Author Archives: Lila

Peter Thiel On The Incompatibility of Democracy and Capitalism

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“. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.”

Peter Thiel at Cato Unbound.

My Comment

Thiel’s essay is one of several at Cato Unbound  on sea-steading, the Free State project in New Hampshire and cyberspace communities as possible routes of escape from statist interventions. I liked the piece because it captures my own sense that genuine libertarianism is still quite foreign to the masses of people who make up any democracy.

Thiel finds two constituencies particularly difficult –  women and welfare beneficiaries. (Am I misreading something here?).

Really? I’ll wager that the majority of the beneficiaries of  the recent government bail-out of the financial sector are male fund managers. I’d also say that most of the beneficiaries of defense subsidies are companies run by men, not women.

However, I’ll take his broader point that the more people depend on government, the less open they’re going to be to libertarian arguments.

As for women, I’d wager that they’d be very open to libertarianism if  it didn’t come wrapped up in psychologically obtuse language.

More for another blog post.

Ten No-No’s In Indian Business Circles

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In honor of elections in India (April 16 – May 13) I’m going to ignore politics and politicians there altogether and post something useful to anyone wanting to do business  in India.

That, I think, is a more worthy activity than wasting one more second of precious time on figuring which set of incompetent, crooked, pompous, self-serving, supercilious, under-worked, overpaid set of bureaucrats is going to boss Indians around until the next set takes over.

I was just as even-handed with the American election. I avoided them altogether by legging it to Morocco.

[Unfortunately, I couldn’t get away from the political process even there.  On the appointed day in November, I woke up in a lush courtyard in a riyadh near Rabat to the sobs of a young American-born German who was apparently beside herself with joy that Obama had won, hard evidence of world-wide Oba-mania that’s still a bit mystifying to me…..]

Anyway, digressions aside, here it is, a list of 10 don’ts in Indian business circles taken from CIO.com

General:

  1. Don’t use a person’s first name automatically. It’s bad manners in many parts of India. Lila: traditionally, names are thought to contain the essence of things/people. Speaking someone’s first name is therefore an intimate act, reserved for use by people who know you well, like your family, or for people who are superior to you hierarchically, like your boss.
  2. Take off your shoes before you go into someone’s home or into a temple or into a public meeting place.  You should probably take them off before entering anywhere else too, especially if you see footwear lined up at the entrance.
  3. Don’t eat beef (Lila: cows have a special place in Hindu iconography and worship)
  4. Don’t accept or give anything with your left hand. (Lila: Traditional Indian culture – like many cultures – designates the right hand for eating food and the left hand for douching/cleaning up after using the toilet)
  5. Don’t expect overt disagreement. People often say yes to be polite. Lila: The Indian head wag, from side to side, looks like a no to Westerners. It’s actually okay/yes/alright/got it/I don’t know/maybe/whatever.
  6. Don’t say no to an invitation or to hospitality.
  7. Don’t be offended by argument or debate. All Indians like to argue. Lila: It’s not personal and it’s not about scoring points. Indians are prone to nit-picking analysis.  They like lists…and distinctions…and categories. They’re chatty people.
  8. Don’t ignore hierarchy/pecking order in the workplace. Lila:  Seniority is a big deal in India. Buddying up with your juniors won’t endear you to a lot of people. Keep some distance in most cases.
  9. Don’t recommend unconventional ideas/projects, since the notion of trying out things and failing isn’t highly regarded. Lila: There aren’t many social networks in India. Families  have to take the hit for failure.  India may have been socialist for a long time, but there’s little in the way of medical insurance, for example. So, telling someone to go adventure traveling or climbing the Himalayas isn’t the cost-free bit of advice it might be in the West, where insurance companies will pick up the tab for an accident.
  10. Write down instructions or requests, since verbal agreements aren’t considered final.

India’s Illegal Rendition?

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Just saw this really interesting piece of news from early March 2009 on what looks like an illegal rendition (ala the CIA and Mossad) of an accused terrorist associated with the Bangalore blasts [July 2008]:

“In a top secret mission, a team of the Research and Analysis Wing tracked down an absconding accused in the Bangalore serial blasts case in Muscat, and sneaked him out of Oman, since India doesn’t have an extradition treaty with that country.

Sarfaraz Nawaz, 32, who allegedly played a major role in financing the Bangalore blasts, had sought refuge in Muscat.

Investigating officials told rediff.com that a RAW team managed to track down Nawaz in Muscat. They added that Nawaz was ‘smuggled into’ Bangalore on a chartered aircraft.

The entire operation was so secretive that even the Air Traffic Control was taken aback when they received a message to help the chartered aircraft land at the Bengaluru [Images] International Airport.

After landing at the airport, officials of the RAW and the Intelligence Bureau called top Central Industrial Security Force officials and directed them to escort the passengers in the aircraft.

The officials handed over Nawaz to the Bangalore police, who are currently questioning him.

Abdul Sattar, the prime accused in the case, had revealed Nawaz’s role in the serial blasts during his interrogation.

Nawaz was reportedly close to Riyaz Bhatkal, a key Lashkar-e-Tayiba [Images] operative, who later took over the charge of the Indian Mujahideen [Images].

With Nawaz’s arrest, the Bangalore police are hopeful of tracking down the remaining suspects, who might have fled the country after the Bangalore blasts.”

More here at Rediff.com

My Comment:

Here’s a piece I did a few years ago on jihad in India, specifically, in Bangalore,  Jihad and Cyberworld.

And here’s a perspective from the Indian left, by Pankaj Mishra.

I’m generally sympathetic to the view presented by Mishra’s pieces, but there are some angles that strike me as off-base.

What I agree with

As I wrote in another piece on the subject  (“Operation Romeo: Lessons On Terror Laws In Indian Country”), terror laws in India haven’t worked very well. It’s unlikely that adopting CIA/Mossad-type renditions (what next? assassinations?) will do better. Whatever immediate successes Indians might hope to gain from them will be marginal and fleeting next to the precedent renditions set for more secrecy, coverts ops and violation of international and national laws.  There’s just too much scope for abuse of power.

What I disagree with is a passage like this one

Mishra:

“Apparently, no inconvenient truths are allowed to mar what Foreign Affairs, the foreign policy journal of America’s elite, has declared a “roaring capitalist success story”. Add Bollywood’s singing and dancing stars, beauty queens and Booker prize-winning writers to the Tatas, the Mittals and the IT tycoons, and the picture of Indian confidence, vigour and felicity is complete.

The passive consumer of this image, already puzzled by recurring reports of explosions in Indian cities, may be startled to learn from the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) in Washington that the death toll from terrorist attacks in India between January 2004 and March 2007 was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq. (In the same period, 1,000 died as a result of such attacks in Pakistan, the “most dangerous place on earth” according to the Economist, Newsweek and other vendors of geopolitical insight.)”

Here’s my caveat:

Comparing India’s death toll from terrorism between 2004-2007 (3,674) to the death toll from terrorists in Pakistan (1000) and in Iraq is disingenuous, given the vast difference in the population and size of the three countries.

Per wiki:

India:                  Area  3,287,240 sq. k.    Population 1,147,995,904   (2008 estimate)

Pakistan:           Area     803,940 sq. k.    Population    165,900,000  (2008 estimate)

Even if Mishra’s death numbers are right, India is only about four times the size of Pakistan, but it’s roughly seven times as populous. Indian deaths from terrorism, however, are only about four times as many as Pakistani deaths. That is,  the number of deaths from terrorism is a bit over half of what it is in Pakistan.

That’s quite a bit of a difference.  India’s far from being free of terrorist violence as “India Shining” advocates would have you believe.

But it’s also not as riven with violence as Pakistan. And,  for whatever reasons, terrorists do in fact find safe harbor and training grounds in Pakistan.

Reviving the IMF: Pieces In a Puzzle

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Well, a few posts ago, in “Survivalists for Nationalization,” I noted that oddity of The Atlantic running a piece by a former IMF economist touting the benefits of nationalization just after an article praising doomsday mongering and survivalism. What gives, I asked.

Was one strain of libertarian thinking about to be coopted into the same old big-government vein of reasoning?

Now, reading through  “Pieces of a Grand Puzzle” on Robert Wenzel’s blog I came across a few clues to understanding what that was all about. The IMF is getting a make-over . It’s going to be the new regulatory cop on the global beat.

PS:  Thanks to Wenzel for linking to my blog. It’s much appreciated.

Greenwald Calls Out Right-Wing Amnesiacs

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From Salon, the tireless Glenn Greenwald calls out the amnesiacs on the right for double standards:

“Conservatives have responded to this disclosure as though they’re on the train to FEMA camps.  The Right’s leading political philosopher and intellectual historian, Jonah Goldberg, invokes fellow right-wing giant Ronald Reagan and says:  “Here we go Again,” protesting that “this seems so nakedly ideological.”  Michelle Malkin, who spent the last eight years cheering on every domestic surveillance and police state program she could find, announces that it’s “Confirmed:  The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real!”  Lead-War-on-Terror-cheerleader Glenn Reynolds warns that DHS  – as a result of this report (but not, apparently, anything that happened over the last eight years)  – now considers the Constitution to be a “subversive manifesto.”  Super Tough Guy Civilization-Warrior Mark Steyn has already concocted an elaborate, detailed martyr fantasy in which his house is surrounded by Obama-dispatched, bomb-wielding federal agents.  Malkin’s Hot Air stomps its feet about all “the smears listed in the new DHS warning about ‘right-wing extremism.'”

Amazing chutzpah.  Malkin’s, especially, considering that her magnum opus was a celebration of the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, precisely the kind of violation of liberties she’s exercised about now.

No. Libertarians have to wash their hands off the two-party system entirely and admit that both parties are too compromised by their records to pose as civil libertarians and constitutionalists at this hour. Give the mic to the people whose record holds up, please.

Or to anyone else but these folks.

Spy State: NSA Surveillance Wider Than Ever

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In the news:

“The New York Times revealed last night [April 15] that the National Security Agency has been illegally spying on legions of Americans’ email and phone calls. Congress vastly expanded the NSA’s surveillance purview last year – but the NSA has chosen to go much further.

The Times noted that the NSA may have spied on one congressman without a court warrant.

This is the only chance that this latest crime might get at least some fleeting attention on Capitol Hill.

The lack of response to these NSA spying outrages is a great example of how cowardly the media has become and how clueless many, if not most, Americans are. The media even refused to make a hubbub last year when it was revealed that the NSA had been wiretapping reporters without a warrant. Author James Bamford pointed out late last year that 2 Israeli companies are at the core of carrying out NSA surveillance on a subcontracting basis. But Bamford’s revelation have received almost no coverage in the print media. (Bamford is one of the most highly-respected critics of the NSA).”

More at Bovard.

Mexican Gun Trade Is Multicultural, Not American

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In the news, Obama’s gun stats are cooked, say libertarians.

“ATF Special Agent William Newell tells Fox News that between 2007 and 2008, around 11,000 guns used in Mexican crimes appeared to come from the United States and were submitted to the ATF for tracing. Of those, only 6,000 could be successfully traced.  Of those, only 5,114, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover, were found to have come from the U.S.

Obama’s “90 percent” number refers, not to the percentage of “guns recovered in Mexico,” as Obama claims, but to the “percent of the traced firearms” according to a BATFE spokeswoman.
But Mexican authorities report that in those two years, a total of 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.  That means 68 percent of the guns recovered by Mexican police did not even appear to come from the United States.

That means only 5,114 out of 29,000 guns used in Mexican crimes were found to have come from the United States.  That figure would be 17 percent, not the 90 percent repeated by Obama.

Further weakening Obama’s case is the fact firearms manufacturers such as Colt legally shipped some of those United States-originated guns into Mexico for permitted uses, such as by the Mexican military.

Research finds most of the guns used by Mexican criminals come from overseas black markets, Russian crime organizations, South America, Asia, Guatemala and even the Mexican army.

“No reasonable person would think Obama didn’t consult the BATFE to get numbers before coming up with his talking points, and this information has been public for over two weeks.  Barack Obama chose to intentionally spread fake information because he hopes to use fear to ram his anti-Second Amendment agenda through the Senate,” said Ferguson.

During his term in the Senate, Obama earned an “F” rating from Gunowners of America, as well as the National Rifle Association. …”

More here.

Correction: The actual figure seems more like 35% than 19%,  according to FactCheck.org.

My Comment

This doesn’t surprise me at all. As some wag wrote, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics….”

The conventional wisdom is that guns don’t deter crimes; that guns cause violence, that only semi-literate goons believe in self-defense, and that second amendment rights are pushed by a lunatic fringe of bible-thumping, arms-stockpiling David Koresh mutants. Well, whatever Koresh was or wasn’t, the remedy for lunacy, child-molestation, fundamentalism or any of his other sins in the eyes of the Feds was not to incinerate him and scores of human beings, including children.

Which is just what Bill Clinton’s AG Janet Reno did at Waco, Texas, 16 years ago, as Anthony Gregory notes in this article. It was one of the most infamous and pointless crack-downs of federal power on the heads of citizens. The usual line is that the Koresh group deserved to be burned to a crisp since they were cultists and child abusers —  this from people who would fight to the death for the right of serial killers to endless appeals.

The second amendment of the Bill of Rights wasn’t meant just for state militias.  It was meant for individuals.

And the reasoning behind it was impeccable: weakness invites abuse.

Right now, the citizenry has been all but disarmed.

Any wonder it’s being abused by the government?

Churches Object to US mandate of Frankenfood Research for Developing Countries

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Advocates of food self-sufficiency have responded critically to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hasty passage of the Global Food Security Act (S. 384) on March 31, which would mark a major shift in U.S. policy. The Act mandates foreign agriculture research for genetic engineering.  Faith groups responded sharply too:

“Andrew Kang Bartlett of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) said, “While the intentions behind the Global Food Security Act may be laudable, the question is whether poorer farmers left behind by the last Green Revolution will again be swept aside by a top-down approach that benefits mostly transnational corporations.” Dave Kane, of Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, a Catholic missionary organization with priests, brothers, sisters and lay people working in Asia, Africa and Latin America, added, “We have found GM technology to be disastrous for small farmers and rural communities. Our missioners in Latin America and Asia have seen farmers get deeper and deeper into debt as they struggle to pay for all the seeds, fertilizers and herbicides that GMO technologies require. The result: farmers lose their land and with it, the ability to feed themselves and their families.”

The National Family Farm Coalition, a North American member of La Via Campesina, the international peasants movement, will be pressing the G8 to reconsider policies that advocate for food sovereignty. Ben Burkett, a Mississippi farmer and president of NFFC said, “Farmers both here and in Africa know that the current industrial agriculture model—and the push to fast-track trade liberalization—has failed to alleviate global hunger and denied family farmers a sustainable livelihood. A recently released report this month by Union of Concerned Scientists titled “Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops,” showed that despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields while only driving up costs for farmers. In comparison, traditional breeding continues to deliver better results. The G8 needs to move away from Green Revolution monoculture practices and instead implement the IAASTD’s most promising options: support ecologically sound practices, more equitable trade rules and local food distribution systems to empower family farmers.”

More at Food First.

The Shill World Order

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 From  a face-book link, The Shill World Order: Pushers of the False Left-Right Paradigm

“Now with the election of Obama, we see the friends that joined us under Bush, retreat to their liberal corner and take on the role the neo-cons did, in order to shield Obama from criticism. Therefore under Obama, government dissent equates to fascist extremist who hate blacks. This is the standard program that the corporate left uses in order to quell government dissent by hyping militia groups and racists. Just think back to all the subterfuge associated with groups on the right, who were against government corruption under Clinton. An unbiased look at the political environment back in the 90’s would show that they were not all extremist, and the events hyped up in the media had the fingerprints of COINTELPRO all over it.

Just recently in Philadelphia, 2 undercover officers organized a KKK rally and they were the only ones who showed up. Several people showed up to protest these racist who were actually cops. The anti-racist activists smashed the car of the posing skinheads, after they antagonized the protesters. An excerpt of witness testimony to the court is below.”

My Comment

Well, this has been my experience too. When you step outside the box and tell it like it is (and since I am a true outsider it’s been easier for me to do), you’ll get trouble.

First, you’ll be ignored.

This will be enough to get most novice writers to shut up and move to some safer ground. Maybe give up writing anything except what fits the mold of the alternative press (they have a mold too).

If by chance you survive that and still manage to get heard, you won’t get attributed. You may be read, but you’ll be subtly tarnished as a possible kook, racist (it doesn’t matter that you’ve never written anything remotely racist) or whack-job. Expect to be called a “wing-nut” if you’re anything other than a socialist.  Criticize any of the following: Israel, the Israeli lobby, the media, the financial industry, the banksters.  the Federal Reserve, drug and money laundering through the stock market, and also be a believing Christian or sympathetic to Christians and you can  expect to be called anti-Semitic. (And if you’re also an immigrant from a developing/third-world/less developed (take your pick of the label, I can’t keep track) country, you’re obviously even less welcome as a critic – I mean, don’t you have enough to criticize in your own country?)

Expect everyone to nonetheless take your work and leads and run right on ahead without a blush of shame. They will, because they can. Those are the kind of people who are in charge. Shame isn’t in their vocabulary. They would have all resigned and taken up jobs in the post office if it was.

No matter what your credentials or your credibility, you will be ignored and tacitly coerced into shutting up and conforming.

If that also doesn’t work, expect other kinds of pressure…. to steer you in ways different from what you would want.

Next comes provocation. You’ll get blatantly racist or antisemitic emails that seem to contain news-worthy items.  The idea is to bait you into replying so that it looks as if you’re in close contact with or pick up your ideas from unworthy material or sources.

Then come attacks. Emails calling you various nasty epithets from mild (moron) to severe (crack-pot bitch) will land up in your mailbox. Your mail will vanish or get deleted or moved around in your mailbox. Blog posts will show up on forums. Old articles go missing or get subtly vandalized.

(Correction: I’m now told that wordpress blogs aren’t easy to hack at all. So I might be okay there …)

You may get death threats – real or simply malicious foolery (last week’s episode).

I don’t expect any sympathy for this. Journalists have had their heads blown off for doing nothing much different. I only mention it to keep people’s eyes focused where they should be  – on the government, not on all the divisions – class, race, color, religion – that the media keeps bringing up…

Survivalists For Nationalization: What’s Up With the Atlantic?

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From The Altantic, May 2009:

“[Cody] Lundin is not a racist; in fact, he’s an Obama supporter, and he resents the racist associations attached to survivalism. Nor does he wish for the grid to go down. He says he enjoys electricity and indoor plumbing. He tends to think, though, that civilization is a thin film, and that in times of economic distress, it’s smart to be prepared for the day when Safeway runs out of milk. “This isn’t something I hope for. But what if the illusion does really crumble, and we have to move as a society to something else?”

I asked Cody how he invests his money. “I don’t believe in the intangible economy; I believe in the tangible economy. When I have extra money, I buy tools, food, or land. I like to be able to see what I’m buying. And I really don’t like debt, so I’d rather not have certain things than be in debt to anyone. I just feel better knowing that I don’t owe money, and I feel good knowing that I can take care of myself. That’s the American way, to be able to be self-reliant.”

For the record, I don’t think the grid is buckling under the weight of consumer debt or the mistakes of AIG. But we’re in a strange moment in American history when a mouse-eating barefoot survivalist in the mountains of Arizona makes more sense than the chief investment strategist of Merrill Lynch.”

and

“Unconventionality makes me nervous, but less so than conformity. I’m finished with conformity. In picking an adviser, I’m also looking for someone who is unleveraged; someone who is putting his own money into the investments he’s recommending; and someone who can explain to me in a few sentences, in language easily understood by earthlings, his philosophy of investing….”

  Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, May 2009

 My Comment

My, my.  Survivalism is finding its way into the stodgy halls of the establishment. A genuinely truthful, even humble, piece by Jeffrey Goldberg. Note: I don’t know if it adds to the surprise that Goldberg supported the Iraq war in 2002.

Of course, there’s the mandatory and utterly gratuitous swipe at the racism and anti-Semitism of survivalists (you’d think survivalists were the only racists of any kind around).**

But we’re not picky about the dawning of good sense.

We’ll take it wherever it comes, whenever, and however.

But then, we read what seems to the companion piece to the one above, The Quiet Coup, by Siimon Johnson, a former economist at the IMF. Johnson writes correctly, but rather belatedly, that the country has been taken over by what he gingerly terms ‘American oligarchs.’

Well, substance-wise this is somewhat tardy, now  that the horse – indeed a whole team of horses – has fled the barn.

And style-wise, we much prefer the earthier feel of  ‘bankster’ or ‘mobster’  to ‘oligarch.’

But it’s what Simon Johnson tells us to do in this piece that sets off our b-s detector.

Simon sez nationalize.

We’ve heard this before, from every economist in town. And the public said, thank you very much, but no.

But here it is again. Nationalization is obviously something the establishment badly wants.

[I say establishment, because that’s exactly who’s pushing it].

And that makes me have second thoughts about the Goldberg piece. Much as I like it, I begin to wonder about it…what end is it being put to?

Co-opting exactly the same mood (libertarian and survivalist) and the same economic argument (impending disaster) that characterized “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets” (down to citing behavioral economics and Kahneman) the Atlantic seems to be pushing an establishment big-government solution that’s directly opposite the libertarian small-government solution we advocate in the book.

That is, using the same arguments, The Atlantic gets to another place.

The Atlantic wants more of the same (big-government and nationalization)

Libertarians want change (non-intervention and self-reliance).

Libertarians read the Goldberg piece and go all warm and fuzzy, hoping the establishment is about to come around.

Still warm and fuzzy, we read the other piece and begin to give the argument a second thought. Maybe it’s not so bad, we mutter…

Maybe we should rethink some of our criticism…

Maybe they only mean some stop-gap measure..Maybe, in that next piece of mine I’ll tone down some of the rhetoric against nationalization….

We tone it down…

The naive undecided reader reads the libertarian blog and the mainstream press and likes what he reads.  He sees two similar sounding arguments and recalls only the similarities. He forgets the differing conclusions. He starts to think the press can be trustedl. He hears the same solution touted all over the networks and begins to see no other way out but nationalization….

You see how it works?

**I’m philosophically a survivalist, but a bourgeois, urban, cosmopolitan one…….. more inclined to subsist on green drink powder than wild mice..