because they libeled me, actually damaged the very thing she –  with typical arrogance – thought she was assisting – the public interest. In short, she forced me to state things that tipped off the very people she claimed I was covering for.

That’s why I even thought Agora itself was encouraging the story, a view shared by at least one other credible journalist. For the same reason, I suspect that Tony Ryals, the cyberbully behind all the negative postings about me, isn’t half as insane as he pretends to be. In fact, I think he has indirect ties to Agora himself, since he never mentions the people there who have actual legal responsibility there, like CEO Myles Norin, or their attorney, Matt Turner, or Agora Financial chief, Addison Wiggin, or some of their star traders, like Alan Knuckman.

[Sept 6 – this morning, I checked to find that Ryals’ posts referencing these comments of mine and thus referencing these individuals had been deleted or “disappeared.” Of course, just to make me a liar,  they might pop back. But it’s interesting that it’s impossible to stop Ryals’s libels, when it’s someone like me (or others, who aren’t in charge at Agora or whose crimes, if they committed any, are beyond the statute of limitations, but it’s easy enough to get him to remove comments about the people still there.]

Funnier still, Ryals never mentions a former senior employee, Christoph Amberger, whose blog about the company’s shenanigans (cons would be a better word from what I read) was shut down in 2011. Reportedly, this was after he was paid to keep his silence, that is, hold to a non-disclosure agreement under threat of litigation. All traces of his blog about the company’s marketing deceptions (GreenLaserReviews) were wiped off the net in a matter of days.

Instead of mentioning all this, Ryals, who even corresponded with Amberger (who smacked him down for the troll he is) waffles on about Davidson, who is safely beyond reach of prosecution, and, in any case, seems to have more than paid for any sins by his investigations into the Clinton mafia and his insights into the manipulation of the stock markets; Bonner, who probably has no legal liability, as he’s not an officer of the company, and is too wealthy, too cautious, too smart, and too well-connected to get into trouble anyway; and Stansberry, who is already damaged goods and unlikely to get hurt any worse by innuendo.

But leaving aside intriguing theories about the cyber-underworld in which Ryals and his rants reside, I’m still not sure what the Rothschild connections to Agora really amount to.  The best I can say is I’m much more willing to believe some people there profit from them.

Why did it take me so long to get to that point?

Because it’s only recently (over the last year) that I’ve had the time to dig around and find any kind of credible accounting of how the Rothschild family might be the financial juggernaut they are said to be on conspiracy sites.

[I got there by adding material posted at Project Humanbeingsfirst  to my own research into BCCI (via Engdahl, Skolnik, DeepBlackLies, Yamaguchi.com, Forbes.com, LBMA website and other material.]

Now that I’ve come to think the whole “Rothschild” conspiracy  is something more than fiction, I’ve also begun to look at Ron Paul with a more critical eye.

So that’s where I come from on that.

Now, for my own credibility on the subject, given that I too have a connection to Agora.

This is what I have to say.

Except for the attacks following my pieces on Assange (by an attention-seeking Assange groupie, Tom Usher at RealLiberalChristian) and a legal threat at DailyBell by another fanboy and blatant troll, calling himself Al Kyder, and a couple of other things), one hundred percent of  the negative posts about me on the net stem from this one supposedly crazy person, who seems to have an indirect connection to Agora.

And all the rest of the monitoring/hacking I’ve experienced stem from my fall-out with Agora too.

What was the monitoring/hacking about? Simple.

In 2008, I gave whatever information I had  about certain sensitive issues to responsible journalists and investigators.

There you have it. That’s why their campaign against me didn’t end with the resolution of my IP issues with the company.  In fact,  it’s the reason why the IP issue keeps festering.

Who likes to be joined at the hip to someone who’s outed them? Who likes to know that someone knows what they are capable of?

That is why they are so bent on isolating me, stirring up third parties against me, and minimizing my influence in every way possible.

Since then, I’ve been warned by good people to “leave it alone” or possibly become even more of a target.  And that’s what I’ve tried to do, but it’s not because I’m interested in covering up anything for anyone.

It’s because I see no reason to second-guess the integrity, good faith, and sound judgment of what I’ve been told but take it as solid advice from people who know better than me. And  it’s because I believe more evil than good will come from ignoring that advice.

Especially as there’s another layer of complexity to this story.

Agora Inc. was also the last business association of former CIA director, William Colby, who  seemingly committed suicide some twenty years ago.

I say seemingly, because the suicide theory has been peddled only recently, and only by one of Colby’s sons. No one else believes it and there’s not much evidence for it.

Thus far, the official story has been  that it was an accident.

That sounds just as unlikely to me, as I blogged earlier.

Note: Ryals not only filched the Davidson-Chomsky-Rothbard connection from my blog (posted on July 20), as well as the information about Rees-Mogg’s and Colby’s Le Cercle and Pilgrim connections (which I got by discovering and researching the ISGP.EU site in detail),** he failed to link the post and then tried to pretend that I was covering up something about the Colby killing, when I’d  blogged about it as a murder, long ago, in 2010, and before that, in 2009. In fact, I’d been researching Mockingbird, MKUltra, mind-control, and sex-trauma as early as 2004, for my first book, where I have a couple of chapters on the material.

In 2005 I wrote a piece about former CIA director Stansfield Turner and Operation Gladio. It was around then that I also first heard about about Colby.

The fact that I ended up in the company where Colby once worked is one of those strange coincidences that “intention” pulls out of the universe.

And, far from covering up any of this, I’ve blogged repeatedly about it.

For instance, here’s my comment on an interview of Rees-Mogg there:

Posted by Lila Rajiva on 06/05/10 11:59 AM

Sorry. Colby was Cercle and apparently also Opus Dei …

Posted by Lila Rajiva on 06/05/10 11:55 AM

Rees-Mogg is reportedly a member of Le Cercle and the Pilgrim’s Society, as well as the exclusive Roxburghe club – supposedly a very influential part of the Anglo-American establishment. He was backed by speculator and corporate raider, James Goldsmith, relative and close associate of the Rothschilds.

Allegations are made on the left that Rees-Mogg is closely associated with Richard Mellon Scaife. Rees-Mogg is also closely tied to James Davidson, Bill Bonner, and Agora, through the Strategic Investment newsletter and other publications.

Through SI, he’s also linked to William Colby, ex CIA chief, also a Pilgrim Society member, if I’m not mistaken.

By link, I just mean there exists a relationship. It’s by no means clear how that actually plays out, if at all.

Colby was murdered (?) early 1990s. My best guess is it was related to the opening of CIA files with the Church Committee (much earlier)….and inter departmental fighting that resulted; there’s also a connection to a White House- related paedophilia scandal in Nebraska that got hushed up in a hurry. Some have linked that scandal to CIA mind-control operations but I haven’t seen anything conclusive about it. “

It always seemed plausible to me that Colby’s death was a political assassination, given his involvement in Operation Phoenix and Project Mockingbird, his testimony at the Church Committee hearings, his interest in the Nebraska pedophile ring, and his work for the intelligence-affiliated Nugan Hand bank (which had ties to BCCI).

I learned about Le Cercle and the Pilgrim’s Circle from ISGP.eu, and passed that onto the Bell, as well.

I posted the link to ISGP.eu at the Bell below a July 8, 2010 article

Posted by Lila Rajiva on 07/09/10 12:28 PM

Sorry. Two careless mistakes.

@John Treichler (not Treicher, as posted before).

The site is the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP.eu not ISGPU, as I wrote in a hurry). Written from a very left-wing perspective. Meticulously compiled.

[Note: ISGP eu was up when I posted the link, but googling for it today, I find that the domain is for sale and I find a post at Cryptogon, dating back to January of the same year (2010), saying that the site had disappeared, but that the writer at Cryptogon had saved the information from the google cache in the form of a zip file. However the link he had posted didn’t open to the ISGP.eu file at all. He claimed he had given it to Wikileaks for safe-keeping. I later found it at wikispooks.]

So, that’s my explanation of why the Bell’s dismissal of the Lehrman link isn’t quite enough; why there are other reasons to worry about Paul, such as his connections to Agora; why I was slow to start looking at Paul critically; what Agora’s ties to the Rothschilds might be; and what my connection to the whole business amounts to.

There’s one other thing. The Bell is also a part of the same Agora network to which Paul seems to have ties.

You won’t hear that from them, though.  It’s one of those little omissions that are troubling,  like the repositioning and revisionism that goes on on the site, at times.

For instance, in the same piece on the Lehrman tie, Wile writes that he knew Assange was disinformation right away.

Not so. He got that from me (see these comments below a piece at Infowars.com

as well as these comments below another piece there.

I was perhaps the only rightist anti-neocon to criticize Assange.

Other debunkers were Wayne Madsen (the first on the case) and Bill Engdahl, both on the left.

Neither of those two, by the way, assembled nearly as comprehensive a critique of Wikileaks as I did.

And I know that research had an impact, because  the Guardian ran a piece derived from it shortly after (picking up on the John Shipton lead) and an Australian academic wrote a paper repositioning the cypherpunk association (deconstructed in my pieces) into a narrative more favorable to their man.

Wile relied on that research, as well as material on Gordon Duff’s site, in changing his opinion. Then he exaggerated and ended up with a kind of parody of my criticism of Assange.

This he tends to do, which allows an opening to people like Fed regulator, William Black, whom Wile once made the mistake of criticizing. Black reacted with a petty and surprisingly  personal attack, but, when you distort people’s positions, you have to expect vehement reactions.

Wile’s subtle perception management has even caught the attention of many contributors to the Bell, including pro-Paulian goldbugs like Bionic Mosquito and Leonardo Pisano, as well as paper-money anti-Paulians like FauxCapitalist and Memehunter.

Why does he do it? Most likely as a way for the site to stay viable on the net, while conspiracy mongering, or perhaps, as a way to manage the reactions of readers and associates. Nothing wrong with that, but, still, it’s unsettling and tends to make people suspicious.

It’s why I stopped posting on their forum, despite my gratitude to them. for providing a useful and unusual venue for discussions.

I also do respect Wile’s courage in tackling material people usually avoid for fear of losing their credibility.

So the Bell does get a lot of props from me for bravery and unique content, yes, but I also see them as compromised by their financial ties. The same goes for some other libertarian sites I still read.

Other pluses: Wile is almost always polite and he is not as Eurocentric in his thinking as some others.

I should add that I’m not one of those who think he’s running a limited hang-out himself.  Or, at least, he is doing it less than most.

Some final thoughts:

First, about Colby and Agora.

Colby had so many enemies that it would be hard to narrow down who murdered him, if he was murdered, without a lot more evidence being uncovered. But no one in officialdom or intelligence is likely to want to do that. And only a fool or a martyr would venture into that territory alone.

About the Agora connection (and, through them, to Paul):

Colby’s name appeared on Agora’s long-running Strategic Investments newsletter, with which the Rothschild-related Rees Mogg is/was affiliated, along with long-time anti-tax advocate, electronic counterfeiting (anti-Naked Short Selling) critic, and Forbes/Scaife protege, James Dale Davidson.

Davidson, Rothbard, and Chomsky all worked together in the 1970s, in antiwar activism, which by itself means little or nothing. Many ideological foes make common cause on single issues.

But, it was not “by itself,” as the evidence shows.

At least one of Paul’s writers (the guy who wrote the race realist pamphlets) is directly tied to Agora.

Paul himself has been incessantly promoted by Agora, until very recently, when affiliates and associates began promoting a few anti-Paul libertarians, like Wendy McElroy, N. Stephen Kinsella, and even Stephan Molyneux, who appeared briefly on the Doug Casey website, and then was pushed out.

It was also from Agora Inc. that I first heard of Ron Paul.

Casey, like Jeff Berwick and what looks like a majority of the hard-money community, is himself closely tied to the Agora network by business affiliation.

So also, as I said earlier,  the Daily Bell, with its multiple banking and gold community associations.

These ties may or may not mean anything nefarious, but they would certainly limit what the Bell, or any other libertarian writer in this circle, would be willing or able to say publicly.

Which means I really can’t trust someone in that circle to be too forthcoming about Paul, since they all share business networks.

That is simply common-sense.

Even I have had a hard time writing about Agora’s network, even though all I did was write and do some research there, and the only person I really worked with was Bill Bonner.

To put it as simply as possible for all the trolls who still can’t read my actual words, let alone between my words:

It is difficult to write critically about people with whom you have had personal and professional relationships; who have accessed your personal and business records (illegally).

It is even more difficult when their employees work and live close to where you work and live and they are native-born, while you are an immigrant.

It becomes impossible when the political and economic context is a multi-front global military and economic war, in which your motherland is also involved, and not always as an ally; when the legal and media environment of your adopted country is totalitarian; when your family lives abroad and you are self-employed and modestly well-off, while they have tens of millions of dollars behind them, are connected to intelligence and financial elites, have thousands, if not millions, of subscribers and friends to whom they can outsource their efforts, and when they are marketing, financial, and political players on a global scale.

If that is true of me, how much more is it true of the hard-money community, which is completely encompassed by the Agora network?

I don’t expect any of them to pipe up with anything but support for Ron Paul. They will alienate their business associates, otherwise.

I hope that explains why I don’t think the Bell’s dismissal of the Lehrman tie is sufficient by itself.

I say this as someone who took a long time to open their eyes about Paul.

Which person likes to think they’ve been had? Or, that establishment critics mightn’t be entirely off-base in their criticism of Paul?

As far back as 2008, I heard some mutterings from loyal fans of Paul but said nothing, hoping it was all minor or a mistake.

I even took the part of the LRC crowd against the WSJ in a lengthy blog post.

[As far as that WSJ incident goes, I still stand by the piece ]

In 2010 I spoke up about my dissatisfaction with Paul’s positions at the Daily Bell forum.

I didn’t want to, because I knew Paul supporters would get annoyed by it, but credibility is very important to anyone writing about politics. It should be more important than pleasing the team.

Then, a few people who’ve wanted to discredit me for supporting libertarian positions(albeit nuanced and rather more conservative ones than that of the anarcho-caps), or for criticizing Assange (albeit in a most circumspect and balanced way than his other detractors), or for deconstructing Ron Paul and his libertarian promoters (albeit factually and with respect), have tried to claim that I’m covering up for this or that person.

The truth is exactly the opposite. I’ve been libeled, monitored, and undermined covertly, almost continuously since 2007.  I’ve also been plagiarized repeatedly and marginalized.

I don’t really believe the government was behind any of that, except maybe at a very low level, in so far as some petty operatives might have been employed by my enemies to do the dirty work.

So, there is no cover up on my part. Or paranoia.  What I say is not a lie. It’s not propaganda. It’s not a smear or anything but the most truth it is possible, helpful, and advisable for anyone in my position to speak.

For the umpteenth time, I’m not RAW, nor CIA, nor Jihadi, nor Hindu fascist. I’m just a writer, with a lot of interests, an eclectic background, and too much curiosity and impetuosity for her own good.

It was a meaningful synchronicity that I got involved in the whole business. I don’t say that to promote myself,  create a mystery, or confuse the situation. I say it because that is really how it happened.

There are mysteries of “intention,” “attraction,” and the cycles of time.  And they have nothing to do with “dissembling”, “disinformation,” or “RAW”.

The innuendos by Jennifer Lake, Tony Ryals, and Tom Usher are simply smears, even if they are understandable smears.

There really are more things in earth and heaven, Horatio…

[Added: August 5, 2017, I deleted the link on this page to http://occultview.com/category/astrology because my security software sent me a malware alert for it. You can google the site directly.]

Gore Vidal Dead: Clever Satirist, Deluded Moralist

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Gore Vidal died.

He said some accurate things about American foreign policy [which I admired], wrote some famous books I’ve never read [well, actually I did read “Myra Breckinridge” and disliked it] and was a clever fellow altogether, at least, all the clever people say so. 

But, hmm…I don’t really have anything to say except, let’s see…

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young

hooker decrepit old pansy man dies?  feels as though she’s been taken advantage of ?

[That was Gore Vidal defending his good friend Roman Polansky, guilty of forced sodomizing and rape of a 13 year-old girl, after feeding her drugs.]

[Further note. The derogatory term (pansy) is intended to be satirical.  I have no animus against gays or gay rights, in fact, I fully support them.]

But, since the entire blogosphere is singing Vidal’s praises, without any reference whatsoever to his many negative traits, including venomous attacks on people ranging from Truman Capote to Charlton Heston,  I decided to break my usual rule of not saying anything negative on someone’s death and point out how mean a man he was in some ways, personally.

There was, for instance, his trick of embarrassing heterosexual males by implying homosexuality, the most famous instance of which was his encounter with Charlton Heston, who was not amused.]

And more here about the venom behind the urbanity:

About Truman Capote:

“Vidal made no secret that he detested the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, saying once: “Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.”

When asked ‘What was Capote doing that you didn’t like?” Vidal shouted: “Lying! The one thing I hate most on this earth. Which is why I do not have a friendly time with journalists.” He called Capote’s death “a good career move” and added “Every generation gets the Tiny Tim it deserves.”

Stephen Moss in The Guardian has a good piece about a man who wrote brilliant essays and over-rated novels, and  carried his perceptive and prescient anti-imperial criticism into pointless America-bashing that finally undercut his own criticism.

“Does age bring wisdom?” a questioner from the floor asked Gore Vidal? There was a short pause. “No, it brings senility.” Cue a wave of applause from the vast audience that had come to touch the hem of the man Adam Boulton, who had the tricky task of interviewing Vidal, called “the greatest essayist since Montaigne”.

That’s a big claim, but not necessarily wide of the mark: Vidal’s essays on politics and literature are magnificent and will live long after the weighty novels he is keener for us to read and remember are gathering dust.

The wind-lashed encounter with Boulton was a ramble – an old man (Vidal, not Boulton) peering into the nooks and crannies of a fascinating life – but, happily, it was punctuated by some memorable one-liners. Asked who his successor as the great contrarian would be, he said: “I’m not holding the door open.” Lifting his walking stick and brandishing it like a mitre, he intoned: “I’m still the bishop of Rome.”

His advice to young people – “Grow up.” Questioned about his famous line that “when a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies”, he insisted it had been a joke – the books of quotations may have to be rewritten. The Republicans he called “a mindset rather than a party – a group of like-minded people compelled by greed and with a capacity for character assassination.” Asked by Boulton if Bobby Kennedy (who Vidal heartily disliked) would have made a better president than George W Bush, he replied: “You would make a better president than Bush!” Could an intellectual ever be elected president? “Well,” said Vidal, “accidents happen.”

[LR: Being anti-Bush or anti-Republican, is, after all very popular in intellectual circles, so it is hardly evidence of great courage to attack either of them from the safety of Europe.]

The one-liners, if you could catch them above the howling wind, kept coming: Vidal’s mind, which has a deeply ironic and subversive bent, is sharp, even if at 82 the body is frail. But are one-liners enough? There is substance in Vidal’s worldview – the Jeffersonian belief in the autonomy of the states, the fear of centralised power, the opposition to US entanglements abroad (he even said US involvement in the second world war was undertaken for selfish reasons) – but these days it gets hopelessly lost. He has become a turn.

His ceaseless negativity is also wearing. Perhaps that is the prerogative of the old, but the attack on the US is so unremitting that he undermines his own assault. “America is a country where no one can be phoney enough” – it sounds good, but is it true? It seems phoney to me. This is the country, after all, he has chosen to return to after his long sojourn in Italy.

Vidal has things of value to tell us – that the US administration has used 9/11 to tear up supposedly inviolable personal freedoms, that America cannot be both republic and empire, that all US politics is based on money, property, business. It was a telling moment when Boulton mentioned the picture in Vanity Fair that linked Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer, three octogenarians pitching against America’s misguided, self-interested interventions in the Middle East. That got a large and deserved burst of applause.

Where were the voices of the younger generation was the implication? Is the art of engagement dying? Ironically, Christopher Hitchens, seen by some as a possible heir to the waspish Vidal, has engaged – but on the side of so-called liberal interventionism. Hitchens was in the audience and asked a loaded question – was it true Vidal had said the Bush administration knew 9/11 was coming? Vidal shot back that he’d never said such a thing, and that in any case Bush – his questioner’s hero – was too incompetent to have carried out so strategically devastating an attack.

[LR: Notice that Hitchens and Vidal reinforce the propaganda frame-work, by denying any validity whatsoever to the view that the government itself might have been complicit. How is this different from the Michael Moore brand of Democrat anti-establishmentarian critique?]

Vidal avoided that trap, but the uncommitted observer was still left wanting a more coherent picture of what should replace Bush. Even old guys – and it is poignant that Vidal is now the last of that Vanity Fair trio alive – have to do more than mock the vanities of the world. And beyond welcoming an Obama presidency as a sign that the US might be growing up,

[LR: Again, how deep really is criticism of this kind? ]

Vidal has little positive to say. Bush is an idiot, McCain a dimwit – not even a war hero, because “all he ever did was crash his plane; he didn’t even try to escape”; even Roosevelt wanted only to become “emperor of the west”. Sorry, but I don’t buy that latter point: there is a point where glib contrarianism becomes hollow and self-defeating; the enemy of thought.

Did he have any words of wisdom to offer at the dusk of a long life, asked a youthful member of the audience? Vidal had none, which seemed rather sad. It doesn’t suggest senility – the mind is strong, the wit undiminished – but it does suggest that irony can only take you so far.”

Desi Divas: Anoushka Shankar & Norah Jones

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Half-sisters and full celebrity musicians, Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones.

Anoushka , the daughter of classical sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, is  a renowned sitarist and composer herself. She’s also a columnist and actor. Her paternal half-sister, Norah Jones, is equally gifted and a familiar voice and face in American popular music. She is a country/blues singer, pianist, and composer.

Besides her widely praised solo work, Anoushka has collaborated with Joshua Bell, the classical violinist, Herbie Hancock, the jazz pianist, and legendary classical cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich.

Norah (born Geethali Norah Jones) sold over 26 million copies of her sensational debut album, “Come Away With Me,” which won 5 out of the 9 Grammy awards she’s won altogether. Billboard rates her the best-selling Jazz and popular singer of the last decade.

A Real History Of Conservativism..

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Ah. At last, some truth in advertising.  Clyde Wilson at LRC brushes off some forgotten conservatives and sets them down against what passes for conservatism today. May he find some more of these old codgers and create an alternative line of descent for modern conservatives without a taste for bullying and bribing the world.

“The true conservatives have been those who wanted to let the American people alone and not hector and dragoon them into schemes of “progress” and foreign entanglement.

Conservatism, for us, has been a powerful and eloquent train of thinkers who have opposed the Hamilton/Lincoln regime of state-capitalism and the Roosevelt/Bush/Irving Kristol agenda of “global democracy.” Our conservatism stands strongly contra to the historic Republican party and to “neoconservative” imperialism. In this we are not so much out-of-step as some may think. Russell Kirk, “the father of modern conservatism,” considered Alexander Hamilton to be no conservative but rather a dubious “innovator.” And more than once Kirk lamented that “the conservative disposition” in the United States has too often been misunderstood by identifying it with rent-seeking behaviour.

As we have tried to show, many of the great figures of American literature – James Fenimore Cooper, H.L. Mencken, William Faulkner – fit well into our scheme of true American conservatism. The thinkers Dr. McClanahan and I have presented are perhaps not so much forgotten as they are unheeded, but they are all good men who have warned tellingly of the march toward the regime of regimentation and exploitation that is now established.”