“United States: You have two cows. The government pays you subsidies not to milk your cows. Imports of dairy products from South America increase.
China: You have two cows. The government takes both cows and shoots you.
Iraq: You have two cows. They end up in Guantanamo Bay, but receive excellent medical care.
India: You have two cows. You worship them.
Poland: You have two bulls. You get killed trying to milk them.
Russia: You have two cows. You drink vodka and see four cows.
Argentina: You have two cows. Néstor and Cristina Kirchner take the milk and export it. They tax you 44%, leaving you without enough money to cover production costs. Too bad! On the plus side Cristina is able to pay for Botox injections and pays off some political cronies.”
Renouncing America in India (Comment added)
Jeff Knaebel tore up his US passport out of hatred for the state and became a stateless person wandering through the villages in India. In case you’re thinking he must be some kind of hippy, Knaebel is a former CEO of a company and an engineer trained at Cornell University.
“The one actual, real and direct action that I could take was to break the paper chains that were holding me as a slave to the Empire. I tore up my U.S. passport at the Gandhi Samadhi, Rajghat, New Delhi. Rather than arrest me, the Indian police told me that I was free to roam anywhere in India, and to call them for help if I ran into any trouble.
The great Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Man is moral choice.” This is what I have been calling the Law of Moral Causation. By unilateral renunciation of my citizenship, I chose to assert my responsibility by denying that the U.S. government could act in my name and on my behalf.
Here is the quotation of a freedom fighter in Mexico which seems equally relevant to the India of today:
“Why is it necessary to kill and to die so that you should listen to Ramona, seated here beside me, tell you that Indian women want to live, want to study, want hospitals, want medicines, want schools, want food, want respect, want justice, want dignity? ~ Insurgente Marcos to President of Mexico Salinas after the cease fire in Chiapas, San Cristobal de las Casas, February 1994 (Our Word Is Our Weapon, Seven Stories Press).
I plan to continue to present to the State and to humanity the question of whether we are ready to permit a peace-loving man to exist and to move about freely, without tracking tags and permission-to-exist documents. Or have we been so thoroughly conditioned that everyone except third world villagers and tribal people is destined to live in the big surveillance sheep pens constructed by states all over the world.
Hat-tip to Lew Rockwell for running the article on his site.
My Comment
Bravo for the gesture. But as an Indian by birth I must say I wouldn’t advise any expat Indian to try this. The Indian police will treat you very differently from a vellakara (this is Tamil for ‘white man’ ). A friend of mine, a graduate of one of the Indian Institutes of Technology, spent the year after his graduation roaming India, minus “English language privilege” – i.e. he pretended he didn’t speak it. He said he saw a side of India he hadn’t experienced until then.
Besides, the cynic in me wants to know – did Knaebel dispose of his assets before this gesture….or after? And if so, how? I’m sorry if my questions seem derisive. They’re meant respectfully.
I feel the same way about some…some... elements in the “patriot” movement.
Did civil liberties and the police state work them up so much when George Bush was in power? Is it civil liberties or the thought of an African-American president that incenses some people?
I’d say in a few cases it’s the latter….
Twitter Outage Targeted Lone Blogger…
Following on my own social media problems, I found this story compelling. An extraordinary cyber attack that silenced all Twitter users on Thursday turned out to have been intended for just one blogger…
“According to CNET News.com, which got its information from a Facebook security executive, it appears that Cyxymu’s Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Blogger accounts were attacked simultaneously in a massive denial-of-service attack. Facebook, LiveJournal and Blogger were able to ward off the attack for the most part, but the assault brought Twitter to its knees for much of Thursday.
The culprits still haven’t been identified, CNET reported, although an Internet traffic expert quoted by the New York Times said the attack came from Abkhazia, a territory along the eastern coast of the Black Sea that’s in dispute between Russia and the Republic of Georgia.
And why was Cyxymu—a pro-Georgian blogger who “has long been viewed as an antagonist by some Russian supporters,” according to The Register—targeted? “To keep his voice from being heard,” the Facebook exec told CNET.”
Here’s what I find so chilling about yesterday’s Twitter attack: that these guys, whoever they are, apparently thought nothing of taking down an entire communications network because they didn’t like what one person was saying.
Imagine if someone didn’t like what you were saying, and decided to shut you up by nuking your ISP, or your wireless carrier. Or heck, the entire phone system. All for you….”
So – no it’s not paranoia. If you happen to stumble on certain things and if your world view is not in synch with that of the powers that be, I can assure you, you will be targeted — but in such a way that you may pass it off as “random” or “happens to everyone..”
Now you know. There are people senseless and ruthless enough that they don’t mind how many people are affected so long as the voice they want to shut up, shuts up…
Democratic Delusions
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.”
-Edward Dowling
(Thanks to Ryan Safner at Republic versus Democracy)
More Debate On Sarah Palin…
I got a long critical response from a liberal reader to my Sarah Palin piece at Lew Rockwell (now also posted at Palin for 2012 website). I’ve added my responses below the salient points in the response, which you can find in full in the Comments to the post entitled Liberals Love to Hate Sarah Palin.
Here are my responses:
Bill: Quote: Standards of decency from ” journalists”?? you are kidding right?
Lila: Well, no, not really. If journalists want to consider themselves professionals, they should act with professional standards. I think journalists need to be restrained toward the private
lives of ALL politicians. If they aren’t – no one competent and half-way
decent will want to go into politics – especially not women.
Bill: Palin is a media whore and she dragged her family in front and center, and
now expresses shock and dismay when the media does what the media does. I don’t get it,
Lila: I don’t think she was a media whore. You have to be able to project
yourself in the media – that’s the job of politicians these days.
They can’t be called whores for doing what they have to do to get visibility
The media is supposed to be the 4th estate, not some tabloid trash..but
today there’s no distinction.
Bill: You do cause me some vertigo “defending” bill clinton, but your venial
tirade is relatively trivial IMO, particularly in the context of the
recent POTUS history of pursuit of excellence to the bottom. I prefer to use
body count and erosion of civil liberties as the litmus test, not the
Berlusconi
scale. **
Lila: I do too..but in Clinton’s case, it’s related. Berlusconi certainly used women he’d bedded in his political empire…and he used them to shut down critics – so there’s really no distinction between those two facets of his life.
Bill: Quote: *assaulted a couple of women, bit one on the lip until she bled,
Assault!.Are you sure of that?
Lila: Very sure. Two is a conservative number, I think.
Bill: * Quote: sodomized the barely-adult daughter of a loyal Democrat donor and then
tried to trash her as a stalker? Barely adult !?! you have got to be kidding.. Stalker, no doubt
Lila: Lewinsky was a very young, chubby intern with a history of emotional problems, in her early twenties. He’s fifty plus and the most powerful man in the world, with a history of wheeling and dealing in unsavory circles – you tell me who’s the player
Bill: *Quote: besides causing unaccountable career-implosions,... causing?, Arent
career implosions ultimately the stuff of free will
*gory suicides …innuendo, have any facts?
Lila: Vince Foster’s suicide was very odd and there were several others among less-known figures
Bill: *Quote: causing.. jail time... facts? did you mean elective jail time?
Lila: That woman who covered for him – Susan McDougal, for one
Bill: Ultimately what is your point? The liberal media gave Clinton a pass?? You
have got to be kidding..
Lila: No, I said the opposite. I said the media could have been more responsible and sensitive toward Clinton too..but the trashing of Clinton shouldn’t be the reason liberals use to go after conservatives on minor issues.
Bill: The whole time honored canard of the “liberal
media” unjustly persecuting conservative stalwarts has gotten pretty
threadbare. Liberal media, conservative media, I think you mean to imply
Corporate media. Corporate media goes after easy red meat irrespective of> affiliation and sells it to the superficial ADD public that laps it up.
Lila: The media is corporatist and reflexively liberal – since when are these two things opposed?
Bill: Quote: And that wouldn’t be something ever committed by Barack Obama now, would
it – he with the near-halo on every magazine cover,> are you forgetting the
evangelical canonization of Bush???
Lila: No, not at all. It’s all bad. I criticized Bush on the same grounds. Check it out.
Bill: Quote:Todd was the Palin they should have picked. Have you have taken leave of
your senses? BTW, in debate 101 that would be called Fallacy of False
Choice..
Lila: That was a cute line expressing the idea that real feminism would involved more concern for the family and less for a power career. By the way, it’s not a false choice. The unspoken implication of the line is if they had to have a Palin, Todd was the one they should have picked…
Bill:
*Quote*insiders who dragged America through the mud over the last two decades>> Once someone is elevated to be the Establishment throne POTUS, they are by
default the new insider by definition, don’t you get that? Was Clinton was
an insider when he was living larger than he ever expected in his wildest
dreams as gov. of AK?
Lila: Palin barely got into office in a remote state.
Bill: Quote* The persistent trashing of Sarah Palin is a trashing of ordinary
Americans. If Palin represents “ordinary americans” come and shoot me now
Lila: Yes, she does. She stands for a large part of America.
Bill: Perhaps BHO really sucks, but having Palin a heart attack away from POTUS
would have been in the realm of fantastic reality to take a line from
Richard Burton in the Night of the Iguana..
Lila: Agreed, she was a bad choice for Veep. I said I wasn’t a fan..
Activism: Jewish Voices for Peace Needs Your Support
From Jewish Voices for Peace:
“Upset about the inclusion of a film about Rachel Corrie at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, Koret–one of California’s largest Jewish foundations–issued a statement calling movie sponsors Jewish Voice for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee (yes, pacifist Quakers) “virulently anti-Israel, anti-Semitic groups.”
We need your support to counteract these lies.
Jewish Voice for Peace is an organization that includes Israelis, Jewish educators, rabbis, Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren. We’ve written extensively about the issue of anti-Semitism, and our members are an essential part of a burgeoning Jewish cultural and spiritual renaissance……. What changed? Why now?
And how is the backlash here linked to the backlash against pro-democracy activists in Israel?
We think it’s because now, the world’s attention is on settlements, and for the first time in recent memory, a US administration is creating pressure on Israel. That means that this is a historic opportunity and that we need your financial support to take full advantage of this moment….”Please go to the Jewish Voices for Peace website.
to help.
Tim’s Tantrums….
Is Geithner losing it? Mark Calabria at Cato notes:
As reported in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner called fellow bank regulators, included Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, over for an obscenity-laced rant about their audacity in raising questions about his scheme to fix our financial system.
Reportedly the Secretary told regulators that “enough is enough” and that they’ve been heard, so the time for debate is over. This sounds eerily like the President’s previous comments about including Republicans in the talks over the stimulus – you’ve been heard, so you were “included,” now shut up. The shouting down of debate is becoming all too much a signature of this Administration.
The Secretary apparently also told the regulators in attendance that it was the administration and the Congress that sets policy. Perhaps next he’ll tell us that the power of the purse lies with the Treasury and the Congress. Secretary Geithner has no more constitutional authority to set policy than do any of the bank regulators. It is the job of Congress to make laws, not the Treasury Secretary’s. He can offer his opinion, just as they can, and should, offer theirs.
Of course, Secretary Geithner’s frustrations are understandable, given that his regulatory proposals have hit a brick-wall with both Congress and the Public. He has made no effort to explain to either Congress or the public how exactly his plan will stop future bailouts. Instead, any reasonable read of his proposal would lead to the conclusion that we will have more bailouts, rather than less, under the Obama-Geithner plan. Instead of directing his energies at anger, he should put them toward coming up with solutions that actually increase the stability of our financial system.
We were all told during his confirmation process that we must overlook such facts as his failure to pay taxes, because Tim Geithner was the “boy-wonder” who would save our financial system. As his recent out-bursts demonstrate, “boy-wonder” is only half-right.
Liberals Love to Hate Sarah Palin
Update: This piece is now up as a full-length article at Lew Rockwell.. Reader responses will be below in the Comments, as usual…
In an August 3 piece in Salon magazine, even the usually well-modulated voice of Professor Juan Cole, shot up a few octaves. He compared Sarah Palin to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, and came out in Ahmadinejad’s favor. Now, according to some people, Ahmadinejad stands guilty of anti-Semitism. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But that’s what the establishment media seems to think. So, if the same media thinks Palin is worse than Ahmadinejad, then what it’s saying is that to liberals, being a conservative small-town mother is more dangerous than being anti-Semitic.
Palin and the Iranian president are both dangerous populists, writes Cole. They blame their failures not on their own loose lips (Palin’s stutterings on the Katy Couric show and Ahmadinejad’s alleged anti-Semitism), but on media conspiracies against them.
Of course, there’s no real reason why both things couldn’t be true. Palin could have her short-comings, and she could still be the victim of a hatchet-job by the media. But measured logic is not the style of the Sarah-phobics:
Here’s Cole again on the Irani-Alaskan Axis-of-Medieval:
“Both politicians ‘encourage a political style of exhibitionism, disregard for the facts as understood by the mainstream media, and exaltation of the values of people who feel themselves marginalized by the political system….’
Dear me. Tut-tut. Political exhibitionism, eh? And that wouldn’t be something ever committed by Barack Obama now, would it – he with the near-halo on many a magazine cover, who dubbed himself a voice for people marginalized by the system – or so I recall – in his celebrated Getty- er- pre-election speech on race?
As for “facts as understood by the mainstream media,” since when are facts determined by how journalists understand them? Isn’t that just what some guy called Donald Rumsfeld said not so long ago and got these very same journalists lathered up at his solipsism?
I’m no fan of Sarah Palin.
Anyone who has five children at home and hankers for high office has her priorities confused. If a real feminist was needed on McCain’s team, Todd was the Palin they should have picked. And no, the photogenic governor doesn’t have the experience needed to take on DC. No more than our genial President himself.
But by trashing Sarah Palin in such a rancid, racial, and bigoted way, the media did itself no good, and turned her into an instant symbol of the double-standards practiced by this country’s political elites toward outsiders.
Whatever you think of the moose-hunting mayor, she isn’t an insider, and it was insiders who dragged America through the mud over the last two decades.That makes her – one way or other – a voice for ordinary people, one of us. The persistent trashing of Sarah Palin is a trashing of ordinary Americans.
MindBody: Virginia U. Prof’s Research Into Reincarnation….
Dr, Ian Stevenson’s research into the paranormal at the University of Virginia has always interested me:
“Ian Stevenson is a man extraordinary in his intellectual and scientific accomplishments and even more extraordinary in his possession of a quality of mind which resists and never allows itself to be dominated by assumption. And so, against a powerful scientific ethos, which generally looks askance upon matters such as religions and more specifically the question of the soul, Stevenson has stood firm, recognizing that such issues are highly debatable issues and cannot be dismissed as trivial, irrelevant or devoid of value.
He is one of those remarkable men whose creativity and intelligence enable him to look beyond boundaries, instead of tempting him to contain his gaze within the pale of a single discipline. His early experiences in science, as a student of biochemistry, and as a young doctor, taught him that scientists are not always free of the prejudices and assumptions which as scientists they should be.
Indeed, Stevenson came to understand that the vanities, pride and jealousies, which historically have been the failings of politicians, philosophers, and theologians, can be, and often are, the same failings of scientists. Scientists, no matter how much they are taught to be wary of the personal and the subjective, are men, and as men they cannot be completely free of arrogance, pride, ambitions and other human failings. It is these human flaws which constrict and hinder that primal imagination of science, out of which come new possibilities from old impossibilities, and new considerations from old rejections. Stevenson’s mind is full of these transfiguring impulses of the imagination which are the source of his admirable resistance to those assumptions generated by the past accomplishment of science. Stevenson is remarkable for having been resistant to those vices of self to which science is loathe, vices which make error and shortsightedness among scientists…..
……And so even to this day, Stevenson submits to a vigorous scientific scrutiny an idea which for years has engaged his mind: the notion of survival after death and the possibility of reincarnation.
Stevenson has done more in the lecture than give us a brilliant paradigm of mind; he has returned to us something which has been too long absent from discussion in philosophical, religious and theological groups and in our intellectual life. I am referring to the argument for the immortality of the soul, a central idea in what we call the perennial philosophy. For centuries the possibility of survival after death has engaged the imagination of men; yet in the last hundred and fifty years, this conception has not fared well in a world in which Darwin, Freud and Marx have gained currency in the general culture….”
— from the Preface of Some of My Journeys, Ian Stevenson, 1989
For more on Dr. Stevenson’s research on reincarnation (his most famous research) visit the University of Virginia’s Department of Perceptual Studies.
More research along those lines has been done by another accomplished scientist, Dr. Satwant K. Pasricha, of the Department of Clinical Psychology of the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences in Bangalore, India.
What Barack Obama Left Out of His Foreign Policy Speeches
From Bill Blum’s Anti-Empire Report:
I’ve compiled a list of CIA assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, against prominent foreign political figures, from 1949 through 2003, which, depending on how you count it, can run into the hundreds (targeting Fidel Castro alone totals 634 according to Cuban intelligence)2; the list can be updated by adding the allegedly al Qaeda leaders among the drone attack victims of recent years. Assassination and torture are the two things governments are most loath to admit to, and try their best to cover up. It’s thus rare to find a government document or recorded statement mentioning a particular plan to assassinate someone. There is, however, an abundance of compelling circumstantial evidence to work with. The list can be found here.
For those of you who collect lists about splendid US foreign policy post-World War II, here are a few more that, lacking anything better to do, I’ve put together: Attempts to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which had been democratically-elected.
After his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama was much praised for mentioning the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. But in his talk in Ghana on July 11 he failed to mention the CIA coup that ousted Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah in 19663, referring to him only as a “giant” among African leaders. The Mossadegh coup is one of the most well-known CIA covert actions. Obama could not easily get away without mentioning it in a talk in the Middle East looking to mend fences. But the Nkrumah ouster is one of the least known; indeed, not a single print or broadcast news report in the American mainstream media saw fit to mention it at the time of the president’s talk. Like it never happened.
And the next time you hear that Africa can’t produce good leaders, people who are committed to the welfare of the masses of their people, think of Nkrumah and his fate. And think of Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the Congo 1960-61 with the help of the United States; Agostinho Neto of Angola, against whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it impossible for him to institute progressive changes; Samora Machel of Mozambique against whom the CIA supported a counter-revolution in the 1970s-80s period; and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (now married to Machel’s widow), who spent 28 years in prison thanks to the CIA.4
- Gross interference in democratic elections in at least 30 countries5
- Waging war/military action, either directly or in conjunction with a proxy army, in some 30 countries
- Dropping bombs on the people of more than 30 countries
- Attempts to suppress dozens of populist/nationalist movements in every corner of the world6″
My Comment:
The issue here isn’t whether you or I approve of everyone of these leaders…or not (I don’t).
The issue isn’t whether some other country might not have done even worse if it had the power the US had (they might have).
The issue is – is it the business of the US government to interfere in the rule of other countries, foment coups and revolutions, police, bomb, and spy on millions of people?
And how does any of that make us safer, richer, or freer?