Tag Archives: travel

War On India: US Warns Travelers Not To Visit India

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US issues travel advisory against visiting India:

“The United States has issued a fresh travel advisory on overseas travel to its citizens, including India which “continues to experience terrorist and insurgent activities”.

“India continues to experience terrorist and insurgent activities which may affect US citizens directly or

indirectly,” the State Department said in its new worldwide travel alert for its citizens.

“Anti-Western terrorist groups, some on the US government’s list of designated Foreign Terrorist
Organizations (FTOs), poses a potential danger to US citizens in the region,” it said.

“Terrorists and their sympathisers have demonstrated their willingness and ability to attack targets where US

citizens or Westerners are known to congregate or visit.

“Their actions may include, but are not limited to, vehicle-born explosive attacks, improvised explosive device attacks, assassinations, carjackings, rocket attacks, assaults, or kidnappings,” the State Department said. “

Comment:

OK. That’s an official hit against the tourism industry. The advisory is basically letting the world know  the country’s got HIV, please quarantine it.

Is this for real, or is it one more show of force? We’ll soon see.

Meanwhile, it’s been six years since I’ve seen my family (FOO).  And as many since I’ve even talked to some of them.

They live and work in some of the most dangerous places in India, traveling on the most dangerous roads in the world (150,000 deaths a year), in a country with the highest number of terror attacks…and that’s besides the difficulty of just ordinary living in a place with mind-boggling bureaucracy, extreme corruption, non-existent government services (we’re not talking social-security and other kinds of pampering that you find in the west) and a thousand social ills… Nowadays there’s also soaring gas and food prices that make daily living for even the professional class an unending struggle.

Each of these problems can be traced back to some misbegotten government program shoved down the country’s collective throat against the warnings of India’s true national heroes, by some brainless puppets fed by Western foundation (Rockefeller etc.) and grant money.

So by the time the leftists and the corporatists and the NGOs and the rights brigade and the rest of the monotheist one-worlders have meddled (doing good, right?), bribed (moral, right?), blackmailed (heroic, right?), and extorted (fun business, right?) everyone, with the blessings of whatever bunkum leftist or rightist theory is currently being touted  by academic pimps and attention whores, all that’s left for the masses of  ordinary people will be the  intellectual transfat and spiritual aspartame that’s already poisoned the population back home in the West.

Libertarian Living: Expat Belonging

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My first year as an expat. Come New Year and I will have done the necessary time outside the country.

I must say it´s a relief. At the best of times I never quite fit into America, although I think I fit in better there than I would ever have fit into India…but I´ll never know, since I left India as a student.

Honestly, I think I wouldn´t really fit into any country, except as an observer of sorts. A kind of partial citizen. That´s me. I spend a lot of my time alone, because people tire me out. Yet I like them around me anonymously…. preferably talking a language I don´t understand.

Loren Eisely, the anthropologist, once wrote somewhere in some essay of his that he liked spending time by himself in dark theaters (or was it bars?). I´m like that.

I like a seat in the corner of a crowded restaurant or lobby where I can watch people. The current of voices, as long as it doesn´t impinge too much on my thoughts, soothes me. A  dark hum of water whirring around me. A kind of return to the womb.

Airport lounges…small coffee shops, one-star hotels with wooden cupboards that tilt precariously when you open them late at night…unfamiliar streets that open up suddenly as you turn a corner ..a grey sea… I feel at home around  them.  Anonymity seems to make my own self clearer to me. In a group of friends, on the other hand, I lose a sense of who I am.

People yearn to belong somewhere. I spend my time elaborating ways of not belonging. And when I begin to feel at home, it´s always a warning sign that soon, very soon, I will want to leave.

Travel Like a Libertarian….

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A new piece with some travel tips at Lew Rockwell.

Here’s the opening:

“A while ago I wrote an article suggesting that for some libertarians it might be time to run.

I still think it is. But I also think your journey abroad should be reasoned and carefully planned, or it could leave you worse off, not better. Run smart, not stupid.

To help you do that, here are some things I’ve learned from years of going back and forth across the world. I’ve grouped them under four headings that express fundamental elements of a libertarian stance in the world.

Connectivity (the free market is all about communicating and persuading)
Security (libertarians should take the initiative in defending themselves)
Simplicity (less always makes for more independence)
Flexibility (don’t resist change; it’s the essence of the free market)

Blogging Projects..

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Apologies for not having blogged for a while on Madoff and the “kleptocrat” angle of the financial story.

The reason is the web harassment I’ve talked about before. I’m not intimidated by it, but I think it’s a good idea for me to get my cyberhouse in order before I embark on more research on that. It looks like parts of that story might intersect with another story that’s been troubling me, which I can’t get into here.

When highly credentialed journalists start telling you to buy a revolver, you begin to wonder if you shouldn’t stop being bo-peep and try mata hari for real.

I also have some restructuring of my life going on that takes up most of my time and energy – so my posts have become a bit erratic.

My dream of becoming a professional wanderer, a vagabond of the net, is within a year (or so) of realization. Once I complete the structures I need to set up, this blog will become professional.

It will turn into a magazine and an online community, which is my dream.