Category Archives: Uncategorized

Wikileaks Helps”War On Terra” Expand To South India

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Wikileaks:

“Islamic terror groups could have big bases in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Wikileaks cables now reveal.

A 2009 cable, signed by secretary of state Hillary Clinton, says the Laskhar-e-Taiba had surveyed Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, and was in the process of setting up training camps. It also says it planned to kill Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. In another revelation, Hillary says Saudi donors are supporting Sunni terror groups across the world.

Gunman Kasab, arrested in connection with the 2008 Mumbai blasts, had confessed on video that the Lashkar recruited him to carry out a suicide attack by paying off his father. Kasab later told the court he had made that confession under duress.

The police were not completely oblivious to the problem, though. In 2007, police were talking about 50 Lashkar militants being active in the south, especially Karnataka.

In 2008, nine low-intensity blasts rocked Bangalore. A woman was killed. In 2010, two bombs went off at Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, just before an IPL match, injuring six. The Karnataka police arrested Abdul Naseer Madani, a radical Islamist from Kerala, on charges of plotting the blasts. Andhra Pradesh was not spared either. In 2007, two blasts went off at Hyderabad. Two years on, the Andhra Pradesh police arrested 13 men, and sent out an alert to neighbouring states.

The Intelligence Bureau had said it had picked up some intercepts suggesting that cities in the south could be targeted. In September 2009, Rediff reported:

“It is now confirmed that many southern modules carried out the serial blasts in the country. Following the blasts there was a major crackdown on the cadres and sleeper cells. Even the interrogation of various terrorists revealed that the southern module carried out the blasts.

The most important factor that came out during the interrogation was that the entire southern module was directly linked to the Gulf module. However,  the recent crackdown has had a disastrous effect on the Lashkar’s plans. Sources say that the south modules were being majorly financed by the Gulf module.”

Misogyny: Alive And Well In The US

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Intent Blog:

“In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.

There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, “When was the last time you got screwed?”

An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman’s face with the lotion spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.

We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We’ve been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we’re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there’s big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it’s never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We’re all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society’s casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels — objects — and never, ever as the equals of men.

“Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now.

That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream America. Forget the embarrassed, inhibited raincoat crowd of the old days. Now Mr. Solid Citizen can come home, log on to this $7 billion mega-industry and get his kicks watching real women being beaten and sexually assaulted on Web sites with names like “Ravished Bride” and “Rough Sex — Where Whores Get Owned.”

Then, of course, there’s gangsta rap, and the video games where the players themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the Academy Award-winning song this year was “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”), and on and on.

You’re deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It’s all part of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches down in places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel Mines, Pa.”

The Veneer Of Dissent

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Zahir Ebrahim

“As daunting as it might appear to the mainstream television watcher, it is in fact rather straightforward for those unencumbered by blind faith in governments and its statecraft. Just look for the core-lies and unquestioned axioms of empire that are typically retained in the “leaks” and reportage which, in order to sound credible, often openly expose what is mostly already known anyway or judiciously employ some variation of “Limited Hangout” wrapped in a veneer of dissent or ‘freedom of the press’.

It’s the exact same recipe as is used by all the other fabricated and controlled dissent assets of empire when they are not outright spinning patent lies, for spinning half-truths requires far more brilliance. It is not for nothing that James Jesus Angleton, Head of CIA Counter Intelligence 1954-1974, is quoted in the 1992 BBC-2 Documentary on Operation Gladio: “Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State”.

Herman Hesse: Death Without One’s Mother

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Herman Hesse in Narcissus and Goldmund:

“GOLDMUND: Now both flames have died out in me.

I no longer have the animal happiness of ecstasy and I wouldn’t want it now, even if women were still running after me. …and to create works of art is no longer my wish either… I´ve made enough statues…therefore it is time for me to die…and I´m curious about it…really curious. Not of the beyond, Narcissus, I think about that very little..I no longer believe in it. There is no beyond. The dried up tree is dead forever…the frozen bird does not come back to life, nor does a man after he has died…No I´m curious about dying only because it is still my belief that or my dream that I am on the road to my mother..

NARCISSUS: It seems to me you have found peace now..Goldmund.

GOLDMUND:: Do you mean peace with God? No, that peace I have not found. I don´t want any peace with him. He has made the world badly; we don’t need to praise it and he´ll care little whether I praise him or blame him.

But I have made peace with the pain in my chest, yes. In former days, I was not good at bearing pain, and although I sometimes thought that dying would come easily to me, I was wrong. …I was still much too strong and wild to die…

but now it is different…as I rode along , I realized that force and youth and intelligence had already abandoned me…I stumbled  into a gully with my horse and fell into a stream and broke several ribs…and lay there helpless in the water and that´s when I first learned about real pain…As I fell, I felt something break inside my chest and the breaking pleased me, I was glad to hear it. I was content with it. I lay there in the water and knew that I was about to die….but dying no longer seemed terrible to me...I lay there and had burning pains in my chest and I was defending myself against them and screaming when I heard a laughing voice I had not heard since childhood.It was my mother´s voice, a deep womanly voice, full of ecstasy and love. And then I saw it was she, that she was with me, holding me in her lap, and that she had opened my breast and put her fingers between my ribs to pluck out my heart. When I saw that, it no longer hurt. And now when the pains come back, they are not pains, they are not enemies. they are my mother´s fingers taking my heart out. She works hard at it. Sometimes she presses down and moans as though in ecstasy. Sometimes she laughs and hums tender sounds. Sometimes she is not with me but high above in heaven…and I see her face among the clouds as large as a cloud…I had completely forgotten my mother until you conjured her up again..That day too it hurt very much….but even then my mother called me and I had to follow…she is everywhere..

..She was Lise the gypsy, she was Master Niklaus´ beautiful Madonna, she was life, love, ecstasy..she was also fear, hunger, instinct…now she is death; she has her fingers in my chest…I wanted to tell you about my mother and how she keeps her fingers clasped around my heart…my secret dream was to make a statue of the mother…she was to me the most sacred of all the images..only a short while ago it would have been unbearable to me to think that I might die without having  carved her statue…and now see how strangely things have turned out. It is not my hands that shape and form her…..it is her hands that shape and form me. She is closing her fingers around my heart, she is loosening it, she is emptying me; she is seducing me into dying and with me dies my dream, the beautiful statue, the image of the great mother Eve. I can still see it and if I had force in my hands, I could carve it.But she doesn´t want that..she doesnt want me to make her secret visible.She rather wants me to die. I´m glad to die. She is making it easy for me…….

But you , Narcissus, how will you die when your time comes…since you have no mother? Without a mother one cannot love.Without a mother, one cannot die…¨”

Time to Bow Out

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Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?”
– Jack Kerouac

Updated (December 4)

To all those it concerns: Let me repeat the conclusion of my previous update, once more, in case it didn’t get through. Try the right way.  Try it. This isn’t moral advice. It is practical advice. When you continually feed a vortex of negative energy around someone who harbors a justified contempt for your behavior, but no malice toward any individual,  that energy will destroy all of you, not me.

Updated (December 3):

This blog is officially still in limbo. A friend is supposed to be helping me set up the new format it will use. That has got delayed.  I am no longer interacting with comments, I’m afraid. I have an assistant who posts anything I find interesting in my morning reading, but that is only a sideline of her main duty which is to help me with my business.  She doesn’t have the time to comment. Any political comments of mine are made at The Daily Bell, but I have started to reduce my comments there, as well. I don’t think it’s wise to interact with people whose identity I don’t know. Some incidents made me wary that IP addresses had been harvested by someone.. unknown to the rest of the kind editors.  I also do not believe in the existence of every conspiracy posited there. The factual history of Zionism, as the latest incarnation of European imperialism, post-Renaissance, is all I am prepared to discuss or competently evaluate.

I have commented recently at Veterans Today, where the authors are clearly described, but some of the material there also strikes me as unduly slanted. And I don’t know how/from whom the site receives its funding. [December 7: I have clarified from the editors at VT that the site is NOT funded, but survives on writers’ contributions and Google ads. It also runs an employment agency for vets. Kudos to VT for the courage and integrity to avoid funding that would compromise its clear and unequivocal voice].

Actually, I’ve stopping sending articles to the main alternative sites on the left and right, because of such questions and because, in my experience they are all gate-keeping at some level. As soon as a site grows, it’s drawn into one camp or other, which means it’s essentially retailing a certain amount of spin, if not intentionally, in effect. Ideology does that. No criticism is meant by this of any individual site or activist or writer. That is just an accurate observation about the nature of all organizations.

My great good fortune in life has been that I’ve been able to develop my thoughts largely free of organizations, on my own terms, except for the boundaries of good taste and the fear of provoking powerful people. Otherwise, I have no intellectual or professional allegiance to compromise my reasoning. I see no reason to undo that good fortune by posting/writing anywhere. I’d rather keep quiet. There are enough opinions out there, as it is…

[Note: I have altered this post, December 5, in the interests of not provoking any more cyber-attacks. I am not going to explain anymore, or the deletion will lose its point. I hope the alteration will show interested parties that my intentions are not at all personal or malicious.

Note (Added Nov. 3): I originally had another post following this one, with some email correspondence. I’ve deleted it because I don’t like it showing up at the top of a google search of my name. I’ve posted the emails instead further down on the blog, in the place of an article (deleted), with an explanation of the change. I’ll eventually move that post to one of my permanent pages (Lila at the DR or Media Control).

ORIGINAL POST

Some of you might have heard that Burning Platform (denial of service),  Naked Capitalism (denial of service), Lew Rockwell (credit card fraud, copyright violations). and Zerohedge (denial of service) have all been attacked quite recently. These are big blogs, so it’s to be expected. There are people out there who’d like everything to be swept under the rug.

But what could be behind the attacks on a small blog like mine? That’s what bothers me.  Who would think it worthwhile?

Yet, the attacks have gone on now for some three years. Obscene comments, stalking, flaming, web-libel, subtle threats, wiki deletions.

Fortunately, you know what they say about fish that can’t keep their mouths shut? They get caught. And over the three years, I’ve been able to catch a few fishy folk who lurked around this blog.

Fish one – the disgruntled Mr. T.R., whose history I’ve recounted at the tab Lila at The Daily Reckoning.

Fish Two – attacks on the book and on my articles and wiki page. I finally figured those were from cyber-vigilantes and assorted liberal blog mafias who disliked my blogging in support of 9-11, on extremist Zionism, and on the banking elites.

Fish Three –  emails [added: not published on this blog] seemingly related to my attribution problems with my former employer.

[Note 1 added: There were also emails and stalking set off by a post contributed to this blog by Douglas Valentine, on the CIA.

Note 2: I’ve deleted a section here that goes into this incident in more detail. I’m afraid of setting off the stalker, who, I should mention, is seems to be an ex-CIA operative. I’ve also deleted the links placed on my blog by a commenter, since that was what provoked him. The case cited in the comment link has since been resolved in the stalker’s operative’s favor….or so, it would seem, but, meanwhile, what court’s going to give me back my reputation, peace of mind, career, and privacy, all grossly violated by this man’s actions?

And  for what? For posting someone else’s piece on the CIA, a piece that was then reprinted widely on the net

That brings me to the last point I want to make – which is that female bloggers attract a very high number of threatening and sexually intimidating comments.

This ABC report from 2007 cites cases:

“Kathy Sierra, a software developer, gained a large following on her design blog. She never dreamed her benign postings would attract an online attacker.

“I started getting comments on my own blog that were really threatening like, ‘I’m going to slit your throat,'” Sierra said.

Then the threats became more personal. Her attacker posted a photo of Sierra in a muzzle as if she was being smothered, along with the words, “I dream of Kathy Sierra.”

“At the time, I thought, ‘This is something serious. This is not some kids. This is someone going to great lengths to frighten me,'” she said.

She shut down her blog, and in her final posting wrote, “I am afraid to leave my yard. I will never feel the same. I will never be the same.”

As more women enter the blogosphere, with sites running the gamut from professional advice to cooking recipes, they are increasingly being singled out as targets of threats and sexual harassment.

“Cyberharassing or stalking of a female blogger in particular will often be sexual harassment,” said Internet and privacy lawyer Parry Aftab. “They will often take her head and put it on someone else’s naked body. There may be threats to her children.”

Aftab runs Wired Safety.org, an organization that has handled thousands of cyberstalking cases. She advises women who are targets of online harassment that they not respond to threatening posts.

“The easiest thing to do is turn around and attack your attacker, but that is exactly what they want,” she said. “They will come at you more and more.”

True enough. It’s what I’ve learned.

Still, I’ve tried to put these unpleasant things behind me. I’ve tried to keep the conversation here courteous and free from personal attacks. Any criticism has always been directed at people for their public positions or professional performance. And I’ve only done that to support serious arguments, or in self-defense, to salvage my reputation from slander.

But it doesn’t seem to have helped.

Having failed to find anything wrong with my credentials or professional actions, my ‘enemies’ (I wish I could reassure them somehow!) hacked my personal email addresses in 2008. My blog was also hacked. Vague threats directed at me or my family showed up in the comments section whenever I blogged about certain subjects, even though I was obliged to comment on them by the nature and mandate of this blog.

In short, even though what I wrote wasn’t from malice, I was attacked by malicious people…..and, at the same time, by ignorant people who claimed I was “covering up.” I’ve described all this in posts on this blog.

But still, it’s not enough for someone. Strange things keep happening.

Today, again, I got a comment with a vague threat. Much too vague to go to the police. Not too vague to leave me in the dark.  It is, I think, the final straw. I can’t waste so much energy and time, and I can’t risk any hurt or danger to my family. I’ve decided to call it quits……for real, this time.

My blog will be taken over by a libertarian friend (s). There’ll be other people running it. It was time for me to leave this country anyway.

Let’s see how that goes. It could take a few days….or a few weeks. Until then – goodbye, good luck, and thanks very much for reading.

Why A Win For Rand Paul Matters (Comment Added)

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I’ve expressed my skepticism about some of Rand Paul’s positions, but as I hear the rhetoric from the establishment demonizing the Tea Party at every chance, I’ve come to the conclusion that Rand Paul might still be worth supporting.  In support of that, I found this at Humble Libertarian:

“Ron’s success in the 2012 Presidential race is DIRECTLY tied to Rand’s success in 31 days.

WHY?

Think it through.

Allow me to elaborate the possible scenarios:

Scenario 1- Rand loses. The media, liberals, Democrats, and even Republican establishment will declare that the liberty movement and tea parties are not viable and have no chance of electoral success. Rand is seen as the leader and if he fails then the symbolic victory of the statists will be crushing to any hope for 2012. If this happens then Ron might not even run in 2012 because it would be somewhat pointless for him to do so. Morale will be in the gutter, donors will turn cold, and enthusiasm will be largely nonexistent; not to mention the lack of momentum.

Scenario 2- Rand wins barely. Although victory is victory, a small margin of victory will then give the commentators and media an edge to fight against us in 2012. They will say that we just barely won, and that it was a fluke, or we just got lucky, or whatever. It’ll still be an uphill battle in the fight for legitimacy and credibility. This also will not bode well for Rand when he has to fight for his seat again next time around in perhaps a less friendly political atmosphere.

Scenario 3- Rand wins in a large victory (Randslide). A mandate by the People will be undeniable and cannot be countered. This paves the way that our ideas are now mainstream, acceptable, and that Ron stands a good chance of winning in 2012. Think of it as leap frog. Rand run’s on Ron’s shoulders and wins. Then Ron runs on Rand’s shoulders and wins. We will be unstoppable and perceived as unbeatable because momentum will be on our side.

There you have it — those are the possible outcomes as I see it. If you are cold on Rand, realize you are hurting Ron’s chance in 2012. A large victory for Rand paves the way and is even necessary for Ron’s electoral success in 2012. Anything less makes it highly unlikely. The campaign needs money, it needs volunteers, it needs people on the ground. It needs door knockers, phone bankers, sign placers, etc. Will you come to KY in the final weeks of the campaign and help out? The realization that when you are campaigning for Rand you are also simultaneously campaigning for Ron to be President is critical.”

My Comment

First. I don’t think libertarians should be pouring money into anything..Their first job is to look after themselves and their families. Ron and Rand Paul have received a lot of money already.
They need volunteers and support more than money. Besides, there are plenty of wealthy businessmen and gold dealers in the hard money community who can and should support them financially.

[I say this because some libertarian activists have expressed anxiety about what’s actually been done with the money they’ve given. That’s always a problem for all politicians, of course. I just mention it here, because I’ve heard concern expressed by a couple of activists.]

Two. I think the answer isn’t political – it’s education. And criticism/analysis of propaganda.
The best contribution libertarians can make is to refuse to demonize the Tea Party or ANY candidate being bashed by the establishment. That will allow the candidates’ voices to be heard on their own merit.

Participating in the media circus is a problem in itself. Ignore it. Refuse to listen. Refuse to change the terms of your argument.

Three. I don’t think any libertarian should support only one person. Support anyone who is antiwar, first and foremost. War is the heart of the police-state. I would sooner support someone who was antiwar and pro-government than someone who reduced domestic spending, but wouldn’t touch the military budget, which I think might be where Rand Paul ends up….

But if he’s willing to do both – cut the military and domestic spending  – then of course, I would support him.

Still, just because I don’t know what he’s going to do, I would NEVER make common cause AGAINST Rand Paul with the establishment liberal/left. That would be simply opportunistic.

I would only make alliances with principled people on the issue of war and the police-state.

Once the military budget is cut, we will be on a sounder footing to tackle other problems.

And when people aren’t deathly afraid of surviving (“Muslims are going to get us!”), they’ll be a lot more open to libertarian thinking too.

I know Rothbard moved to the left. But that was then. Things are very different now. Libertarians must keep to the right and try to convince neo-conservatives and the Christian right to stop selling out their core values to socialist ones.

We don’t have to concede ANYTHING to the liberal establishment.

The only thing we want from them is a groveling apology for their Stalinist behavior.

Bring “The Fringe” To The Mainstream…

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A moment of unusual creativity and rationality, from The Economist (or, from a more cynical point of view, a glimpse into the mechanics of co-option):

“What should democratic parties do when lots of voters back a far-right party? At a time of recession, populism cannot just be wished away. One answer is to address legitimate grievances about the scale and nature of immigration. (In France Nicolas Sarkozy has, controversially, pinched far-right rhetoric.) Another is to use the law to curb blatant examples of hate speech.

But the temptation for many is to isolate the extremists, perhaps with an alliance of mainstream left and right. That risks intensifying voters’ sense that politicians are not listening to them, further boosting the extremists, but it may be necessary against the most odious groups. Some, like Mr Reinfeldt in Sweden, may try to ignore the far right. More stable would be a Dutch-style deal to secure their backing for a minority government; some Christian Democrats hope this will tame the wilder side of Mr Wilders. The danger is that it just gives him power without responsibility—and without forcing him to recant outrageous positions.

A better, braver strategy, in some cases, might be to bring far-right leaders into the cabinet, exposing their ideas to reality and their personalities to the public gaze. It may make for tetchy government, but it could also moderate the extremes. So roll the dice and make Mr Wilders foreign minister: for how long could he keep telling the world to ban the Koran?”

Peace Is More Than The Absence Of War

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“I propose to return to Gandhi’s wisdom. It is impossible to move masses of people without a vision. Peace is not just an absence of hostilities, not the product of a labyrinth of walls and fences. Neither is it a utopia of “the wolf dwelling with the lamb”. It is a real state of reconciliation, of partnership between peoples and between human beings, who respect each other, who are ready to satisfy each other’s interests, to trade with each other, to create social relationships and – who knows – here and there even to like each other.”

–   Uri Avery