Category Archives: Police State

Waves of the Future…

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“It sounds like the plot of a pre-Daniel Craig Bond film: an internet tycoon invests part of his vast fortune to fund a fiefdom afloat in international waters. He is joined by the libertarian grandson of one the world’s most famous economic thinkers and advertises for like-minded citizens “who are dissatisfied with our current civilisation” to join him aboard his brave new world. However, this is not fiction. It is happening now and the group, called the Seasteading Institute, has just released the first detailed plans of what its utopian water world will look like. The first architectural stage is being financed by a $500,000 (£362,000) donation from Peter Thiel, billionaire co-founder of PayPal, the online payments system that was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. More funding will follow, and the group hopes to start building a small-scale version off the coast of San Francisco this year.

The computer renderings of this new ocean dwelling, called ClubStead, show a colossal structure similar to an oil rig that weighs 12,000 tons and is supported on four pillars each with a diameter of 30ft. On board will be room for about 270 people to live, including 70 staff, complete with shops, offices and transport. There will also be a hotel and spa facilities.

Although it looks like a fixed structure, the facility will be movable. It will have thrusters powered by four diesel engines capable of moving the whole structure at a top speed of two knots and providing utility power on the platform itself.

The brains behind the project is Patri Friedman, grandson of Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize-winning economist. “If we can open up the ocean as a new frontier where different groups of people can go and set up their own countries and try different systems,” he says, “then the whole world can look at that, see what works and what doesn’t, and everyone can benefit. America was founded by pioneers who wanted to have a different society to reflect their political and religious values.”

More at Times Online.  (thanks to Lew Rockwell for the tip).

Obama Wants FDA Overhauled

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“President Barack Obama has said the US food safety system is a “public health hazard” and in need of an overhaul. He sounded the warning during his weekly radio and video address, as he appointed a new head of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). New York Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg has been named for the post.”

That’s from a BBC report about Obama’s new health czar.

 Comment:

Hat-tip to Sunni Maravillosa for the link. As she points out, calling the FDA “a public health hazard” has a certain libertarian appeal until you read on and find out that what Obama has in mind is an expansion of the funding (hasn’t he heard we’re in a financial meltdown?), an overhaul of the system (read, more bureaucracy), and coordination throughout (read, more centralization).

Here’s the money part:

“The president also announced he was creating a working group to co-ordinate food safety laws throughout government and advise him on how to update the legislation, which he said had not been touched since it was drafted a century ago.”

And who’s the new healthocrat? A bioterrorism expert, who was an assistant health secretary under President Bill Clinton….

We always knew that an Obama presidency would be Clinton – Episode III…

Please underline in your little diaries: bioterrorism, New York, and coordinate through out government.

Now, I know Ms. Hamburg has a very impressive resume (Harvard MD, neuroscience research at Rockefeller University and neuropharmacology research at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, as well as AIDS research at NIH). She also has an interesting personal profile (bi-racial background). But the fact that she “initiated the nation’s first public-health bio-terrorism defense program” isn’t simply interesting to me – it’s disturbing.  I thought we were going to be ratcheting down the war-like posture with Obama. Why does the top health official in the country have to be someone intimately linked to the defense/intelligence complex?

What pressures would that put on her day-to-day policy recommendations? What is this preparing us for? I don’t know. I just worry about it.

Also this part from the NIH’s rather gushing biography:

“Hamburg sent healthcare workers to patients’ homes to help manage their drug regimen, and between 1992 and 1997, the TB rate for New York City fell by 46 percent, and by 86 percent for the most resistant strains…”

Those results sound good, but “help manage their drug regimen” doesn’t sound so good to me.  What if someone didn’t want to take the drug prescribed? Are they forced to?

More digging needed.

Ode to Enemies

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From Ali Eteraz, writer, scholar, and (former) lawyer-activist:

Ode to Enemies

I love my enemies,
with Neruda’s affection.
I cherish insults,
epithets
sarcasm;
I pray,
to be mocked
— abused —
its my redemption.
I love
all enemies,
not only the weak
ones who hate
because they’re empty,
but the heinous
also,
their hyena acidity
it makes me cackle,
it tickles,
it gives me laughter………

…

The best remedy
for ennui
is to offer my enemy
a plate full of me.”

Comment:

Indeed.

Pile on a big serving of yourself, folks, and shove  a plateful into the hungry mouths of the crooks and liars in power.

Read more of Ali’s observations at his website.

Obama Considers National Guard to Police Mexican Border

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“President Barack Obama spoke out about the recent violence that has enveloped our neighbor to the south and has begun to spill over from Mexico into the United States. He admitted that he has been weighing the possibility of moving National Guard troops to the border in an effort to contain the violence but ruled out immediate military action.

“We’re going to examine whether and if National Guard deployments would make sense and under what circumstances,” said President Obama, “I think it’s unacceptable if you’ve got drug gangs crossing our borders and killing U.S. citizens.”

One thousand people have already died along the border in 2009 alone, and almost 6 thousand died in 2008. Phoenix, AZ has seen a huge uptick in violence, earning the dubious title of “kidnapping capital of America” while “rape trees” are being found in increasing numbers on the US side of the border…..”

More at Latina

 Comment:

OK. This calls for some Clintonian parsing.

“weighing the possibility” = it’s gonna happen

“ruled out immediate action” = let’s test the waters for now, but wait a bit before going all Wyatt Earp down there

On the positive side, the Sooth-Sayer-In-Chief did admit mundane reality into the thick fog of DC-speak when he conceded that for every drug sale northward, there was a gun sale southward.

Leave the Police State While You Can…

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“Some time between 9/11 and now America became a police state. I cannot pinpoint the tipping point because the last several years are a blur of laws and policies that were passed so quickly and in such volume that no one could track them, let alone provide analysis. Even lawmakers didn’t read what they were passing. Moreover, I am not sure how to define “a police state” as opposedto a quasi one…so pinpointing is a term of accuracy that doesn’t apply. But, like pornography, I know a police state when I see it and I see everytime I glance State-side. And the collapse of the American dollar has not even occurred yet. When that happens — and it will be as swift as the mortgage collapse — the fear and panic generated could well allow/encourage the establishment of one of the worst totalitarian states the world has seen in a developed nation.

People who value their freedom and safety should leave…if possible. Having said this, I cannot fault those who stay to be near family and friends or a business that took a decade to establish. Nor can I blame anyone who says “Hell, no!” and draws a line against surrending their freedom on the soil of their birth. Hell, I have all those urges warring within me. But I don’t think it is wise to heed them. I think it is wise to GET OUT and fight for freedom from comparative safety. Get your assets out, get your family out, get your body out of the reach of the United States government. ….”

Wendy McElroy, “Leave the police state that is America” via Sunni Maravillosa

Propaganda Nation: Revival Time Is Here Again

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Revival time is here again.

I can smell it. The nation’s preachers are out in full force. First, there was President Obama telling us we needed to have a great race healing. Now, Attorney-General Eric Holder comes out to tell us we’re still segregated. We work together, but then we live and play by ourselves in segregated groups. We’re all cowards when it comes to race, says Holder.

Holder might have had a point and so might Obama had they spoken at any other time…and in any other way. But frankly the only segregation that really matters now is the segregation of the political class and its clients from the rest of us. It doesn’t matter which neighborhood you live in, black, white, brown or parti-colored – they all spell b-r-o-k-e the same way.

Barack Obama is a likeable guy. Not for one minute do I believe that he’s doing anything but the best he can. He’s sincere.

That may just be the trouble. It seems to be the delusion of societies to think they lack precisely what they have too much of. C. S. Lewis said as much. Cultures awash with hedonism believe themselves puritanically repressed; societies long lost to any orthodoxy fear religious dogma; and now with race at the center of talk shows and college seminars, of gym etiquette and prison protocol, we’re told that more race-talk is what we need.

Is it?

Do we really need to spend more time spewing what we think of each other like inbred cousins on a Jerry Springer show? Jerry used to be my vacuum time, so I actually know how those things ended – in a scrum of tattoos and ripped shirts, fake hair and flying cusses.

If that’s togetherness, a bit of segregation might be more civil.

And a bit of proportion might be more sensible.

We can call it segregation today, but I wonder what people segregated a century ago would think about that. Students clustered in groups of their own choosing are not terrified men and women fleeing dogs and police batons.

Actually, you don’t need to go back a century. You can find the same thing today in prisons, at non-violent demonstrations, wherever people are rounded up and snatched out of their houses. The victims are black, brown and white. And they’re not where they are because we don’t talk enough about race in this country. They’re there because we don’t talk enough about the state.

That’s from my latest piece at Lew Rockwell.

Climate Czars’ Ultimatum: Clean Energy Or World War

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“Jose Endundo, environment minister of Congo, said he recently visited huge Lake Victoria in nearby Uganda, at 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles) a vital source for the Nile River, and learned the lake level had dropped 3 meters (10 feet) in the past six years — a loss blamed in part on warmer temperatures and diminishing rains.

In the face of such threats, “the rich countries have to give us a helping hand,” the African minister said.

But it was Stern, former chief World Bank economist, who on Saturday laid out a case to his stranded companions in sobering PowerPoint detail.

If the world’s nations act responsibly, Stern said, they will achieve “zero-carbon” electricity production and zero-carbon road transport by 2050 — by replacing coal power plants with wind, solar or other energy sources that emit no carbon dioxide, and fossil fuel-burning vehicles with cars running on electric or other “clean” energy.

Then warming could be contained to a 2-degree-Celsius (3.4-degree-Fahrenheit) rise this century, he said.

But if negotiators falter, if emissions reductions are not made soon and deep, the severe climate shifts and sea-level rises projected by scientists would be “disastrous.”

It would “transform where people can live,” Stern said. “People would move on a massive scale. Hundreds of millions, probably billions of people would have to move if you talk about 4-, 5-, 6-degree increases” — 7 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. And that would mean extended global conflict, “because there’s no way the world can handle that kind of population move in the time period in which it would take place.”

Melting ice, rising seas, dwindling lakes and war — the stranded ministers had a lot to consider. But many worried, too, that the current global economic crisis will keep governments from transforming carbon-dependent economies just now. For them, Stern offered a vision of working today on energy-efficient economies that would be more “sustainable” in the future.

“The unemployed builders of Europe should be insulating all the houses of Europe,” he said.”

 Charles Hanley for AP.

Police State Chronicles: Another Win For The Un-Free Web?

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 The latest on the BlockShopper -Jones Day trademark infringement case:

“Last April, startup real estate news site BlockShopper ran the headline “New Jones Day Lawyer Spends $760K on Sheffield” with a link to the bio for the lawyer in question—Jacob Tiedt—from the Web site of his law firm, Jones Day. In July, it ran a similar item about a home purchase by Dan Malone Jr., another Jones Day lawyer, with the link to his Jones Day bio.

BlockShopper was following standard operating procedure by linking to publicly available Web sites. But Jones Day got mad. The law firm (a big one, at 2,300 lawyers) has never publicly said why it sued; maybe the powers that be there thought the posts compromised their lawyers’ privacy. Housing records are public documents, but the Web turns public into accessible, and the firm presumably wasn’t thrilled about having its attorneys’ home purchases broadcast. Jones Day demanded that BlockShopper remove the items. When BlockShopper refused, the firm sued the 15-staff startup for trademark infringement. Jones Day’s legal theory was that BlockShopper’s link would trick readers into thinking that Jones Day was affiliated with the real estate site.This may seem far-fetched, but the judge in the case didn’t think so, and that led to a settlement this week that will require BlockShopper to change the way it creates links. And that’s not a good signal to send about the Web, where linking has been an unrestricted currency available to all….”

More at Slate, by Wendy Davis.

Comment:

I’ve had mixed thoughts about this.

Police-State Chronicles: Your Medical Records At Their Finger-Tips

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“The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Betsey McCaughey at Bloomberg.com

Sunny Maravillosa has a  commentary on this that sums up my own feeling: why do we have to give up control of our bodies and health to the allopathic cartel and the healthocrats (thanks for those neat labels, Sunni)?

 Ivan Ilich the Austrian philosopher and priest made a similar point in Medical Nemesis (also known as Limits to Medicine), first published in 1975. llich argued that the medicalization of even normal processes in life had led to a vast amount of  iatrogenic (doctor/drug/hospital induced) sickness in modern industrial societies. His criticism of medicine was part of his more extensive attack against the way society institutionalizes activities that people can better do for themselves.

He also attacked formal education and called for networks of peer learning. Today, that sounds uncannily like the world-wide web…

Activism: Journalists Threatened By Maoists in Nepal……

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 From Nepal:

“Among genuine Maoist cadre – for they exist amidst the mass of opportunists who have signed up – there is the belief that the journalist stands in the way of change. They have been taught that journalism can never be independent and must be part of the effort to fight a class war as directed by the party.

Five journalists around the country presently face credible death threats, and the sense of insecurity in the districts is much more palpable than in Kathmandu Valley. A senior editor was recently asked pointedly and ominously, “How long do we have to suffer this indignity of criticism. Tell us, kati samma sahera basne hamilay?”

As per their politico-military training, Maoists workers as a whole continue to regard those who disagree with them as the enemy, and the critic can variously be labeled feudal, anti-people, anti-national. The leadership has done little to change this self-serving mindset, and so cadres everywhere feel confident in exhibiting hostility. If a sense of fear can be created leading to self-censorship, then regardless of what this does to the image of the party it can be useful for developing a pliant society. But the matter may spiral out of even Maoist control, for the party´s attitude towards media is being internalized by violent groups in the mid-western Tarai and elsewhere.

Amidst the violence-puja that has overtaken the country, who we had thought represented ‘civil society’ are yet to awake to the dangers, the business community seeks accommodation amidst rampant extortion, and the state administration and security mechanisms are subdued by the extremist sloganeering of Maoist leaders and ministers. For now, the journalist, human rights defender, local politician and activist stand at the frontline on behalf of the citizenry, vulnerable amidst daily threats and intimidations, beatings and attacks. Everyone understands that the attacks on the media are meant to send a message to the rest. Everyone also understands that the fall of free media will be a harbinger of years of unrest, derailment of governance, crash of the economy, and pushback of development….”

Kanak Mani Dixit, “Independent Press: Learning From Uma” in MyRepublica.com

Comment:

The Uma referenced in the article is Uma Singh, a young Nepali journalist who was murdered, according to this BBC report:

“Uma Singh, a radio journalist in her 20s, was hacked to death by between 12 and 20 men in her room in the southern city of Janakpur. Ms Singh is believed to be the first female reporter killed in the country, although journalists have long lived with violence or the threat of it.A friend and fellow journalist told the BBC there was no part of her body that was not covered with blood. She died on the way to the capital after attempts locally to help her failed. “

                      What did Uma do to get herself hacked to death?

Ameet Dhakal writes:

“Uma was a gutsy lady—sharp and fearless. It takes guts to be a woman journalist in Madhes, and you need an extra dose of it to move away from your home to another district, to live by yourself in a rented room, and do journalism while braving the likes of Matrika Yadav,* Babban Singh and others of the criminal groups mushrooming in Madhes. She wrote articles exposing Matrika Yadav, and in one of the public functions when Babban Singh was speaking on women’s rights she reprimanded him for the rape cases he was implicated in. Such examples of her audacity are aplenty.”

  *Maoist leader

Arrests have been made in the case, according to this piece at the Nepali newspaper, eKantipur.com.