Tag Archives: Ideology

Gore Vidal WAS A Pedophile, Says Family

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UPDATE

Further substantiating my accurate analysis that Vidal’s “anti-establishment” stance (including his “antiwar” stance) was not in anyway a principled objection to abusive power, notice from this report that he craved the status granted by elite institutions like Harvard (not having gone to college himself); notice that his hatred of the state was mixed with feelings of thwarted ambition because he’d always wanted to be president; notice that his anti-establishment rants were mingled with constant remembrances of status symbols and the upper-class gilded life to which he belonged and in which he reveled; notice the opulent life-style he lived (not that I have anything against that) and his $37 million estate); notice the deep alcoholism and madness in which he ended his life.

Now put against that the FACTS about Gandhi:

1. Was in excellent physical and mental condition late into life, when he was undergoing month-long fasts.

2. Was repeatedly offered leadership positions in the state and turned them down. Counseled against imitating Western state structures.

3.  Although once prosperous, gave away most of his belongings and was left with nothing more than a watch, his glasses, his loincloth and shawl, and a bowl out of which he ate.

4. Died not from alcoholism and insanity, but from a bullet delivered by an assassin. His last words were “He Ram” (Oh God).

No need to demonize Vidal, of course.

He was a talented, clever, witty man, who said many true things about history and government and he was a prolific, popular novelist of varying ability. He was a fine essayist, no doubt.

But he was also a compulsive  promiscuous pedophile (and most likely a child rapist) who publicly defended  other child rapists (Roman Polansky, Catholic priests).

He was nasty to friends and foes, envied others and relentlessly slandered them. He harbored demons to the end of his life that he was too weak to overcome. He deserved  the prayers and intervention of his friends and family in life, not the mindless adulation of strangers in death. He doubtless victimized scores of children, Thai children, whom we’ll never hear about. Safe Horizon, so exercised about the Indian nanny fake-slaver case should perhaps be called in about this compelling example of real child-sex tourism.

The American media can keep Gore Vidal for a hero. He fits their values.

I’d rather look among hundreds of unsung activists/writers for mine.

ORIGINAL POST

Gore Vidal’s family supports the long-standing rumors of Vidal’s pedophilia that I published here and that I decided, after analysis, were credible.

For that, this blog was hacked, and a week or so later, some spooky electronic harassment took place. I’m not really sure how that happened. I only know it took place.

I think I was alone among antiwar bloggers, most of whom praised Vidal to the skies, ignoring everything except the fact that his position on war was theirs.

I usually wouldn’t criticize a man on his death, but the universal praise of such a deeply flawed man, just after the contemptible and untruthful slurs against Gandhi, cried out to be corrected.

So here’s the post I wrote: Vidal, Polanksy and Kinsey, August 4, 2012.

In contrast, here’s Justin Raimondo’s piece “The Last Jeffersonian,” August 3, 2012

[I have always liked Raimondo’s investigative pieces on the Israeli lobby, one of the more dangerous areas for writers, so this isn’t meant as an attack on him.]

Here’s another libertarian Bill Kauffman on Vidal.

Now for the main points from the Daily Mail piece on Vidal:

“In a feature that appeared in the New York Times, Ms Straight – who had a ‘turbulent though close relationship’ with Vidal – said the openly-gay author had had sex with underage men.

“She described the alleged circumstances as ‘Jerry Sandusky acts’, referring to the former Penn State assistant football coach convicted of child molestation.

“Mr Steers – who directed the Zac Efron film Charlie St Cloud – said that conservative columnist William F. Buckley – who had a long-running public feud with Vidal, which also played out in court – had evidence linking Vidal to the alleged crimes.”

AND

“The New York Times article also says that the ever-opinionated Vidal had a strange and controversial take on the abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests.

“‘He would say that the young guys involved were hustlers who were sending signals,’ Mr Steers said.

[Lila: Based on this statement alone, I would give credibility to the charges against Vidal.]

“However the author of the article, Tim Teeman, wrote that ‘other friends of Mr. Vidal told me they doubted he had sex with underage men’.

“I”Vidal suffered from dementia and alcoholism towards the end of his life.

“Mr Steers said he would drink single male scotch ‘until he collapsed’.

Vidal also had ‘wet brain’ – proper name Wernicke-Korsakoff – a syndrome characterized by a number of symptoms, including confusion and hallucination.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2496631/Family-Gore-Vidal-allege-pedophile-challenge-writers-37-million-will.html#ixzz2q2g6wNOz
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Vidal was not only a pedophile, it seems he beat up gays, so intense was his own self-loathing.

[Lila: I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not his “pedophilia” but his involvement in even worse – violence against  male child prostitutes that might be the real story and the “yes he was a pedophile” simply a diversion. After all, pedophilia apologias have already appeared in mainstream media, like The Atlantic.]

Consider the reverential treatment given to this insane, addicted, unpleasant man, who was a self-confessed pederast. His well-documented compulsive lifestyle was passed over in silence by the establishment media, since he was “one of them,” from the ruling class.

But of Gandhi, a man who fought his devils all his life bravely, with the utmost candor, and engaged, successfully or not, in one of the biggest social upheavals in modern history,  the same media has recently had nothing but scurrilous and easily discredited innuendo.

Malicious critics called him a bisexual pedophile molester, based on deliberate falsification and exaggeration of historical evidence. They called him a hypocrite, whereas the truth was he was compulsively open to his critics, even begging them to write the worst they knew about him.

Why so much venom? Because Gandhi was Indian and the media in the West has over the last two years been engaged in a systematic campaign of vilification and half-truths against India, along with literal provocations, as I’ve amply documented.

While Vidal,  a hero of  modern liberals, lived in terror of the truth about himself coming out, Gandhi courageously reported every passing sexual feeling in his diaries, urged his critics to say the worst about him that they could, and berated himself endlessly for even mental failures of continence.

Here’s more about  the new claims about Vidal:

“Vidal accused Buckley of being a “crypto-Nazi”; Buckley responded by labelling Vidal a “queer” and telling him to stop his insults or Buckley would “sock [him] in the goddamn face”.

Their argument ended up in the courts, where Buckley first lost an expensive lawsuit against Vidal for libel, before winning a settlement from a magazine that republished Vidal’s written attack years later.

Vidal once estimated he had slept with 1,000 men before he was 25, and boasted of having had sex with Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson and Noel Coward, according to Mr Teeman.

While enjoying a 53-year relationship with his long-term partner, Howard Austen, before Austen’s death in 2003, he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Palimpsest, that he was “attracted to adolescent males”…….

…Buckley’s son, Christopher, has said that while clearing out his late father’s study, he found a file labelled “Vidal Legal”, which he threw into a dumpster…….

An unidentified “longtime friend” of Vidal’s added that the author had once shocked a guest at his home in Ravello, Italy, by announcing: “You know I’m a pederast”.

This friend focused on Vidal’s time spent in Bangkok, Thailand, a city notorious for its sex trade. “He did go to Thailand every year, and he was definitely having sex with male prostitutes there, and they weren’t older male prostitutes,” the friend said.”

Evil people lie about good people for one principal reason – vanity.

They cannot stand being shown up by anything or anyone better than they are.  A couple of years ago, the Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote about the profound intolerance of sin for anything that rebukes it, in an essay, “Evil preaches tolerance only when it’s weak.”

So also lies cannot tolerate truth.

But  the world is not built on lies.  And man cannot live on lies.

At the end, when the mud and the bile and the envious distortions of petty men have had their day, the truth will be vindicated.

Joshua Holland on the myths behind Romney’s “47%”

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Joshua Holland at Alternet has a thoughtful piece on the intellectual fudging behind  Romney’s  “47%” who allegedly don’t pay taxes, don’t have skin in the game, and feel both entitled and victimized.

This notion of a non-paying half of the population omits a fact that the right usually understands – that these sorts of figures are not set in stone.

47% is a figure that represents mobile segments of the population.

That is, the people who are in the non-paying 47% in one year are in the paying 53%  in the next.

For instance, included in the non-payers are students, who eventually do pay taxes.

Furthermore, there are plenty of wealthy households that don’t pay taxes.

In fact, if Romney wants to find entitled people who cry victim at the drop of a hat, feel the government owes them bail-outs, contribute nothing and steal whatever isn’t actually nailed down, maybe he should check out some of his colleagues in the financial industry.

Joshua Holland writes:

“More than a fifth of households that pay no federal income taxes are elderly. This is a group that should feel entitled. They paid into Social Security and Medicare during their working years, and are now in retirement. Many are struggling to get by .

There are a good number of rich people among the 47 percent of households that pay no federal income taxes. According to the Tax Policy Center, 18,000 households with incomes over $500,000 – and 4,000 households bringing in over $1 million – paid no federal income taxes in 2011.

Because there is no discrete group of Americans who routinely pay no income taxes year in and year out, it’s impossible to say for sure what their partisan loyalties might be, but it’s highly likely that a majority of them are Republicans. Around four out of 10 of those households are divided between demographics that lean towards the Dems – students, the poor – and those that lean toward the Republicans – the elderly, disabled veterans. But a majority of that group – six in 10 – are just lower income working families whose incomes fell below a certain threshhold in a given year. And this is where they live:

Click to enlarge.

The Romney campaign is reportedly going to run with this narrative in the coming weeks. The problem is that it only resonates with a minority of hard-right voters who aren’t up for grabs anyway. Most Americans understand that half the country isn’t indolent and doesn’t see themselves of victims of anything but the depression in which we find ourselves today. And that’s why, according to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday , only 20 percent of registered voters say that Romney’s sneering remarks make them more likely to vote for him, while 36 percent say they’re turned of by them.”

The delusional nature of Romney’s math is matched by the delusional nature of his philosophy.

He was born with no silver spoon, he claims, except the silver spoon of being born in America.

Well, being born in America is surely an enormous advantage.

But consider what Mr. Romney does NOT consider a silver spoon:

“Romney was the son of a governor and an auto executive who gave him a wealth of connections, a private education, college tuition, a stock portfolio that he lived on while in graduate school, help buying a first house.”

Apparently, Romney thinks that had he been born Hispanic, his life would have been much easier.

Oh boo-hoo.

Last I looked, the financial industry, not noticeably underpaid, was filled with while males who are NOT Hispanic.

And their high incomes seem to have reflected no great competence on their part.

Indeed, the high incomes seem to have gone hand-in-hand  with extraordinary levels of incompetence and criminality.

Vox Day: Free trade often linked to war

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The provocative (some would use much harsher terms) Christian libertarian writer Vox Day pokes a hole in the venerable libertarian mantra –  free-trade uber alles:

“China and Japan have only been trading since diplomatic ties were normalized in 1972; China became Japan’s largest trading partner in 2004. A war between two of the world’s largest economies would permanently shatter the oft-heard argument that trade eliminates the possibility of war. It’s an argument that should always have been dubious, however, as England’s many wars against the various principalities in India and the USA’s Middle East wars have all followed the inception of large-scale trade with the region.

Once more, we see that free trade delivers precisely the opposite of what it promises. And, as Generational Dynamics adroitly points out, trade actually expands the range of warfare as well as providing an economic weapon that can be wielded against the trading partner. Even when trade is not a cause of the war, it provides a means of fighting it.

Lest anyone think I am setting up a strawman here, consider this article by a free trade advocate at the Mises Institute: “The Classical Liberals of the nineteenth century were certain that the end of the old Mercantilist system–with its government control of trade and commerce, its bounties (subsidies) and prohibitions on exports and imports–would open wide vistas for improving the material conditions of man through the internationalization of the system of division of labor. They also believed that the elimination of barriers to trade and the free intercourse among men would help to significantly reduce if not end the causes of war among nations.”

Zerohedge: Party Time Over, Fight Club Time Begins

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“Water, even when it’s polluted, is the source of life; blood, even when it’s carelessly spilled, is the symbol of life being fully lived. To put his point simply: it’s better to be wet than dry.”

—   Richard Schickel about “Fight Club”

Tyler Durden at Zerohedge says it’s time for the Paul grass-roots to grow out of politics and take their fire to the real world and the real fight: time to become self-sufficient, time to gain financial independence,  time to develop powerful networks, diversify your assets, travel or relocate abroad, if necessary, develop alternative currencies, new trading systems, new banks; counter-economics:

“It has become clear that Benton and others have been “handling” Ron Paul for a considerable portion of his campaign and attempting to divorce him from the elements of the movement which are seen as “extreme” or anti-establishment, even though these are the same elements that catapulted Ron Paul into the minds of average Americans.  My impression is that they have been targeted for surgical removal because they are impossible to co-opt for the purposes of diplomacy (submission) with the Neo-Con elites running the GOP carnival.

Rand Paul’s recent endorsement of Mitt Romney is not surprising given the parasitic nature of particular campaign organizers who buzz about him, including Benton.  The bottom line is that some people in the movement are not in it to fight for freedom, or to ensure a brighter and more Constitutional Republic.  Some are in the movement to further their political careers and ambitions, and are perfectly willing to use the energy of popular candidates to carry them to success.

Sadly, this is the ultimate weakness of the political ideal; regardless of how honest and forthright a candidate is, even a principled luminary like Ron Paul can be undermined by those closest to him if he is not careful.  Millions of people relying solely on the tenuous chance of victory of a single man in a single rigged contest is NEVER a recipe for liberty…..

Stewart Rhodes’ speech at Paulfest was the most shocking for many of the political Paulers, as well as the most necessary.  He removed the kid gloves completely as well as any feel-good rhetoric, stating that the GOP as a party was dead, and deserved to be, letting the Paul folks know that any further strategy of attempting to “infiltrate” the Republican establishment and turn it over to the side of good was a waste of time.  He also stated that it is no longer enough for the movement to play around as “intellectual warriors”, they might soon have to become real warriors.  I agree.

In my speech, I gave clear cut and tangible solutions to Paulfest attendees, including alternative markets and barter networks, commodity based currencies, micro industries and localized business models, useful trade skills, off-grid living, preparedness, and if all else fails, real revolution.  Not idealized intellectual activism under the catchy label of revolution, but fists in the air and rifles in hand revolution.  The kind that scares the crap out of most, not because of its danger, but because of its finality of purpose.  The will to fight, really fight, is frightening, especially to those who cling to the belief that one can reason with his opponents.  The cold hard fact is; some men are not men.  Some men are monsters, and reason is the last thing that will ever sway them…”

Ron Paul and Herman Cain Only Non-Deadbeats

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LRC blog comments on a Politico piece about presidential dead-beats (“Presidential also-rans stiff small businesses, ” David Leventhall and Robin Bravender, Politico, July 29, 2011):


Bachmann, other candidates stiff small businesses
Posted by Lew Rockwell on July 29, 2012 09:05 AM

Politico goes down the list of shame, but for some reason neglects to mention the one non-deadbeat, Ron Paul.

Comment:

Ron Paul wasn’t mentioned, true. But why did Lew Rockwell emphasize Bachmann? The Politico piece emphasized her too and buried the Democrat names at the back.

It also buried Herman Cain’s notable difference from the crowd. He paid his vendors personally and ended up being owed by his own campaign, as well as Gingrich’s.

Even Bachmann was actually less in debt to vendors than the other candidates (under a million compared to multiple millions for the others, all of whom are richer than she was).

So why would a former paleo-libertarian pick on Bachmann?

Pandering to the left?

Ron Paul Dithering Suspiciously About Romney

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Oh dear. I told you Ron Paul has been looking worse by the minute these past few months.

See this from Politico (h/t Wenzel):

“Asked on the Fox Business Network’s “After the Bell” on Thursday if he will cast his ballot for Romney, Paul responded, “I’ve not made a decision.”

Look, he seems to be a nice man. He’s cleaner than most people in politics. He’s been a huge name-draw for millions and brought attention to major issues that are important to anyone opposed to war and empire or the bankster regime.

But, am I deaf, an anti-white racist, an Indian spy or a potential terrorist, if I say the obvious – these are weasel words….. at least to my brown ears.

And I blogged about Paul’s weasel words before.

What’s difficult about saying NO?

As in, not, nein, nope, nah, nay, nada, nyet, noway, nohow,untilhellfreezesoverbuster

And what’s with Romney tweeting “audit the fed”

This is co-option central!

Rand Wants Spotlight, Ron Approves, Says Rand Staffer

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Update 3 July 17:

OK. Apparently Ron Paul’s staff/campaign people are making statements at odds (deliberately? accidentally?) with what Ron Paul’s saying. Not the first time, either. Weird.

Here’s a link confirming that Romney did deny Paul a place to speak at Tampa.

Update 1: I noticed a link at LRC saying that Ron Paul would not be allowed to speak at Tampa, because Romney is terrified of him..but clicking it on it send me to an article at Jeff Berwick’s Dollar Vigilante (Berwick seems to be a Casey friend) talking about an anarcho-capitalist meet with Murphy, Woods, Casey and others. I couldn’t find anything about it at all about Romney preventing Paul from speaking, or anything about Paul on it at all. Maybe it’s a wrong link?

Update 2 (July 15) OK. I just noticed this, where it’s Ron Paul who’s claiming that Romney is too terrified to let him speak.  Maybe, but then why was he so soft on Romney for the last six months?

Sorry. All of this sounds like good marketing to me….including the Berwick stuff…directed at college age kids.

ORIGINAL POST

A report at Business Insider says the Rand endorsement shows he wants star status  in the GOP and a serious shot at the Presidency in 2016:

“For more pragmatic Paulites, however, the surprise endorsement was a shrewd political ploy that puts the younger Paul front and center in the national spotlight, and positions him as a leading figure in the Republican Party, with his eyes set on 2016.

James Milliman, Sen. Paul’s state director, explained the logic to a group of Young Republicans in Louisville, Ky., last week:

“As a practical matter, you have to endorse a candidate before the convention — Romney is going to get the nomination, no doubt about that at all, so it behooves everyone to have Sen. Paul to endorse him before the convention,” Milliman said. “It could enable Sen. Paul to have a prime speaking role at the convention, and his dad to have a prime speaking role at the convention. I think those things factored in.”

The remarks — the Paul team’s most candid comments yet regarding the endorsement — appear to suggest that the younger Paul is more concerned with attaining star status within the GOP than with retaining his father’s army of diehard fans.

Even more interestingly, the same report  quotes Milliman, Rand Paul’s state director, as saying that Ron Paul is OK with the endorsement.

“Rand would not have done this without his dad’s okay,” Milliman told the Louisville Young Republicans. “So if his dad is fine with it, I think everybody else will be fine with it.”

That’s not what Lew Rockwell has been saying.

So who’s right?

Rand Paul: Welshing On No Aid To Israel?

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If I were a young libertarian who’d emptied my wallet into Rand Paul’s campaign, I’d  be painting his face on the basement wall and throwing darts at it, especially after the recent revelation at Liberty Fight about Rand Paul’s apparent silence on the $9 billion dollars in aid guarantees to Israel.

That’s after Rand spent the whole of 2011 (just google) swearing he’d cut aid to Israel. It’s not 100 percent clear what happened with the vote, some are making excuses and giving plausible explanations,  but at this stage of the game,  it doesn’t look good.

Also, one thing that seems to have missed comment is that the Senate summary of the bill specifies support for Israel as a “Jewish state,” not just once, either. Delete Israel and substitute, say, “Malaysia as a Muslim state,” and then you’ll get how just preposterous business-as-usual in DC is.

Not only is this vast sum of tax-payer money going to a foreign government (that’s all aid is anyway), it’s going to a form of government that runs counter to something the Constitution stands for – the US is against a state establishment of religion.

Meanwhile, the same people who applaud “Israel as a Jewish state” every day of the week will foam at the mouth and bark like rabid dogs if someone suggests that the US is a Christian state or that India is a Hindu state.

The h*** with Rand.

Gender Wars: A Word To The Wise

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Comment at A Voice Of Men.com

“If men were all that into how women look, why does she think that 99,9% of the men on the planet will shy away from the question: ‘Does this dress make my ass look fat?’
Besides the trouble you might get into if you actually dared answer the question truthfully, I find it really hard to believe that men give a rat’s ass to begin with. On a very basic level men will look at a woman and go:
‘Is she young and fertile?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ok, she will do.’
All you have to do is look at all the fat, bleached and self-centered women out there, that are some man’s wife, to prove this point.

If women spend half the amount of time they spend in front of the mirror, trivializing over petty details about their looks, on actually having sex with us, and doing something serious about what’s going on on the inside, there would be no shortage in men loving them.”

Comment:

Blog comments are often more enlightening than the blogs themselves. Digging around for more information about the crime of battery-acid throwing, common in some parts of Asia including India, I came across a masculinist blog, on which I found this gem of a comment.

I call it a gem, because although it’s ill-tempered and unfair (we women do spend time on fixing our “insides”), it manages to say more in one paragraph, intentionally and unintentionally, than many an essay in ten.

A truth that is uncomfortable to many women is that sex is more important to men than it is to women (we’re talking averages and generalities).

Despite all the media hype, beyond a few attributes signifying youth and health (which are both important for fertility),  a high level of beauty is simply not needed for male sexual and emotional engagement, as even men readily admit.

(See here and here and even here (Naomi Wolf: “The Beauty Myth,” Anchor, 1992), although Wolf’s other contentions are controversial and not something I want to bring into this blog post.

Then, what is important for male sexual engagement?

Evidently, the opposite of female self-involvement.

That would be a woman’s awareness of the needs, thoughts, and feelings of people around her.

Something your neighborhood padre would be happy to celebrate.

Women concerned about the raging gender-wars should chew on that.

Maybe Shakespeare was onto something, after all.

On Veracity As An End In Itself…

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A libertarian-turned-royalist explains why fudging for the sake of whatever you consider “good,” will leave you on the opposite side of the field, in the enemy’s camp:

“I see this Hitler-was-a-liberal trope catching on all over the right. Of course, it is a leftist trope – in two senses. First, the tactic of tarring all political adversaries with some abstruse connection to fascism in general, and Hitler in particular, is of course a characteristic tactic of the Left. Second, the tactic of disseminating a palpable misreading of history, for political purposes – etc.

To a Carlylean, Satan is the Lord of Chaos and the Father of Lies. When you lie – intentionally or unintentionally – you sacrifice a kitten to Satan. Satan loves you for this! And, since he is not uninfluential on this earth, he does what he can for you. Which is sometimes quite a bit.

[Lila: Disbelieving in the Judeo-Christian Satan, as popularly understood, but believing very much in Saturn (Shani), I translate this as follows:

[Clarification, July 25, 2014): I don’t mean to imply that Saturn/Sani is the equivalent of Satan.  Saturn is more akin to Shiva and Rahu/Ketu (the lunar nodes or Dragon’s head and tail) to Satan.]

The limitations of time and space guarantee that a very small error (intentional or not) will end by fetching you the very opposite of your intended goal.]

The Carlylean technique accepts only absolute veracity as the basis for any political strategy.

The fact is: by sacrificing the occasional kitten or two, by twisting the truth a bit for the sake of this quarter’s sales, libertarians and other rightists get nowhere. Their enemies are (a) in power today, and (b) operating an assembly-line rhinoceros abattoir for the sole benefit of His Satanic Majesty. Surely, sir, you had not thought to out-scoundrel such a bunch of scoundrels.”