"Western Civilisation: Decline – or Fall?"

Western Civilisation: Decline – or Fall?.

Interesting.

New Sign of Racism In The US

I admit this comes as a shock:

The number of those who approve of the drone strikes drops nearly 20 percent when respondents are told that the targets are American citizens. But that 65 percent is still a very big number, given that these policies really should be controversial.

I used to think that the American government is the sole culprit in all the misdeeds done in America's name all round the world, while retaining a warm feeling towards at least half of the Americans (assuming they are divided 50-50 between liberals and conservatives).  No longer.  

I use the word 'racism' since I believe that the 20% are OK with the drone attacks on non-Americans because they (the targets) are 'brown people'.

Law-Making In The Richest Democracy

Money, power, and Congress: how lobbyists will determine the fate of SOPA

I quickly learned that our elected officials are not demigods solely focused on the collective good — they’re just people. To inflate them into anything else trivializes their real accomplishments at best, and blinds us from the reality of Congress at worst. Lawmakers may have their own parochial interests or lofty causes, but first and foremost they're always looking for votes. To get votes, they need attention and money -- something that corporate lobbyists can dish out in abundance. The end product of this system is lawmaking that's less about making good public policy and more about appeasing the hands that feed — as a result, powerful corporations with deep pockets gain unparalleled access to members of Congress, and they help set the agenda. That agenda is why bills like SOPA and PIPA gain such traction — they were delivered to Congress in return for money and votes.

You don't even have to dig deep into the history of SOPA and PIPA to find blatant conflicts of interest: According to Politico, Allison Halatei, former Deputy Chief of Staff to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, and Lauren Pastarnack, a Senate Judiciary Committee Senior Aide, just accepted jobs with two of the lobbying firms backing SOPA and PIPA. Halatei and Pastarnack helped write the bills. Halataei is now the National Music Publisher's Association chief liaison to Congress, and Pasternak is now the director of government relations for the MPAA.

It gets worse: Chris Dodd, who served as a senator for thirty years, is now the Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. As a senator, Dodd swore he'd never take money from lobbyists, but he now reaps a $1.5 million base salary and a $100 million lobbying budget. Lobbying is one art form the entertainment industry doesn’t mind investing heavily in: SOPA’s 32 co-sponsors received four times more in campaign contributions from the entertainment industry than from the tech industry. We shouldn’t be surprised that SOPA is as bad as it is; we should be surprised it’s not worse.

No wonder policy/law-making is likened to sausage-making - you really don't want to know how it is done.

Should Journalists Do Their Jobs?

NYT's Public Editor wants to know.  Arthur Brisbane and selective stenography

The New York Times‘ Public Editor Arthur Brisbane unwittingly sparked an intense and likely enduring controversy yesterday when he pondered — as though it were some agonizing, complex dilemma — whether news reporters “should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.” That’s basically the equivalent of pondering in a medical journal whether doctors should treat diseases, or asking in a law review article whether lawyers should defend the legal interests of their clients, etc.: reporting facts that conflict with public claims (what Brisbane tellingly demeaned as being “truth vigilantes”) is one of the defining functions of journalism, at least in theory.

Winning Presidential Elections in the Richest Democracy

Takes a lot of money, obviously.  In fact, the guy who raises most, nearly always wins.  That, and other minor facets of American presidential elections in this piece Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins

Those numbers tell us that both parties rely upon the same core of major donors among the top law firms, the Wall Street companies, and business leaders – basically, the 1%. Those one-percenters always give generously to both parties and both presidential candidates, although they sometimes will hedge their bets significantly when they think one side or the other has a lopsided chance at victory. That’s clearly what happened in 2008, when Wall Street correctly called Obama as a 2-1 (or maybe a 7-3) favorite to beat McCain.

The 1% donors are remarkably tolerant. They’ll give to just about anyone who polls well, provided they fall within certain parameters. What they won’t do is give to anyone who is even a remote threat to make significant structural changes, i.e. a Dennis Kucinich, an Elizabeth Warren, or a Ron Paul (hell will freeze over before Wall Street gives heavily to a candidate in favor of abolishing their piggy bank, the Fed). So basically what that means is that voters are free to choose anyone they want, provided it isn’t Dennis Kucinich, or Ron Paul, or some other such unacceptable personage.

If the voters insist on supporting such a person in defiance of these donors – this might even happen tonight, with a Paul win in Iowa – what you inevitably end up seeing is a monstrous amount of money quickly dumped into the cause of derailing that candidate. This takes overt forms, like giving heavily to his primary opponents, and more covert forms, like manufacturing opinions through donor-subsidized think tanks and the heavy use of lapdog media figures to push establishment complaints.

And what ends up happening there is that the candidate with the big stack of donor money always somehow manages to survive the inevitable scandals and tawdry revelations, while the one who’s depending on checks from grandma and $25 internet donations from college students always winds up mysteriously wiped out.

Emphasis mine.  

Bio-Terrorism And The US

US puts lid on flu experiments over terror fears

Fear of misuse as a lethal bio-terrorism agent has prompted the US government to ask two of the world's leading scientific journals – “Science” and “Nature” – not to publish technical details on the creation of a deadly avian influenza strain which has the potential to transmit easily among human and cause millions of deaths.

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity created after the Anthrax scare post 9/11 on Wednesday has asked the editors of the journals to withhold certain technical details showing how an avian influenza virus (H5N1) can wreak havoc among humans.

“Editors at Science are taking very seriously a request by the NSABB to publish only an abbreviated version of a research report related to a strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus, Bruce Alberts, editor in chief of the journal said in a statement.

NSABB emphasised the need to curtail publication of the details of research to ensure that it does not fall into wrong hands.

The deadly genetically altered virus was created Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center and colleagues in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Another team at the University of Wisconsin in Madison  came out with comparable results. 

Both were funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which backed the censorship.

Emphasis mine.  This is the country which accuses other countries of wanting to wage various forms of chemical, and biological warfare at the drop of a hat.  'Wrong hands'?  Which country is killing other people day after day through drones, dropping bombs, is holding people without trial for indefinite periods etc?  The US?  No, can't be.  They have their heart in the right place.  

Wrong hands indeed.

Iraq, Libya... now Iran?

 UK softening up its population for a possible war with Iran

Many in the UK swore that it would never happen again. A hugely unpopular decision to go to war at the time, Tony Blair is still vilified to this day by large sections of the British public for his decision to support the Bush administration and illegally invade Iraq.

Fast forward eight years, and the now British prime minister David Cameron and foreign secretary William Hague are spewing out a similar brand of finger pointing bravado that we once heard from Blair towards Iraq, but this time in the direction of Iran. 

The ransacking of the British embassy in Tehran has served to ratchet up existing tensions between Britain and Iran a few notches more. 

Hague, the blood on his hands not yet dry from Libya, has used the embassy episode to exploit to the full what have become ‘common sense’ perceptions of a demonic Iran that have become prevalent among the British public. And the British media can always be relied on to fuel such beliefs and then cheer-lead the public into supporting aggressive actions and policies towards other states, as it did over Iraq and Libya. 

During the past few years, the British public has become used to media stories about  Ahmadinejad ‘the crazy man’ and the ‘mad mullas’ in Tehran, as well as the Iranian regime being hell bent on wanting to acquire a nuclear bomb that would only threaten the ‘peace and stability’ of the region.

We are all democracies in name only.  Otherwise these things wouldn't happen.  And what a topsy-turvy world we live in:

What peace and stability? Look what the meddling and carnage by the US has done to neighbouring states, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. And why single out Iran over the nuclear issue? Iran is a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory, and there appears to be no firm evidence that it is in breach of it. 

Nuclear armed Israel and India are not NPT signatories, yet it’s Iran that has been subject to economic sanctions and nuclear inspections for years, while India basks in the warm glow of US ‘favour’, if that’s what compliance with US hegemony can be termed.

Oh Those Crazy Brutal Dictators - 3

... an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor. 

It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.

A TV sitcom writer recounts his arrest at Occupy LA.

Relatedly, U.S. arming Egyptian military crackdown.

‘Reigniting a new political imagination’

Arundhati Roy visits Occupy Wall Street.  Her take on the two-party situation in the USA and the virtually two-party system back home:

Even in India, we have the same problem. We have a right wing that is so vicious and so openly wicked, which is the Baratiya Janata party (BJP), and then we have the Congress party, which does almost worse things, but does it by night. And people feel that the only choices they have are to vote for this or for that. And my point is that, whoever you vote for, it doesn’t have to consume all the oxygen in the political debate. It’s just an artificial theater, which in a way is designed to subsume the anger and to make you feel that this is all that you’re supposed to think about and talk about, when, in fact, you’re trapped between two kinds of washing powder that are owned by the same company. 

...but it happens everywhere, and it will continue to happen. Even I know that if I go back to India, and tomorrow the BJP comes to power, personally I’ll be in a lot more trouble than with the Congress [party] in power. But systemically, in terms of what is being done, there’s no difference, because they collaborate completely, all the time.

 I like that metaphor:  two kinds of washing powder owned by the same company.  Nice.

Why The Sudden FDI Decision?

Ekalavya's take: Maunam Mohanam.  

This leads to the question that all the clever Indians have never asked: what is the US asking for in return for bringing Pakistan to heel? 

Aah! Oh! Well! Hmm… 

Oh dear! Never thought of that.

Anything's possible.  

Bombing Them Into Submission?

US faces Pak fury after Nato kills 28 troops

US asks Pak to shun Iran pipeline, open up to India

And relatedly, Iran was on the regime-change list just ten days after 9/11: Wes Clark and the neocon dream.

This is one out-of-control regime indeed.

Oh Those Crazy Brutal Dictators - 2

And some reading to go along with that.

Oh Those Crazy Brutal Dictators

Treating their own citizens like this:

Shame on 'em.

Advice for Indian Politicians

Who want to make quick money:  Get with the times.  Change your methods.  Learn.  There is an easier way to make easy money.  No taint of the 'C' word attached too!  Link.

As many as a dozen members of Congress and their aides took part in insider trading based on foreknowledge of market moving information on Capitol Hill, disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff told CNBC in an interview. 

Abramoff, who was once one of the wealthiest and most powerful lobbyists in Washington before a corruption scandal sent him to federal prison for more than three years, said that many of those members of Congress bragged to him about their stock trading prowess while dining at the exclusive restaurant he owned on Pennsylvania Avenue.

60 Minutes on the same issue:

Hey, if the elected reps of the US are doing it, it must be fine!

PS: Top Favorite Stock Holdings of Congress

American Hypocrisy

As I was reading this 

Arab leaders have given Syrian President Bashar al-Assad three days to halt his ''bloody repression'' of protests or risk sanctions, but activists said security forces shot dead a nine-year-old girl on Thursday.

and thinking how the killing of the 9-year-old will cement the Syrian government's status as the most horrible government that has to be overthrown immediately, this came to my mind: The killing of Awlaki’s 16-year-old son:

Two weeks after the U.S. killed American citizen Anwar Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen — far from any battlefield and with no due process — it did the same to his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, ending the teenager’s life on Friday along with his 17-year-old cousin and seven other people. News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki’s son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: “anyone killed by the U.S.”), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver. 

 ... Every now and then it’s worth pausing to reflect on how often we talk about the killing of people by the U.S. Literally, the U.S. government is just continuously killing people in multiple countries around the world. Who else does that? Nobody — certainly nowhere near on this scale. The U.S. President expressly claims the power to target anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, for death, including his own citizens; he does it in total secrecy and with no oversight; and this power is not just asserted but routinely exercised. The U.S., over and over, eradicates people’s lives by the dozens from the sky, with bombs, with checkpoint shootings, with night raids — in far more places and far more frequently than any other nation or group on the planet. Those are just facts.

 That is one hypocritical government.

Soaring Student Loans in the USA

As the calls for for-profit private education institutions get louder, here is one data point to take heed of: A 511% rise in student loans 1999 in the USA.

Obviously the number of students didn't grow by 511%. So why are education loans growing so rapidly? One reason could be availability. The government's backing lets credit to students flow very freely. And as the article from yesterday noted, universities are raising tuition aggressively since students are willing to pay more through those loans.

And the state of for-profit colleges over there is uncovered here: For-Profit Colleges: Undercover Testing Finds Colleges Encouraged Fraud and Engaged in Deceptive and Questionable Marketing Practices.

Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

How The Other Half Lives

Fraudclosure Errors Destroying Americans’ Property Rights

Lost Trust

Must be a tough thing to admit:

In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment.

Pesky Questions

From The Hindu:

The Americans hate to admit that they were wrong - nobody does, for that matter. But few have taken so many undemocratic and illegal actions in world policy as they have. In the United States, those guilty of such actions may face life imprisonment, if not a lethal injection, electrocution or gas chamber (how can democracy be preached by a country where 35 states allow capital punishment by such revolting methods?). Erosion of international law started with Serbia - the bombing of Belgrade in 1999. Iraq followed.

Robbery and murder

In terms of criminal law, these global actions qualify as robbery and murder. In Arkansas and Texas, these crimes are punishable by death penalty. These are home states of the last two Presidents that started wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq in violation of international law. But at home, U.S. Presidents do not behave like this - they are decent gentlemen playing the sax and riding a bike. But once they go outside, everyone had better scatter.

The last two Presidents liked to talk about the U.S. mission before the start of a war: "The United States is called upon to guarantee...." Depending on the situation, they would continue with such phrases as "Kosovo's freedom," "peace and prosperity," or "democracy all over the world." None of them has specified who imbued the United States with this mission and what rights they had for that.

But these are details that ordinary Americans should not go into until someone in their family is killed in action. For the time being, Americans are not dying in Kosovo like they do in Iraq; and for this reason they don't ask who has urged America to help the Kosovars and whether the Kosovars had the right to do so.

Have the Kosovars appealed to the Americans? What if the Basques, Catalans, or Corsicans appeal to them? Quebec has a hard life as part of Canada, and is closer to the United States. Does the United States want to help the Turkish Kurds? Probably not, separatism is a bad word in Turkey.