Category Archives: Uncategorized

Cow College Versus Ivy League

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I’ve been thinking about the psychological roots of the anger between the two parties.
It’s not simply political, that’s clear. It’s ethnic, demographic, geographical and many other things that have been explored by a lot of people.

One element that hasn’t attracted that much attention though is one that’s always struck me quite strongly – the anger directed toward people with Ivy League or elite school educations by those who attended humbler schools. The “cows and the ivies” is where some of the class-warfare of today is played out.

We hear a lot about how the poor and middle-class envy the rich, but I’m not thoroughly convinced by the thesis. Most of the people I’ve talked to seem to admire the rich in the most uncritical sort of way. They ape their life styles as best they can. And they ascribe to rich people all sorts of virtues they think they lack themselves, when in point of fact, great wealth (I’m talking about tens of millions and more) is usually the result of many other things besides hard work and skill. It also takes luck, contacts, and some money to start with. It takes a certain kind of personality – a not very admirable one, often. Everyone knows Balzac’s line about there being no great fortune without a crime behind it..

The truth is money alone doesn’t confer enough status to provoke envy. Who envies a rich garbage man? No one.

And no one envies bankers these days, no matter that they keep making money. They’ve lost their status. It’s status that provokes envy.

And today, the most obvious and common insignia of status is graduating from an elite school. The left side of the political spectrum is associated, rightly or wrongly, with the high status universities – with Ivies like Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Wellesley – as well as with all the other universities, which, though not Ivy, are considered elite, such as, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Chicago, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, or Wellesley. Cornell.

On the elite list are also some public universities, like Berkeley, and a couple of more conservative schools, like Chicago and Dartmouth.

But, in general, the elite schools are associated with liberal-left politics and with internationalism. The cow-colleges (and we’re fond of cows ourselves) have become the terrain of a kind of chip-on-the-shoulder nationalism and conservatism (of course, I’m simplifying this terribly).

This leads to a lot of hilarious posturing by the cow crowd – about effete elites (read Boston Brahmins, Jews), decadence (not sure what that’s supposed to mean – perhaps feminists and homosexuals?), affirmative action (read, Hispanics and Blacks) etc. etc. – although by and large these schools are as – or more – likely to have middle-class students than the state universities. And though affirmative action – if one were to include women and legacy students – surely benefited whites far more than it ever did non-whites.

I recently came across an example of this envy in a bit of resume-massaging. Someone who studied at a locally respectable state university (Georgia State), was a very mediocre student (C’s and low B’s), and then paid for a year’s study at Oxford – or was it at Heidelberg? (something anyone with money can do), inverted the order of their studies on their resume thus:

“Studied politics at Oxford and at Georgia State…”

This mean little ruse gives the false impression that the student was admitted competitively to the rigorously selective undergraduate program at Oxford – an academic achievement of a much higher caliber than mere attendance.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that the Georgia State student might not be smart or might not do very well in life. He might. But the deception betrays a certain envy – the same envy that, unfortunately, I detect in some of the populist hatred of liberal “elites.”

I say that objectively, since I’ve no great love for those elites myself. But I have even less love for the anti-intellectualism of some parts of the right. For its open contempt for scholarship, intellectual striving, cosmopolitan sympathies, and international standards – things that to me are the essence of decent liberalism.

That’s the kind of liberalism with which I have no quarrel, no matter if its politics differs from mine. No matter if it embraces the state more than I do. I am any day closer to that liberalism than to the yahoo know-nothing right.

And, as always, the ever insightful – if often spiteful – Anne Coulter manages to find an example of the envy I’m talking about not in a conservative, but in the kind of liberal I don’t like – Keith Olberman.

Quote:

“Finally, you can stop pretending that you went to the hard-to-get-into Cornell.
Now you won’t have to quickly change the subject whenever people idly remark that they didn’t know it was possible to major in “communications” at an Ivy League school. No longer will you have to aggressively bring up Cornell when it has nothing to do with the conversation. Relax, Keith. Now you can let people like you for you.”

That’s on Olbermann’s constant derision of cow-college graduates and his name-dropping about the “Ivy” he went to, when he actually studied “communications” at the agricultural school affiliated to Cornell.

Update: Correction. Cornell contradicts Anne Coulter’s description of Olbermann’s alma mater.

Here is a latter written to someone who asked about the criticism:

Dear Tammie,

Many people have contacted us about the false and negative statements about Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences being made by Ann Coulter in the media recently.

Cornell as a whole–and all of its colleges–are considered “Ivy League.” The term “Ivy League” was initially used by sportswriters, and became the official name in 1954 of the NCAA Division I athletic conference to which Cornell belongs. The “Ancient Eight” are Cornell, Princeton, Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Harvard. Additionally, CALS admits 1 out of every 5 applicants, as does the College of Arts & Sciences.

Please feel free to watch Mr. Olbermann’s response on his Countdown show at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/29539156#29539156

Thank you for your concern about the College.

Sincerely,

Ellen Leventry
Web Communications Specialist
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Cornell University

Apologies. Ms. Coulter was apparently off-base on that. Hmm. Why am I not surprised? But her larger point stands, I believe.

Blogger Credibility…(links added, updated, correction)

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I. A Question About Zerohedge:

Felix Salmon raises some questions about the blog, Zerohedge, which rose to swift prominence recently, following the TARP bail-out.

He notes that one of the principals, Daniel Ivandjiiksy has a record of insider trading.

I hardly think that this undermines the credibility of what Zerohedge posts. A drunk driving violation doesn’t disqualify you from credibly digging up information on auto industry lobbying. What’s more germane to my mind is the fact that none of these bloggers seem to have been so visible before the Goldman-AIG bailout story broke (ahem…taking a bow here..). Is that coincidental? Perhaps.

II. Other Bloggers:

Here are some of the bloggers or names that have suddenly become attached to the story – Max Keiser, Goldman666, Matt Taibbi, Zerohedge.

They’ve all contributed a lot of legitimate material. But one thing strikes me as odd. None of these names were notable for critiquing any of the main culprits of the financial crisis, before September 2008. But now they’re the blogosphere’s leading voices on the kleptocrats.

Yet, Taibbi, as I’ve noted, isn’t all that informed about a number of things. And in some of his writing, at least, seems to be steering opinion away from what I consider the prime suspects. I initially thought he might be spreading a bit of disinformation. Now, I wonder if it’s just that he doesn’t know enough. In any case, they’ve all done good and useful work that I hope won’t be discounted because of occasional slip-ups.

Even if individual posts or documents are unreliable, vetting from the blogosphere should keep everyone honest.

Note: In relation to the attacks on my own credibility by a pseudonymous stalker, Tony R, here is a link to a settlement with the NASD (the securities dealers association).

Correction: Villasenor denies that he is the same as Tony R. I’ll accept his denial, though both he and TR use the same message boards, employ the same invective, use multiple aliases – some of them overlapping or very close – and both attack the same figures.

Villasenor Ry–ls continuously slanders me with accusations that I’m a “stock fraudster.” The only reason he gives is that I co-wrote “Mobs” with a financial newsletter publisher, one of whose innumerable publications has fallen afoul of the SEC, and some of whose associates have had admittedly very questionable histories. (I’ve blogged about them before). But none of them ever had any kind of contact with me. So why the persistent posting (since 2007)?

Villasenor Ry–ls seems to have been a reader of mine who thought I was on the far left side of the political spectrum, and became incensed when he found I was a supporter of Ron Paul instead. Having seen some of his rants before I’d taken up the book project, I briefly questioned him about them. I found his responses incoherent, so I went ahead and wrote the book. That seems to have set him off.

Scroll down the webpage I’ve copied below, and you’ll see his real name, Roberto G. Villasenor. (He has scores of aliases). [Correction: Villasenor denies that he is Ry_ls. Both use multiple aliases, both post on similar issues, in similar venues, both have been attacked for libel, both are traders/speculators, so it was an error, it was a good faith one, easily made, I think, unless one were familiar enough with the stock underworld to tell all these characters apart at once]

Villasenor’s Ry–s role in the “captured media” story (the thesis that Wall Street media coverage is manipulated by powerful financiers) is a minor one and can be found at Patrick Byrne’s Deep Capture blog, one of the main advocates of that thesis. It’s a bit role in the story of the ‘Easter Bunny’ (the character who, Byrne says, first drew his attention to the naked-shorting businesss). Byrne deserves a great deal of credit for going after the story early on, despite brickbats, and for detailing exactly how the  Russian-Jewish mafia came to Wall Street.

[Note: Byrne’s company, Overstock, an internet discount retailer, has again come under investigation by the SEC. Byrne thinks that it’s retaliation for his campaign against naked short-selling].

On the other hand, Gary Weiss, a former Forbes journalist and perpetual sparring partner of Byrnes’, says that the Overstock investigation is legitimate. He says it proves that Byrne was all along using his Wall Street short-selling-conspiracy campaign to divert attention from his own massaging of company earnings. Weiss and Sam Antar (a convict turned white-collar crime fighter, who has criticized Overstock’s accounting) argue that Byrne harasses his critics over personal matters.

[Both sides seem to make some good points, but on the issue of personal attacks, neither side comes off well. There’s stuff that’s fair game for criticism. There’s other stuff – family or medical matters, physical appearance, sexual history – that shouldn’t be, because they’re completely irrelevant to the issue – financial fraud. Some of the back and forth ends up being plain nasty].

To return to the story of my web-stalker, Villasenor is also connected to an allegedly extortionist website that has shady connections. I don’t want to get into all that here, though. (this is Villasenor but it’s not R__ls)

[Update: I just got a critical comment from this website, claiming that “extortionist” is not accurate. I deleted the comment, because in my post I’ve used the word “alleged”; my focus is on Villasenor’s activities, not on the website. Nonetheless,  I’ve now added a link to back up the term, “extortionist”].

Where does Villasenor Ry–ls write about his targets? Apparently from Guatemala, hiding out in a hut. Being penniless, unemployed, and on the run from whoever is suing him for libel this time round (as you can guess, he gets sued a lot), he spends all his time posting long screeds on Indymedia, which has no standard about what it’ll publish.

Other journalists whom he’s latched onto in his screeds include well-known members of the major media, like Carol Remond, Roddy Boyd, Jesse Eisinger, Christopher Byron, Gary Weiss. You can see their names, as well as private correspondence of theirs, posted publicly by Ry__s Villasenor. This strongly suggests a degree of attention-seeking.

As an example of his activities, Villasenor has also attacked a CEO named Michael Zwebner for stock-pumping. Zwebner sued him several times and seems to have lost, as he was likely to under US law, which requires the plaintiff to establish “malice” – something quite hard to do. Still, I know nothing about the merits of the case. I’m merely pointing out that Villasenor has a history of attacking people.

[Correction: Villasenor has indeed attacked Zwebner, but not, apparently, Ry__s]

Before that, Villasenor Ry__s also used to post on Amr Elgindy’s message board – Elgindy being a near-legendary Wall Street fraudster involved in naked shorting and also in the 9-11 story.

I’m guessing that might be the reason that Villasenor Ry__s defends naked shorting and claims its critics are people with vested interests in laundering money – penny-stock pumpers, for instance.

Having read through nearly all his extremely involved statements (some achievement, as they go into hundreds of webpages), I’ve come to the conclusion that some parts of his rants are not beyond credibility, even though is he isn’t the most credible person to be making those points.

For instance, it’s certainly true that there is a lot of money being laundered through the stock market, and that penny-stock pumping is one avenue. It’s also obvious that Cox and the SEC didn’t do their jobs – whether as part of an overarching conspiracy is something that has to be established. I suspect that the venture capital firm the CIA set up in the 1990s – In-Q-Tel, which I’ve mentioned in my book on Abu Ghraib – might have some connections that are also worth pursuing. And off-shore firms and banks play a large role in what’s happened over the last 25 years. All that is true.

But whatever accurate moments Villasenor’s Ry__s’ rants have, they get muddied by his tendency to attack anyone who’s ever crossed his path, even casually, and weave them all into a galactic conspiracy directed at his trading/speculating losses.

Well, even as an amateur, I’ve probably lost more than he has. And for a sometime school-teacher, that’s a lot. But I don’t blame anyone for those losses except myself.

Yes, the market is rigged. Yes, it’s manipulated. Yes, it’s not your fault and yes, you got conned. But those are factual truths. In trading, you have to learn to deal with emotional truths, which are different things. The emotional truth you have to “own” is that it’s always your fault…no matter how much it isn’t. That’s the only road to mastery.

Update:

I’ve pasted a copy of the message-board that alleges that Rip-Off Report is associated with extortion. I’m pasting the whole page, in case the link gets lost. As you can see from it, Villasenor, is/has been charged with racketeering, conspiracy, invasion of privacy, defamation and other crimes (you can verify by googling Roberto G Villasenor and NASD, as well as Villasenor and Zwebner, and also any of Villasenor’s aliases – which are variations on wolfblitzer, pin, worm, and many others. I’m not mentioning his most frequent alias, because any time it’s mentioned he shows up on this blog and starts spamming me and reduplicating his posts all over the web.

1. FALSE: I attended Freedom Fest (TRUE: I did not attend and never have attended, although I fail to see why that’s a crime, even if I did)

2. FALSE: I have sold stock (TRUE: I never have. You need a license to sell stock and I don’t have one, nor am I interested in getting one. I only trade my my own savings – and that, rather infrequently. I did research Goldman Sachs, with the intention of using that material in “Mobs,” but that was vetoed and I turned the research into an investment report, suggesting shorting GS. I didn’t own GS at the time, have never owned it, and didn’t know anyone else who owned it. I advocated shorting it because I thought it was a corrupt company, knee-high in derivative contracts – and I was proved quite correct. I later turned that into a story that was used by my co-author’s company. The research on that is thorough and I stand by it. The report was later sold by the company under someone else’s name without my permission – that was one of many things that led to my leaving. I had no say in any of that. Besides some very brief analyses (a few paragraphs) of the Indian market where I recommended nothing I held (or anyone I knew held), that is the extent of my involvement with recommending anything in a newsletter. You can find that writing on my blog and check for yourself).

3. FALSE: I am closely associated with/covering for Porter Stansberry, James Davidson, Mark Skousen.

(TRUE: They are associates of my co-author’s. I do not know them except by hearsay and was quite critical of two of them to senior people – to my detriment – and on this blog. I’ve been blurbed by left-wing writers like Ward Churchill and I don’t know them personally either).

4. FALSE: I wasn’t born in India (TRUE: I was born there and completed my first two university degrees there. I speak two Indian languages and return there frequently. Most of my family lives there).

5. FALSE: I am concealing my birth-date because I’m a fraud (TRUE: Revealing personal information on the net exposes you to frauds/threats of all kinds. It’s sensible to put the minimum possible out in public).

4. FALSE: I am “covering” for the company. (TRUE: I have never “covered” for any one. I asked about the Stansberry case, as well as about Davidson, at the time I was approached to help write the book. I was told by two senior people that the problems were in other divisions and in the past, and I would have no involvement with them. I did my work almost completely over the net and was most of the time out of the country. I have several times expressed my dislike of the “hard-selling” employed by some newsletters published by the company. I have criticized that, and other things, not only directly to senior people, but also in my blog posts. I have suffered the consequences for that in my career. I do not think more can be asked from a citizen journalist. After having left the company in 2007, I came across published material on the web that confirmed that I was right to leave. In so far as that material has any relation to my own interests as a citizen journalist, I have posted it. Beyond that, it would be both incorrect and injudicious for me to venture, for many reasons that would be immediately apparent to anyone with an ounce of intelligence or integrity).

5. FALSE: I am “pretending to fight Byrne.” (TRUE: My posts support Byrne’s findings, as they confirm my own research into the engineering of media coverage. I have, however, criticized some of the tactics he’s used to go after his critics. That’s in keeping with my general dislike for “personal attacks” on the web that use material that’s irrelevant to the public interest involved. I cannot “fight” anyone over subjects I cannot verify or disprove. I believe (with Byrne) that naked short-selling had a serious role in the financial crisis. I also believe (with Byrne’s critics) that the market is used to launder money. That opposition roughly coincides to Republican-Democrat, and as always, both sides seem to have got different parts of the story right. Which of the two is the more important part, I don’t know).

*****
WEBSITE POST
Google search 9/29/09

From: edmagedson@ripoffreport.com
Subject: Group of Criminals behind ripoffreport (badbusinessbureau) and easybackgroundcheck (modelingscams)
Date: 16 Jun 2005 13:52:03 -0600

This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.

Classification: Query

Message Board URL:

http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/3U.2ADE/1636

Message Board Post:

Ed Magedson demanded over $50,000 from a company that is also suing him and the Rip-Off Report
Ed Magedson demanded $5,000 from a small business owner in return for a positive testimonial.
Complaint filed by an Arizona law firm that was victimized by the same Rip-Off Report extortion scheme.

Criminal Ed Magedson is working with the group of criminals that formed the easybackgroundcheck aka modelingscams

List of companies paying extortion money –
Consumer Health Network
National Health Network
World Benefits
National Grants
Incredible Discoveries
MVI – Mini Vacations
Harvard Professional Group
Alyon

Group of Criminals behind ripoffreport (badbusinessbureau) and easybackgroundcheck (modelingscams) –
Ed Magedson – Conspiracy and Racketeering (RICO) proceedings as well as claims for defamation
Les Henderson – Under the guise of helping protect her from “scam” companies he tries to lure a 17 year old girl to his hotel room to do coke
Edward Bloedow – has convictions for flashing women (misdemeanor) and receiving stolen goods (felony)
Frank Torelli – is so afraid his lies, conspiratorial and illegal activities will eventually catch up with him he never discloses his whereabouts
William Rosenberger – Conspiracy and Racketeering (RICO) proceedings as well as claims for defamation and invasion of privacy filed
Madelene Rosenberger – Conspiracy and Racketeering (RICO) proceedings as well as claims for defamation and invasion of privacy filed
Roberto Villasenor Jr. – Conspiracy and Racketeering (RICO) proceedings as well as claims for defamation and invasion of privacy filed
Stephen Howe
Michael Potter – attorney in California who acts as a front for Bloedow and Noll
Klaas DeVries Jr. – named in RICO lawsuit filed with FBI and U.S. Attorney General’s office
Ted Peterson
Stick Bogart
Robert Kirchman
Pamela Kirchman
Amr Elgindy- FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office link Easy background Check Founder Amr El-Gindy (along with Criminal Les Henderson) to 9-11.
Robert Noll – owner of Monster Talent management an unlicensed photo mill in California
Patricia Gewartowski- under investigation by federal authorities for revealing confidential financial information to criminal Frank Torelli and Criminal Les Henderson

********

Uruguay Cost of Living

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Is Uruguay first world living at third world prices, as some of the less accurate newsletters will tell you?
Don’t believe it.

In some cases, you’re paying less than US prices, but remember that that’s cheap only to dollar holders. People who make the average Uruguay salary- about a quarter of what they’d earn in the US – aren’t going to find it cheap at all. In other cases (supermarket processed food, for example), you’re actually paying more than in the US. In the case of electronics or clothes, you’ll be paying considerably more.

To give you an idea, here’s a link to a site (in Spanish), where you can see uptodate prices.
It’s at the Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas –Sistema de Información de Precios al Consumidor

Eggs, as you can see, are expensive – equal to or higher than in the US. In a country of farms that’s a bit of a mystery to me. Chips, crackers, cereal and orange juice are also expensive.

However, if you go to the street stalls and buy vegetables, you’ll find them cheaper.

Services in general are cheaper. Which means what? I hate to tell you. It means that labor is overpaid in the US – relative to the world market, at least.

Roman Polanski Arrested by Swiss at US Request..

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Roman Polansky, acclaimed film director, has been living abroad for years to avoid arrest for charges stemming from ‘date rape’ of an underage girl. Now he’s been arrested by the Swiss, says an AP report this morning.

Polanksi’s horrible actions can’t be excused by his considerable talent. But, from a libertarian stance, I am not sure why the state needs to pursue him further, when the victim seems to have settled and wants the whole business over.

I say this, despite having very strong feelings about crimes of this nature, which – when the victims are not minors – are often dismissed as “consensual” – instead of what they really are – acquaintance or date rape. When you target a naive young man or woman, ply them with alcohol and slip drugs into their food, in order to make them compliant, you are raping them, as surely as if you’d knocked them over the head. [I know the victim’s surname has been given every where, but on principle, I think it should not be – so I am referring to her by initial. I also removed the link to her testimony to the grand jury which I’d placed here before. I hope other writers will do the same.].

But Polanski has paid his dues and made amends to the victim to her satisfaction. Why is the state baying for blood? Ambitious judge?

Here is what the victim, now married with three children, has said about the repeated publicizing of the case.

“My views as a victim, my feelings as a victim, or my desires as a victim were never considered or even inquired into by the district attorney prior to the filing,” she said. “It is clear to me that because the district attorney’s office has been accused of wrongdoing, it has recited the lurid details of the case to distract attention from the wrongful conduct of the district attorney’s office as well as the judge who was then assigned to the case.”

— The Huffington Post.

There is really no “public” good being served by rehashing this business when Polanski is in his 70’s and has never offended again, when there’s been evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, and most importantly, when the victim is satisfied that justice has been done. All the rest is vanity, careerism, and titillation.

Next to the number of children whom governments and corporations routinely abuse when they starve, bomb, destroy, and impoverish whole countries, the damage Polanski did was relatively limited.

It seems as if the Swiss have become pretty compliant with demands from the US government.

What does this say about the new monetary regulatory regime, now headquartered in Switzerland?Could the government just be looking for a high-profile victim to lend legitimacy to its own intrusiveness.

“In 1977, he [Polansky] was accused of raping the teenager while photographing her during a modeling session. The girl said Polanski plied her with champagne and part of a Quaalude pill at Jack Nicholson’s house while the actor was away. She said that, despite her protests, he performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy on her.

Polanski was allowed to plead guilty to one of six charges, unlawful sexual intercourse, and was sent to prison for 42 days of evaluation.

Lawyers agreed that would be his full sentence, but the judge tried to renege on the plea bargain. Aware the judge would sentence him to more prison time and require his voluntary deportation, Polanski fled to France.

The victim, Samantha G, who long ago identified herself publicly, has joined in Polanski’s bid for dismissal, saying she wants the case to be over. She sued Polanski and reached an undisclosed settlement.”

People Leaving Florida and California..

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When bad times came in earlier days, Americans were likely to up and leave town for greener pastures.
This time, they’re hunkering down. It’s the new depression mentality.

Those that are moving seem to be moving out of the two states that had the biggest booms in housing – Florida and California.The reason is clear. With the housing market in crisis, the economies of the two sunshine states have been hit proportionately hard.

CNN Money reports:

“The Florida economy is based on growth and home construction,” said Lang. With building projects dying on the vine, unemployment soared to 7.6% for the state in 2008. It’s now up to 10.7%.

The same job problems plague many California cities, especially Central Valley towns like Stockton, Fresno and Merced. Construction-related job losses helped send state unemployment to 8.7% by December 2008 from 5.9% a year earlier. Today, some cities report breathtakingly high unemployment rates: 30.2% in El Centro; 17.6% in Merced; and 17.2% in Yuba City.

So, if people aren’t heading for the good life in California and Florida, where are they going?
D.C., Alaska and Wyoming. (Seriously……

…To be fair, however, small populations in these places convert modest in-migration increases into large percentage gains. They’re each among the smallest states (or district) in the Union. That’s just the opposite of California and Florida where each percentage point represents hundreds of thousands of people….In terms of net migration — those moving in minus those leaving — Texas was the star performer in 2008, with the population growing by 140,000.”

My Comment:

I thought of Texas – way back in 2003. Houston or San Antonio, I thought. I liked the fact that Houston had a large Asian community and was reckoned one of the best places to begin a new business and one of the best places for immigrants. Property was also reasonably priced and the place had a healthy libertarian community. It’s reputed to be a safe, family-friendly city – and greener than you’d think. And there are all those jobs in the energy business.

But there are negatives. Both places are a long way off from anywhere else. In many ways, you’d be going to a new country. To get to any other city in Texas, let alone anywhere else, is a long haul. Houston’s roads are congested. The housing is largely modern – no old architecture. The weather is extremely hot and humid, and there’s hurricane season. I told a friend of mine he’d find me on a ranch, chewing baccy, spitting, and eying down rattlesnakes. I’d fit right in, I said. I probably would have. But I would have lost something in fitting in. In Uruguay, subtly, I feel I gain by fitting in.

And the prison system – not that I was planning on ending up in it – has serious problems. I am not sure it would have been the ideal place for a political blogger.

I still wonder about Texas and if I made a mistake coming here. My reasoning was that if I was going to uproot that much, I might as well go abroad, where I’d also have the advantage of being out of the country. But I admit to being conflicted about it all…still.

What made up my mind for me ultimately was the privacy issue. You can move to Texas, but you can’t move out of the way of the snoop state. And you can’t get away from litigators and stalkers…from enemies with their malevolence and the government with its benevolence….

Revisiting the Reshuffle Club? (Update: Fake Alert)

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Just been alerted by a reader that the document below might be a fake. I will take a look. Zerohedge is widely quoted and Matt Taibbi cites them as the blog to which he owes his Goldman bashing. I’ve had my doubts about that attribution, and I expressed them. I tried to go back and look at when Zerohedge began posting but it’s not clear when their archives begin.

My fault for not checking this myself.

Of course, it matters little to proving any gold conspiracy theory, since there are so many other statements that can do that. But it’s an interesting document and I’d like to find out if indeed it’s authentic. I will follow up on this in a fresh post.

Zerohedge has a copy of a declassified telegram to the Secretary of State in 1968 that seems to reveal market manipulation by something called the “reshuffle club” (today’s plunge protection team?)

Zerohedge: “A recently declassified telegram to the Secretary of State sent in 1968, has some very distrubring [sic] revelations to gold “conspiracy theorists” who believe there could be an international arrangement to maintain a control over gold prices in the international arena. This is especially true as the G-20 meets currently in Pittsburgh behind closed doors. Could gold be one of the issues discussed?

We particularly bring readers’ attention to paragraph 13 in the telegram below, which present some troubling revelations (emphasis ours):

QUOTE: “If we want to have a chance to remain the masters of gold an international agreement on the rules of the game as outlined above seems to be a matter of urgency. We would fool ourselves in thinking that we have time enough to wait and see how the S.D.R.’s will develop. In fact, the challenge really seems to be to achieve by international agreement within a very short period of time what otherwise could only have been the outcome of a gradual development of many years.”

New Findings About Race in India..

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This news item republished at the genetics blog, Gene Expression, is likely to have some impact in India, where there’s been a long-standing debate about the North Indian-South Indian divide, also known as the Aryan-Dravidian divide.

There are several theories about the origin of the different peoples of India. The most popular one and the one that’s favored by the most prominent historians is the Aryan invasion theory.This theory suggests that there was a substantial difference between a preexisting population of shorter, darker people in South India (called Dravidians) and an invading bronze- age culture of taller, fairer people (Aryans) that brought in Vedic or Hindu culture.

This theory, of course, has had a lot of repercussions not only for history and anthropology, but also for politics. The Aryan invasion theory depicts Hindu culture as having a foreign origin, so it was considered colonial, if not racist, by many Indian scholars.

Anthropologists consider Indians to be a branch of a widely dispersed Indo-European group that sent out branches to Persia (Indo-Iranian), Europe (Indo-European) and India (Indo-European). Race theories that developed in the 19th century tended to use this Aryan theory as their foundation (if I’m not mistaken).

However, many Hindu nationalists have considered the Aryan invasion theory a colonial distortion and have argued instead that the movement of people was in the opposite direction. In other words, the Aryans moved outward from India. This would make India the mother culture of the Aryans

Critics of this Indian origin theory call it an outgrowth of Hindu chauvinism. The debate has been a pretty heated one, as a consequence.

Now comes new research.

The Times of India notes:

“The great Indian divide along north-south lines now stands blurred. A pathbreaking study by Harvard and indigenous researchers on ancestral Indian populations says there is a genetic relationship between all Indians and more importantly, the hitherto believed “fact” that Aryans and Dravidians signify the ancestry of north and south Indians might after all, be a myth.

“This paper rewrites history... there is no north-south divide,” Lalji Singh, former director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and a co-author of the study, said at a press conference here on Thursday.

Senior CCMB scientist Kumarasamy Thangarajan said there was no truth to the Aryan-Dravidian theory as they came hundreds or thousands of years after the ancestral north and south Indians had settled in India.

The study analysed 500,000 genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 diverse groups from 13 states. All the individuals were from six-language families and traditionally “upper” and “lower” castes and tribal groups. “The genetics proves that castes grew directly out of tribe-like organizations during the formation of the Indian society,” the study said. Thangarajan noted that it was impossible to distinguish between castes and tribes since their genetics proved they were not systematically different.

The study was conducted by CCMB scientists in collaboration with researchers at Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. It reveals that the present-day Indian population is a mix of ancient north and south bearing the genomic contributions from two distinct ancestral populations – the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI). ”

Spring In the South

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Spring is here. I walked the four miles or so to the Old Town (Ciudad Vieja) and renewed my visa. The office is at Misiones 1513, a few blocks from the sea. In Plaza Libertad there were people strolling around sight-seeing and buying food, though street food isn’t the way of life it is in India or Malaysia or Morocco.

Actually, you don’t need a visa with a US passport. But I was told I’d have to leave the country and reenter after 90 days, so I’d been planning on making the boat trip back to Buenos Aires. That would have been about $70. Fortunately, I googled and found that all you need to do is show up at Immigration and ask to extend your stay. That cost was roughly $15.

Moral of the story: Sometimes the information on the web is wrong and you need to talk to people to find out the real deal, Other times, people are repeating misinformation and you need to verify from the web.

The whole thing took about an hour, mainly because I had to go out and change money. The Uruguayan peso has strengthened a bit recently, trading at 21 and 22 (compra and venta). So I didn’t want to change any more than I absolutely had to. The man at the cambio seemed to understand my cheese-paring mentality. No problem, he said in good English, as I handed him a hundred. I’ll change twenty for you.

It’s what I like about people here. They seem to understand the notion of “making do.” It’s not a shame. In the US, at least until the market-crash wised people up, a lot of my friends would consider this unseemly haggling.

So far, things have turned out much as I expected, except for rent (higher than expected) and food (much higher than expected). The weather really is temperate. The environment really is pristine. The people really are easy-going. The roads really are safe and good. And it’s not crowded or scruffy or polluted or noisy, as parts of Buenos Aires are. (It’s also not as much of a party scene).
Electronics are expensive – but I expected that. Few places in the world are as cheap as the US for electronics.

My one gripe is keeping in touch with everyone. Skype is relatively inexpensive but the sound isn’t great. I keep calling landlines in the US and in India and getting all sorts of background noise and distractions. The connection disappears. And sometimes it takes ages to get through. If this is the replacement for telephones, I’m not impressed.

The Indian government and a number of private companies have got around to Latin America and are investing in land here. The idea is to produce food more cheaply than can be done in India, even after adding shipping costs.

So maybe Indian pensioners and retirees won’t have to spend their entire savings on food and water in the future, as I’ve been afraid they might.

Maybe also, India won’t be destabilized by the bombing in Afghanistan…

Maybe China and India will be able to see eye to eye on their riparian disagreements…maybe…
Maybe…

But I’m not holding my breath.