Rajiv Malhotra, author of “Breaking India,” writes:

Challenged America hedging its bets on India

So how does this play into India? With the Chinese threat on one side and the Islamic threat on other side the challenged America has developed a schizophrenic attitude towards India which is what I will explain to you. So United States is hedging its bets on India. That is why it is impossible to characterize America one way or the other with respect to India on a long time basis.

I am going to go through the left hand side of the slide first which is the move to build up India and the right hand side of the slide says Fragment India – thus two opposing views on India. The build up India voices in American think tanks and American policy and so on are saying let us invest in India financial capital, market and labor; let us have military alliances let us have regional political alliances. And the benefit is that it will counter China’s hegemony, it contains Islamic threat; it is good for US corporate interests and India will be a stabilizing force in the third world. But there is also a caution at the bottom that says that if this happens and India is too successful then in the long term we have another China like threat. One China is bad enough what if another brilliant people became another kind of China and as successful in competing United States and then we will have to worry about two kinds of Chinas. So while there is a voice that says let us build up India there is also a voice that is concerned that it may get out of hand and become too strong. Therefore let us come to the right hand side that says let us fragment India.

The “Fragment India” is a much older voice than the “Build up India” voice. The “Build up” India is more of a corporate voice and political voice over the last ten years. But the fragmentation of India is a voice that has been there since the cold war. In the fifties and sixties United States has had this attitude that .let us divide and rule. They built up this Dravidian movement; Annadurai was built up and all kinds of movements were built up to fragment India and play one against the other. When Nehru was pro-Soviet then the United States used the Dravidian movement to counteract Nehru’s programme of unifying India. So the fragmentation of India is a very old policy. And it says exploit Dalits vs. the Brahmins; Dravidians vs. so-called Aryans; Women vs. Men Minorities vs. Hindus.

And the benefits to the proponents of this voice are that United States Avoids China like competition; You can still outsource and use those laborers; you can get a whole lot of cheap laborers in India but they will never get out of hand; they will never be too strong and they will never rebel against you. You can still use them on your terms and you can keep them weak. It will also accelerate evangelism because when the state is weak then the evangelists can have clear paths and there will be less resistance to what they are trying to do. and what a great market for weapons exporters. Imagine if the army of Gujarat wants to buy tanks and the army of Maharashtra wants to buy anti-tank missiles, what a great thing for the arms merchants! Their stocks will go up if there is a disruption in India. If the disruptive forces of Hegde would become civil war that would be good news for weapons exporters.

Now the United States is also very concerned if this fragmentation of India happens. It is good to talk about it but if it actually materializes then it is worst nightmare for United States to have anarchy or chaos in India. with India many times the size of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan it would be the worst nightmare for United States if there is fragmentation of India.

US Interventions in India

So I call this the Mother-in-law syndrome. Do I want the couple to be united and happy or do I want them to fall apart? If they are too united, they will not listen to me. I don’t have a voice. I do not have the power. So I have to go and meddle around and play one against the other and create some friction. But then if that gets to the point they would divorce and go apart , then again I am in trouble. So I kind of play between these two poles and do not want either pole to happen too much. So United States’ policy towards India keeps vacillating between these two poles of “Build up India” and “Fragment India” And you cannot expect a long term stability in the way.

I have also been studying for the past decade various US interventions in India. And this is a very significant chart. At the top is the United States – Academy, Government, Church, Funding agencies – how they work together and fund the money with US ideology in training, leadership training, all kinds of things to be done in India and India receives that through the academy, funding agencies, church subsidiaries, NGOs and so on. This is a kind of asymmetry because India does not do this up in the other direction.

Deconstructing India

And the way India is deconstructed, is shown here. This is how the “Fragment India” tank of the US looks at India: they look through both the secular lenses shown in the left and the Biblical lenses in the right and in between are the problems they study.

So the first building blocks to study are the castes, minorities and women. They keep showing that they have problems; they are oppressed and the civilization is bad. This feeds into a negative approach to Hinduism. And the negative approach to Hinduism feeds a negative approach to Indian civilization. Finally at the top there is a group of scholars who look at why India is not a valid nation-state; what is wrong with it and what are the human rights problems and other kinds of problems. So this is the kind of deconstruction of India template, if you will, which is quite commonly found in South Asian studies. By the way I have looked at the last thirty two years of conferences on South Asia which is held at Madison every year. I got all the proceedings and abstracts. They were surprised that somebody wanted to buy all of them. It portrays India as an anti-progressive country, frozen in time, poverty-causing like a patient with caste, Sati, dowry, feticide, untouchability etc with West as the doctor. Further India is mystical and the West is rational. Whenever I hear this very common statement in United States, I say “Look. The chances are that your doctor is Indian. He is not irrational or with some mystical background. And the chances are that the lot of technology you are using is Indian and it is not created by a bunch of mystical people but by pretty rational people. So why do you keep thinking that way? It is just one of the old stereotypes that have not gone away.”

Invasion Theory of India

Then there is this idea that everything good about India was imported into India. The so-called Aryans brought Sanskrit. The Greeks brought philosophy and rational thought; Hinduism was a colonial construction; Indian culture was started by the Mughals and British gave Indians a nation and cricket and now we have to import our human rights from America. So everything we need we should import. And I call this the invasion theory of India which means if we want something we should select who is the best invader who will give that to us. So we do not have any selfhood or we do not have any civilization we need to be invaded to have something of value. And this means that we are doomed to dependency also.

Afro-Dalit Project

Now what caught me started on this course of understanding America’s intervention with India’s break up was a very interesting meeting I had with a scholar in Princeton University. We were just sitting and having lunch and he has just come back from India and I said “What did you do in India?” And he said “Oh I went there as part of the Afro-Dalit project” So I asked him what is this Afro Dalit project. So he said, “Oh we go to India we do youth empowerment and training programmes” I said “It is very interesting. Can you tell me what it is? Who are the Dalits?” And he said “Well. … They are Africans. They are the blacks of India and the non-Dalits are the whites of India. And this is the black-white history of India which is mirroring the black white history of America. And the Afro-Dalit project is to educate our Dalit brothers.” This was amazing to me. And my whole thesis started when I started searching on Afro-Dalit project.

And there is a whole library of what they are up to and who funds them. And they are very much active in Tamil Nadu building up a whole network of youth empowerment and youth training to give them a contrary sense of history that they are historically a kind of oppressed people and non-religious and so on. The Church has a vested interest in it because if you can dislocate their identity from the rest of India then you can re-programme them and give them a new religion and so on. This is called Dalitstan project. So I was invited to this scholar’s office. And I saw this map. This is the map of the Dalitstan that was hanging there. On the northern part is Mughalstan which is from Afghanistan, Pakistan and all the way to Bangladesh. This turns out to be what Mullah Omar says when he states that he wants to put the flag of Taliban on the red fort of Delhi and recreate the Mughal Empire. And the southern part of India is Dalitstan and Dravidstan. So these guys are working on it. So I was very much amazed that nobody is talking about it. Nobody seems to have noticed. Yet these guys have an open project. If you just Google Afro-Dalit you will come across a lot of hits and you yourself can see that. Then I started getting deeper into it and found that there is merit in the thesis that says that the local minorities are being appropriated by global nexuses. Afro-Dalit Project is just one example.

“Disruptive Forces” – Frontier India

So Hegde’s “Disruptive forces” of 1992 have turned into Frontier India mindset where the following wild things are happening. Local minority is co-opted as a branch office of some Global Nexus; many minorities are apart of some global majority and are used for trans-national agendas; third world intellectual franchises are set up to deconstruct their own nation.

It is very interesting that America’s very own sense of nation is becoming stronger and stronger and also the nation of China, the nation of Russia and the nation of Japan are becoming stronger and they are not deconstructing. They are not going out of style. And the European Union is becoming a strong super nation. But somehow the intellectual fashion of the day that is being exported to Indian intellectuals and third world intellectuals is that please go back to your country and deconstruct yourselves. We have to ask them to first do that to themselves. Now you may say that there is a lot of post-modernism in American campuses and they are doing it to them also. But they are doing it from the fringes. The people who are doing it do not have clout. Nobody takes them seriously. The media does not quote these kind of people. They are not policy makers. They do not influence think-tanks. They just are cocoon in the academy and doing some deconstruction of America but the powers to be are very patriotic and the nation state is as strong as ever.

Minorities as part of Global Majorities

So this also led me to question the definition of minority. And I want to leave this provocation with you.

If you are at the Macdonald’s in Delhi and you have local establishment with twenty employees you would not say that this is a minority institution. You would say that it is part of global empire. It is part of a huge global multi-national. Some one may say that all these twenties are from minority classes in India. You will still not be convinced because as individuals working there may be minorities in their personal capacity. But the institution they are working for is a branch office of a large multinational and not a minority. Now why don’t you not apply the same thing to the Southern Baptist Church or Baptist Church which is a huge multinational which has set up a big network of churches in Nagaland and Tamil Nadu and they have a plan of twenty thousand churches in South India. So why do you call them minorities and not call them branch offices or subsidiaries of global multinationals? Why is it that if the product being sold is God’s love then all of a sudden the rules of the multinational do not apply? Because it is God’s love, God’s love is exempt from scrutiny and transparency.

I would submit to you that the definition of minority has to be modulated and if a minority is working for or funded by appointed by trained by a foreign global nexus, then it is not really a minority. It is part of a bigger enterprise. And that enterprise should be studied rather than these isolated twenty thirty people in a place whom we call minority. So I even provoke you to rethink the definition of minority itself in this age of globalization.

Positive India narrative

Now there is a new positive India narrative in the US Business schools. this is the response we like to hear. Finally India’s time has come because I have lived there for last thirty eight years and only in the last seven years this voice has started. Otherwise there is always there is only the kind of discourse that I have stated earlier. Now there is positive focus on investment, markets, labor force and all that. So what we have are two competing discourses. There is a positive discourse which says “Build up India” and this is primarily in business schools. So when my friends want to donate something for the study of India or South Asia, I always tell them to give it to the business schools and not to South Asian studies because South Asian studies are built on fragmentation of India -“Why India is a problem” kind of thesis built upon the old humanities or social sciences.

And now the irony is that both these views are also encased in India. In India also you have the technocrats, industrialists those kind of people who believe in a positive sense of India. Then you also have people in social sciences (and a lot of social science views are actually imported) in India who do not have faith in India as a nation. So you have both voices within India also.

Hypothetical situation for US intervention in India

Now I come to a more troubling part of my thesis.

I am going to give you hypothetical scenario for US intervention in India. Suppose South Asia becomes the epicenter of USA vs. Islam which can happen. Suppose the Taliban takes over nuclearized Pakistan. Ten years ago I wrote a paper on such a scenario but did not publish it because I thought it was sensational but today it is a possibility. What can happen is Taliban takes over ISI and ISI takes over the Pakistan army indirectly and we all know that Pakistan army runs Pakistan. So Pakistan could have a democratically elected government which can act as a nice front for PRO purposes but really they do not have the power and they do not call the shots. It is even worse than having Musharaff. Because at least there it was transparent as you were dealing with an army. But here Pakistan can fool one to think that they are dealing with some group of importance while really that group does not have any power. Let us say under such scenario Taliban takes over Pakistan and thus is now nuclearized Taliban. Now let us say US is fighting and years go on and the causalities build up and US faces economic pressures at home and another election is coming. So this fight turns into Obama’s Iraq. This fight with Talibanized nuclear Pakistan becomes Obama’s liability and US is desperate to exit but exit with honor.

< p>So Obama or the future president has to figure out a way for exiting. So when the US exits, after having flared it up, then it has become a mess that somebody is going to encounter and guess who is going to bear that brunt of it? that will be India. I will also surmise in this hypothesis that Taliban will then have their vision of setting up that Mughalstan. They will see that they have enough disruptive forces sitting in India which can be incited by them and then they can get going with a huge revolution. Now that US has gone they can take over. Number Two. United States may also have another kind of intervention in India which is to safeguard Christians being persecuted. Some of you may think this is far fetched.

But when I started to research on this I saw a Wall street journal front page article two or three years ago titled US evangelists driving foreign policy intervention. It is a very long article that showed a hundred years history of evangelicals not only driving domestic policies like abortion and gay and nowadays on stem cell research very successfully but also very strong on foreign policy. And all foreign policy they want is that the United States should intervene wherever there is a pocket of Christians who consider themselves to be under threat. Once the United States agrees that that is the policy then they go and create some trouble and use that to bring United States intervention in there. Now the dossier of such cases of persecution of Christians in India is growing and it is a huge dossier in United States and there are regular hearings in Washington for which they invite those Indians who complain and there is a long line of such people who are granted Visa and travels grants to go and give testimony in the US congress. Also there are well organized networks in India which have been funded by these entities to provoke trouble, to monitor persecution and then go over to report and lobby in Washington. This is all over the US media. So United States may decide “Ok Taliban has got North India. We can go and intervene here and there and get some Christianized pockets in South India. We have built our own base there and we have built a network of support.” So this is the worst case scenario.

Now similar analysis also applies to Islam and China intervening, as each of them has stakes in India and ambitions in India. One can do scenarios like what if China and Pakistan jointly take military action. China would love to have Arunachal Pradesh because of the water -the Brahmaputra river water which can then be taken to Tibet. China would love to take Nepal because most of the water that comes to Ganga comes from Nepal and filters down to India. So this fight over water makes this geography very strategic and China would love to have all these. So you could build four scenarios of type A which shows how globalization brings civilizational threats to India.

What India can contribute to the world?

Now I shall go to part- II. Now I want you to set aside the disturbing scenario I have explained. Now let us see what is positive that India can offer to the world -how India could be a successful civilization and do positive things.

So to start with what are the problems the world faces where India can offer a solution? I will list just three. One is that development- the cycle of economic development is not sustainable or scalable. It is not ecologically possible to have development of such large number of people and achieve the per capita consumption of the western standard and also you cannot scale to the whole world. Then the Abrahamic civilizations are based on exclusivity and a mandate to take over the world and that is not going to sustain peaceful environment. Finally the human rights laws that exist protect the individual but not cultures. There is no law broken if the language is made extinct or if your culture or your rituals are gone. If you as an individual are not violated then the culture as an entity does not have a status. Only the individual has a status. So I will not go through this in detail because that will be a whole presentation by itself on what are some of the contributions that Indian civilization can make. There is a large reservoir of know-how of consciousness development, enhancement – what is called mind-sciences, intuition, creativity which is now at the cutting edge of western research in cognitive sciences, neuro-sciences, psychology and this is an asset that India has which is actually being acknowledged by the scientific community. So India brings a lot in this dimension.

There is a whole worked out system in Indian society on ecological sustainability starting with being content with less consumerism. The whole Ashrama model where you divide life into four stages has you as a consumerist in the second stage as householder (Gruhasth). But in the stages before and after that you learn life to be happy without much consumerism. These are social models which may be of application to world order where you cannot expect every body to live hundred years old and be a consumerist from zero to hundred at the American level.

Then there is the concept of groups that are de-centralized and self-organized without a state or a very centralized government or authoritarian government running the show. This is a very old Indian social organization that is highly de-centralized and the groups do not need some one else to give them laws and commandments as they are very well self-organized. There is the banyan tree metaphor which is sometimes used to describe this kind of society that is not one trunk or one system but lots of it together. And all of this results in pluralism, dignified aging and decentralized social security. In India we have dignified aging because you do not end up in old age home. But today because of modernity you do. Old age homes have been started here because of the tendency to westernize. But the tradition has a dignified aging. And there is kind of social security from one’s own community. Jaathi was social security network. But now we break families now and we break Jaathi structure and make it into caste. Now who is going to give you old age security? State does not have the money. Even in United States, the social security is going broke. So I do not think any country like India can provide such social security. So these are some ideas regarding Indian civilizational contribution.

 This year’s Agora licensitarian symposium plays off a piece I wrote for LRC in 2009, which got a lot of reaction (”Flight and Fight”). In it I describe alternate responses to the crisis in the US, in terms of limbic reactions.  My stats-counter showed me thereafter who was watching  those pages and the responses….

And, lo and behold, after a discreet waiting period, the idea reappears with a careful nod to the person who coined the physiological term…which is so well-known as to be in the public realm…… but with no nod at all to the person who applied it to possible libertarian strategies to defend against the financial crisis. 

        So much for Internet marketers.  They’re like the kid who goes out of his way to point out something relatively trivial that he did wrong, hoping that will divert you from the bicycle he’s pinched from the neighbors. Fools some of the people, I guess.

So too elaborate and insincere “apologies” for non-existent/trivial failures of attribution provide cover for continual pilfering that’s never acknowledged let alone corrected.

The right hand shakes your hand while the left hand picks your pocket. The right hand pretends it’s never seen the left hand.  And the head stares in the other direction or feigns shock at the goings on below, rather like a prim cat doing potty.

 Such pseudo-libertarians turn out to be no better than the statists they fight. The Pseudos steal openly, confusing the “freedom” of the jungle with the freedom of a  civilized society, all the while mouthing unctuous platitudes about morality and the family. On the other side, the statists steal under color of law,  mouthing pieties about the poor, the third world and minorities, about whom most of them know little and care less. 

For honest people, there is nothing to choose between the two groups.

The real problem is public culture itself. Long moribund in the West and much overrated by credulous immigrants sickened by their own cultural failures, it  is now visibly and irretrievably putrid.

Only the awareness of the reality of the mind-body will change things, not politics. If this be obscurantist, so be it.  The one who knowingly steals from another, steals from himself and from his children.  The imperialist who believed his robbery of unfortunate “others’ went unnoticed by fate, finds that fate herself has planned a visit just for him.  If the visit is in ten days or ten years, what difference does it make? 

http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/06/15/flight-and-fight/

June 15, 2009

Tags: expat. emigration, fight, flight, Police State, US
Posted in: Globalization, Libertarian living, Police State, Writing

My latest piece at Lew Rockwell, answers some questions readers had asked me about leaving the US:

“My last piece, “Time to Run,” provoked a lot of reaction, almost all of it positive, but some negative.

The readers who liked it wanted advice on where to run. That’s a tall order and I’ll come back to them in another piece.

Those who didn’t like it brandished a few arguments that ought to have a stake driven right through them immediately.

Here goes, point by point.

1. Running away doesn’t help

1. Actually, running away is often the best response to a bad situation.

Speaking practically, when a dump truck turns into your drive, mows down your rhododendrons and heads toward you, do you stand your ground yelling Sicilian imprecations at the driver until he rolls over you too? Or do you leap aside nimbly, take a photo, and call a lawyer? You have as much chance getting through to the poisonous shills in DC with constitutional arguments, as you have charming a rabid pit bull with Shakespeare.

Speaking theoretically, your body and brain are hardwired to either put up or shut up, a “fight or flight” response built into the structure of the autonomic nervous system. That is the physiological term for what you think of as your “lizard brain.” Fight or flight is the either/or response that helped your ancestors survive. It’s not the best way to tackle complex problems, but when it gets down to basic survival, it’s a handy guide.

And how do you know when your survival is at stake?

Check your gut response…..”

Read the rest at Lew Rockwell.

[I will be posting reader email on my blog  and will respond there, since my email is often compromised]

Edit this entry.

Seeking Alpha has a good  review of “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets,” by Robert Weinstein, a trader who’s often written up in Active Trader magazine.

(Weinstein’s site is Paid2Trade):

“Mobs, Messiahs and Markets” is a thought provoking book that comes in at nearly 400 pages. Published by Wiley, William Bonner and Lila Rajiva do a superb job of reviewing human nature and the ways that we often make ourselves our own worst enemy. No one is spared in the list of “do-gooders” and the sheep who follow blindly. The book provides a convincingly critical look at many of the institutions we hold dearly.

I think it’s safe to say that most readers will be offended at some point while reading this book as nothing is left for granted. While I am included in the list that at times did not agree, I was forced to look inside myself and ask if some of my opinions could use more logic and less emotion. I believe that a story of history that is able to provide a new view of today and maybe tomorrow will pass the test of time.

As a history buff and skeptic of mainstream media, I found the examples used in the book to explain how the populace has been “duped” into sending the youngest and brightest into hell to protect what they would not want or agree to if given a vote on the situation. The lasting effect of the reading is that when approached by a “worthy cause” the reader will likely take a serious look at what possible unintended consequences will result and will the goal actually be achieved.

I found the pointed look at the media, politicians, governments, and the great many “do-gooders” to be right on target with a fresh engaging reader absorption that made the book hard to put down. At times when it was time to finish reading for the day I found myself reading “just one more chapter,” which may be all that a reader can really ask for in any book. A book that is hard to set down is truly a book worth getting and reading.

Why people will act differently as a group (often to their own determent as individuals) is a mystery I feel worth exploring and reading. The ideas and examples will bring to life new ways of looking at this age-old problem and how to avoid the trappings. When the next bubble comes along (and it will) you will be better prepared to understand the warning signs and how to protect yourself as well as your family.

If you are ready to take a new look at the world around you with the players, movers, and shakers, this may be the book for you. I recommend reading it to improve your trading and especially to improve your understanding of what goes on behind the curtain of the printing presses and websites that provide the public’s never ending appetite for titillating stories to read and hear regardless of accuracy or relevancy. Get a copy in your hands and you will be glad you did.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

Mark Mitchell at Deep Capture ventures into controversial theorizing:

“After Ptech was raided, a woman named Indira Singh went on a mission, ostensibly seeking to “expose” Ptech by giving interviews to dozens of journalists. Singh, who said she was a former employee of JP Morgan, focused her allegations on Ptech’s acquisition of data from the big banks, saying that Ptech had something to do with the collapse of Enron in November 2001, shortly after the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11.

But at the same time, Ms. Singh seemed to go to lengths to discredit herself by suggesting that Ptech was, in fact, a front for the CIA, that it was somehow involved with Skull and Bones and child sex parties, and that it was tied in with a CIA plot to demolish the World Trade Center and wipe out the financial markets – all part of a wide-ranging, top-secret CIA scheme to create a shadow government that would rule the world.

Indira Singh’s eccentric notions have inundated the internet, so that anyone doing a quick search on the Ptech case would quickly conclude that all people who believe that Ptech gained access to sensitive financial data must necessarily be psychotics. Thus, Indira Singh effectively discouraged mainstream journalists and politicians from continuing to investigate the Ptech scandal.

Which is interesting, because Indira Singh had actually worked for the SAAR Network of terrorist financiers. She had been a consultant to Mr. Mirza, bag-man to “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” Yasin al Qadi. So it is possible that she had some motivation for scaring people away from telling the truth about Ptech, lest they be seen as allying themselves with people who believed that the CIA was trying to take over the world.

Either that, or she was merely echoing perceptions that are common in jihadi circles.

In any case, most people in positions of authority did not seem keen to address the Ptech scandal. After a brief flurry of media stories, nobody (other than the 9-11 Truth crowd) paid much attention to it.”

Mark Mitchell at Deep Capture:

“Consider also that the report commissioned by the Defense Department stated that it cannot be ruled out that Wall Street regulatory bodies (including the DTCC) have been compromised by organized crime or even agents of foreign governments that are hostile to the United States.

Then consider the 100% demonstrable fact that the man who helped build what is now known as the DTCC – an outfit that is, in essence, the foundation of the American financial system – was an extremely close business associate of the Russian Mafia, the key members of which seem to be inextricably tied to Russia’s state intelligence services.

I think I have also demonstrated clearly that the business partners of the DTC’s founding president are part of an extremely tight-knit network that includes people who are deeply involved with the Iranian regime, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Saudi intelligence, Pakistani spies, Libya’s dictator, a market manipulator who vacations in North Korea, nuclear weapons traffickers, and Al Qaeda.

If this were fiction, it would be bad fiction, indeed.  But it’s not fiction. It’s the truth, at once absurd and deadly serious.”

To the person(s) who monitored my computer and emails, all my personal and business correspondence, as well as that of some of my family and friends, via  packet-sniffing, for the last two years ( or more), I hope that you know you are guilty of a virtual rape of a specially vicious kind. In my opinion, worse than “rape-rape.” (Thank you, Whoopie Goldberg).

DSK has nothing on you.

I hope you will shortly feel exactly what I’ve experienced. I hope your near and dear ones feel it. And since, punishment requires an added helping, I hope they experience it at least two-fold.

I wish for you as much of hell as exists on earth and at least a couple of lifetimes in the hereafter, should there be one.

Meanwhile, know that I know. Know that everyone I know knows. Know that some of those that know have the goods on you.

Big-time.

Fry in hell, you criminals.

Update: In my latest update, I mistakenly attributed the promotion of the Sorus-funded INET to N. Stephan Kinsella, the anti-IP advocate. It is actually a position taken by Stephen Kinsella, an economist, whom I confused with him. I have deleted the note. My apologies to N. Stephan Kinsella. Still, it is the case that the Access to Knowledge Movement, some of whose concerns about the overzealous pursuit of IP rights are not mistaken, is promoted by INET (The Institute for New Economic Thinking) and that INET is chock-full of the usual globalist suspects, from the technocracy (managers of Citigroup, Bank of England, IMF, BIS, etc.) to theorists of managed globalization, like Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jeffrey Sachs…

[By “overzealous pursuit of IP rights” I have in mind things like Mark Zuckerberg’s attempts to trade-mark the words “face” and “like” and sue businesses that use them for infringement.

Cathy L. Z. Smith writes:

“I’ve been following your writings on IPR and I want to thank you for your tough, principled stand…..“

Widely admired and prolific libertarian novelist L.Neil Smith writes:

Dear Lila (if I may),

“I will happily concede your precedence in the coinage of the word “illiterati” and mention it if it becomes appropriate in my future writings……

…You should understand that you’re an heroic figure in our household. Owing to the pressure of my work, my wife, Cathy L.Z. Smith, ended up doing more combat than I did with DELETED.
She beat them to a standstill and DELETED… In all of that, she felt inspired by what you had done before either of us….all that’s really necessary is to call them out in public..”

Neil.
(April 11, 2011)

Reader G. Anchley writes (April 20, 2011):

“Mining another writer’s ideas, phrases, research, anecdotes……. without acknowledging the borrowing or influence…. is intellectual fraud of a really despicable kind. It’s soul-theft.”

(Names of the last two The name of the last correspondents haves been disguised, since the letters were intended to be private. Some comments were paraphrased or deleted, as they were not suitable for public display. Correspondents were made aware that emails would be published in a responsible way.)

Added (April 19, 2011):

Cathy L. Z. Smith sends me links to her articles defending Intellectual property rights.  She correctly points out that it is the uniqueness of the human being who creates/writes/thinks that is the source of the property claim….not the supposed scarcity of ideas.

Money quote (about anti-IP):

“an army of little entitlement babies, children of the Internet age who think that because they are able to do a thing they must, and that the ease with which they do the thing becomes the whole of their justification for doing it.”

“So what I’ll settle for, for the time being, is the right to call a thief a thief and not let the act be carried out without at least the psychological and social stigma it deserves.”

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle587-20100912-04.html
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle583-20100815-02.html
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle585-20100829-04.html
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle589-20100926-04.html
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle591-20101011-03.html
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2011/tle604-20110123-02.html

Added (April 7, 2011):

Libertarians, including classical liberals, who acknowledge the existence and validity of IP (note the word IP), differing in their justifications of it or their explanations about how/to what extent varieties of it should be protected:

John Locke, Adam Smith (who was continually concerned with plagiarism – and also accused of it**), the Founding Fathers, Lysander Spooner, John Stuart Mill, Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Frederic Bastiat (by inference from The Law), Andrew Galambos (who took his ideas about IP to crankish lengths, but otherwise held mainstream libertarian views), Zora Neale Hurston (“She had a deep sense in the thirties of intellectual property..”)  Ayn Rand, J. Neil Schulman, L. Neil Smith, Morris and Linda Tannehill, Milton Friedman, David Friedman, Richard Epstein, Harry Browne (indirectly – he wrote admiringly of Galambos), Thomas Sowell, Richard Posner, William Landes, Robert Nozick, Hernando de Soto, Tibor Machan, Israel Kirzner, Fr. James Sadowsky (indirectly), Tyler Cowen (possibly a liberal?), Bryan Caplan, David Boaz , George Reisman, John Stossel , Frank Easterbrook, Peter Leeson, Jacob Hornberger (to be continued)….

(**Given Smith’s caliber, it’s highly likely that he did conceptualize things on his own, without the influence of writers who anticipated him, as is noted by Per-Olof Samuelsson)

One would be justified in inferring from this list that the validity of the notion of IP is acknowledged by the majority of leading libertarian theorists and writers, especially on the right.  And no wonder. Many of the arguments used by anti-IP proponents can easily be redeployed against property rights in tangible goods. Indeed, that has happened already . Without a strong defense of IP, copying and/or cheating is bound to take the place of innovation as the preferred strategy of competitive businesses, since it will save them the costs of R&D.

As for the so-called novelty of IP, I quote the following from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“There are at least three other notable references to intellectual property in ancient times—these cases are cited in Bruce Bugbee’s formidable work The Genesis of American Patent and Copyright Law (Bugbee 1967). In the first case, Vitruvius (257–180 B.C.E.) is said to have revealed intellectual property theft during a literary contest in Alexandria. While serving as judge in the contest, Vitruvius exposed the false poets who were then tried, convicted, and disgraced for stealing the words and phrases of others.

The second and third cases also come from Roman times (first Century C.E.). Although there is no known Roman law protecting intellectual property, Roman jurists did discuss the different ownership interests associated with an intellectual work and how the work was codified—e.g., the ownership of a painting and the ownership of a table upon which the painting appears. There is also reference to literary piracy by the Roman epigrammatist Martial. In this case, Fidentinus is caught reciting the works of Martial without citing the source.”

[See the universal condemnation from other bloggers when blogger Rohan Pinto was caught reposting other people’s posts as his own, a reaction hard to explain if intellectual property is just some nebulous mirage].

“There is of course nothing wrong with one man using another man’s ideas (or paraphrasing his formulations), as long as proper credit is given. But what is the moral status of using another man’s ideas while at the same time attempting to deny the very existence of the man from whom one is borrowing?”

–    Per Olof Samuelsson (on intellectual property fraud committed against George Reisman by fellow libertarians)

For an extended discussion of the anti-IP forces (Hoppe is not cited), read the lengthy and rich history of the IP tradition described in Spinello and Bottis’ A Defense of Intellectual Property Rights. Again, the defense of IP is non-economic, as it should be.

ORIGINAL POST (March 25, 2011, modified, March 27)

Han Hoppe:

(If I didn’t want anyone to copy my ideas I only have to keep them to myself and never express them.)

Lila: Hoppe uses the sleight-of-hand so many anti- IP libertarian theorists use. They confuse the ownership claim with the manner in which an IP claim is made… and  then they confuse both  of those claims aspects with the  difficulty of protecting them.IP claims.

All three are different issues.

The creator of a symphony “owns” his symphony, yes. But he doesn’t own it like he owns his shoes.  Thus, the way he stakes his claim to his symphony is different, naturally, from the way he stakes his claim to his shoes. In the latter, he restricts use. In the former, usually, he claims “recognition” or “credit”.

What Hoppe is not seeing is that the property right of the author arises from his work, as embodied in the creation, not from the thing in itself.

Hoppe:

Now imagine I had been granted a property right in my melody or poem such that I could prohibit you from copying it or demanding a royalty from you if you do.

Lila: Again, Hoppe is conveniently running a bunch of things together, confusing the question of whether IP exists with the question of how to stake a claim to it and then with the question of how to protect the claim. He does this so that he can arrive at spurious conclusions.

Hoppe: First: Doesn’t that imply, absurdly, that I, in turn, must pay royalties to the person (or his heirs) who invented whistling and writing, and further on to those, who invented sound-making and language, and so on?

Lila: And here is the absurd conclusion.

First, it is clear that whistling and writing were not invented by any single person. Rather, across the world, human beings refined the use of their own bodies by imitation, incrementally.  It is highly unlikely that any single human being woke up one morning, put a sustained effort into the act, and suddenly began whistling.

Second, even if some individual had come up with the technique of whistling, his name has long been lost, so, practically, one couldn’t acknowledge him. If there were such an individual, by all means, let us acknowledge him. However, at this point, the invention has become public property, by dint of repeated use without any claim being asserted by any single inventor over centuries. IP ownership in the lifetime of the creator is obviously a completely different situation.

Third, the issue is not solely about use. Most authors like their ideas being used…what they claim is “credit”.  So again, Hoppe is thoroughly confusing several levels of analysis to reach his conclusions.

Hoppe:

Second: In preventing you from or making you pay for whistling my melody or reciting my poem, I am actually made a (partial) owner of you: of your physical body, your vocal chords, your paper, your pencil, etc. because you did not use anything but your own property when you copied me.

Lila: If Hoppe’s argument made sense, I could as well argue that when I forbid you from crossing over my property lines into my garden, I am also preventing you from using your body.  After all, when you enter my garden, you are not preventing me from using the garden, are you? So what is the difference in context that makes it alright for me to stop you entering my garden but doesn’t allow me to prevent your use of my work without acknowledgment? I could use even stronger comparisons. I could even ask, when I stop you assaulting me, am I not also preventing you from using your own limbs? Where does that leave Hoppe’s reasoning on IP?

Hoppe:

If you can no longer copy me, then, this means that I, the intellectual property owner, have expropriated you and your “real” property. Which shows: intellectual property rights and real property rights are incompatible, and the promotion of intellectual property must be seen as a most dangerous attack on the idea of “real” property (in scarce goods).

Lila: See above. By Hoppe’s own reasoning, one shouldn’t be able to prevent a stranger from entering one’s home, which is obviously not the case.  Neither “scarce goods” nor  “expropriating the use of one’s body” are substantial arguments in claiming IP doesn’t exist and can’t be protected. The mistake arises because of Hoppe’s lack of precision in defining or separating the elements he is analyzing.  As for dividing property into tangibles and intangibles, and stating that only the first can be owned, this is truly the dangerous, unlibertarian move, because ownership, even in tangibles, doesn’t arise from the thing itself, but rather from the creator’s ownership of the labor and talent which he used and with which he infused added value to either create or transform the thing. This labor or talent is not different from the labor or talent that goes into the creation of intellectual property.

Seriously, how difficult was it to poke holes in Hoppe’s argument (all of ten minutes in the middle of making Sunday brunch, while the TV is blaring).  And how seriously can one take those who offer such arguments?

Which makes me think these AREN’T serious positions at all….but no more than disingenuous attempts to create a rationale for future corporate/mass marketing expropriation of the intellectual creations of individuals unable to defend themselves.

For more fallacies of anti-IP thinking, see this post at Strangerous Thoughts.

Added (April 7):

• More here on why socialism is, in fact, what anti-IP is about.
• Robert Wenzel puts the anti-IP brigade to the sincerity test….with predictable results.

• A passionate defense of IP on moral grounds (which I believe are the only grounds on which an individualist should argue), has been made by the gifted libertarian thinker/novelist, L. Neil Smith.(Coincidentally, I note that a word I coined for this piece, illiterati, shows up in Smith’s piece too…which I put down to subconscious influence, since Smith holds passionate views on the subject, and since a single word can easily be picked up without recollection. I would have said coincidence, except that Smith did write to me after reading the piece. In any case, I bring it up only because I happened to notice the word and because while trivial claims of this sort are supposed to show the unreasonableness/untenability of IP in general, they actually help to make the underlying issues clearer…as I will show elsewhere).
• Greg Perkins, at Diana Hsieh’s blog Noodlefood, points out that the Palmer/Kinsella attack on IP begs the question in its central assumption of scarcity.

• For a debunking of the many fallacies in Hoppe’s version of “argumentation ethics,” see this critique by Bob Murphy and Gene Callahan
• For a critique of the use of the notion of  “scarcity” in anti-IP arguments,  read this analysis by Bob Schaefer.
• In “Praxeology and Ethics” Adam Knott points out inadequacies in H’s notion of “performative contradiction,” as well as in his version of argumentation ethics. (In any case, to the degree that I grasp the implications of H’s argumentation ethics/performative contradiction – and I don’t know that I do – they seem to me to support the validity of IP).
• For problems with Hoppe’s reasoning in other areas, see Jacob Hornberger’s critique of Hoppe on immigration.                                                                                                                                          My objections, I should point out, are to Hoppe’s leaps of logic, not to any alleged racism/homophobia, which I consider unproven from H’s public statements; irrelevant, if inferred from private statements; and secondary in both cases.

_________________________________________

Added: March 27:

Note: While this blog is dead, in so far as posting new material, as far as defending my own material and work,  it’s still kicking.  A hat-tip or link back is all that’s needed most of the time, folks. Not hard. And not the first time, as I’ve noted ad nauseum. I have stopped blogging for reasons described in my previous post, but this kind of thing forces me out of hiding.  Other writers lift ideas, leads, and in some cases even specific language or analysis, without giving me the life-blood of  viable writing – credit. I will be adding other suspicious cases of “lifting” to this post, as they occur…. friends and foes, be warned.

Item:

David Kramer at LRC analyzes the New World Architecture of George Soros. Note the almost identical format and style of a lengthier analysis I made a while back in 2009.  I know from previous experience that Mr. Kramer reads my blog….. I’m happy he does. I like for people to read and use. I’d just like credit. Especially, when I’ve meticulously cited them.  Even hunting up some of these pieces, let alone parsing them, takes knowledge and effort. Same goes for other writers/sites that I’ve noticed picking up stuff from me without acknowledgment (though some try to spin it like they’re not)….

Kramer (March 2011):

“…the world faces another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism. The former, represented by the United States, has broken down, and the latter, represented by China, is on the rise.” [“International” capitalism and “state” capitalism? What the heck is this economically-ignorant billionaire talking about? Oy!]

“While international cooperation on regulatory reform is difficult to achieve on a piecemeal basis, it may be attainable in a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order.” [In other words, rearranges the entire financial order in order to finally bring about the Banksters’ One World Government fiat currency.]

“In addition, a new Bretton Woods would have to reform the currency system.” [I’m sure, George, that it will be as successful as the old Bretton Woods—at least as far as making you and your Bankster puppet-masters even richer are concerned.]

“Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially Security Council membership.” [“..the world order will need to…involve the United Nations.” I thought the world order already did involve the United Nations—like…uh…since its creation?]

“President Barack Obama has deployed the “confidence multiplier” and claims to have contained the recession. But if there is a “double dip” recession, Americans will become susceptible to all kinds of fear-mongering and populist demagogy.” [Sort of like Soros’s fear-mongering and populist demagogy in this op-ed piece.]

“The financial system did not collapse altogether. The Obama administration made a conscious decision to revive banks with hidden subsidies rather than to recapitalize them on a compulsory basis.” [So which form of “capitalism” was that, George? The “international” one or the “state” one?]

Lila Rajiva, Mind Body Politic (January, 2010):

From George Soros on Project-Syndicate.org. (Nov. 4, 2009), his vision of the new world order.

My comments are in italics.

NEW YORK – Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the world is facing another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism.

LILA: International capitalism is also state capitalism and state capitalism (Chinese) has its international face………….

——-

…..While international cooperation on regulatory reform is difficult to achieve on a piecemeal basis, it may be attainable in a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order.

LILA: Yes, negotiating your way peacefully is hard work because you have to respect other people’s rights and preferences. Naturally, a latent totalitarian like Soros would prefer a “grand bargain” (bargain, as in “hold to ransom” – after all, wasn’t that what the bankster bail-outs were about?)

A new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture, is needed to establish new international rules, including treatment of financial institutions that are too big to fail and the role of capital controls.

LILA: Ah, yes. Now the banksters have got ahead of the competition, they have to cut them down to size and keep them manageable (too big to fail won’t apply to Government Sachs, I’m sure). And capital controls will prevent the population from eluding the tax-man.

It would also have to reconstitute the International Monetary Fund to reflect better the prevailing pecking order among states and to revise its methods of operation.

LILA: Let’s centralize power even more among the Western oligarchs, via the  little-known Financial Stability Board, while pretending to expand the IMF leadership to empower the G20.

In addition, a new Bretton Woods would have to reform the currency system. The post-war order, which made the US more equal than others, produced dangerous imbalances. The dollar no longer enjoys the trust and confidence that it once did, yet no other currency can take its place.

LILA: Indeed the dollar has lost world trust. Largely through the efforts of the speculator-hedge funds, banks and Federal Reserve that have colluded for a century, and most recently, since the 1970s, to turn the economy into a casino that works to their benefit and no one else’s.

The US ought not to shy away from wider use of IMF Special Drawing Rights. Because SDRs are denominated in several national currencies, no single currency would enjoy an unfair advantage.

LILA: The word “fair” here reveals that Soros is not for free markets, but for managed markets

The range of currencies included in the SDRs would have to be widened, and some of the newly added currencies, including the renminbi, may not be fully convertible.  This would, however, allow the international community to press China to abandon its exchange-rate peg to the dollar and would be the best way to reduce international imbalances. And the dollar could still remain the preferred reserve currency, provided it is prudently managed.

LILA: Yes. manage international currencies from a central board, so that insiders can rape the system more easily than they already do.

One great advantage of SDRs is that they permit the international creation of money, which is particularly useful at times like the present.

LILA: Take the money- making power outside national borders, where they might be under popular scrutiny and pressure.

The money could be directed to where it is most needed, unlike what is happening currently.

LILA: And George and his buddies (known and unknown) will decide where it’s most needed…which is already what they’re doing but they’d like to do more of the same, please

A mechanism that allows rich countries that don’t need additional reserves to transfer their allocations to those that do is readily available, using the IMF’s gold reserves.

LILA: Who determines what is “needed” or not? Soros? Countries with surpluses will be coerced into transferring allocations to where the banksters “need” them, with the IMF being the central exchange where there will be ample room for hanky-panky in obscure off balance-sheet transactions, double entries of all kinds, and special purpose vehicles.

Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council. That process needs to be initiated by the US, but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals. They are reluctant members of the Bretton Woods institutions, which are dominated by countries that are no longer dominant. The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters.

LILA: Oh, doesn’t that sound good? Lure emerging markets into the same shady international game with promises of becoming one of the big boys.

The system cannot survive in its present form, and the US has more to lose by not being in the forefront of reforming it. The US is still in a position to lead the world, but, without far-sighted leadership, its relative position is likely to continue to erode. It can no longer impose its will on others, as George W. Bush’s administration sought to do, but it could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby reestablishing American leadership in an acceptable form.

Lila: Didn’t Soros just write (see previous paragraph) that the developing countries were to be “equal”? Now he writes the US is to “lead the world” “far-sightedly”.  Only instead of openly “imposing its will,” Soros-style imperialism would refashion US hegemony into an “acceptable form.” (Bush with a French accent)

The alternative is frightening, because a declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance but still preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix. We used to be reassured by the generalization that democratic countries seek peace. After the Bush presidency, that rule no longer holds, if it ever did.

LILA: Uh-oh. Scare tactics. A new Bretton Woods is needed because otherwise we’re going to whack you. We’ll do just like Bush did, and it will be your fault for not letting us “lead far-sightedly” with SDRs.

In fact, democracy is in deep trouble in America. The financial crisis has inflicted hardship on a population that does not like to face harsh reality.

LILA: The population would be able to face harsh reality if the media outfits you pay handsomely weren’t doling out propaganda all the time.

President Barack Obama has deployed the “confidence multiplier” and claims to have contained the recession. But if there is a “double dip” recession, Americans will become susceptible to all kinds of fear mongering and populist demagogy.

LILA:  Apparently, George wants to retain the monopoly of demagogy.

Read the rest here.

“Journalism is a false picture of the world, thrown upon a lighted screen in a darkened room so that the real world is not seen.”

—  G. K. Chesterton

AFP reports:

“Flood waters swept through vast areas of northeastern Australia Saturday, threatening to inundate thousands more homes in a disaster one official said was of “biblical proportions”.

As Queen Elizabeth II sent her “sincere sympathies” to Queenslanders who rang in a damp new year, helicopters were being used to deliver food and other supplies to isolated towns.

Up to 200,000 people have been affected by the floods, which have hurt the nation’s lucrative mining industry and cut off major highways as the water rushes through sodden inland regions to the sea.

“In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions,” Queensland State Treasurer Andrew Fraser told reporters in flood-hit Bundaberg.”

BBC reports that damage is over AU $1billion.

The size of the affected area is equal to France and German combined.

22 towns have been inundated, the country’s major sugar export  port Bundaberg has been closed, Queensland’s major coal mines and coal export port have been shut, and companies like Anglo-American and Rio Tinto have been forced to slow down production, according to The Telegraph.