"Online Thieves and Corporate Puppets," by Alpha Unit

A musician spends time and energy creating a work of music – time and energy he or she can never get back. What is his effort worth? How do you place a value on what a musician has created? The argument over this question goes back for years – probably to the beginning of commercial music, actually. I’m sure plenty of you can remember the battles over file sharing with companies like Napster, Limewire, and Grokster that have lost court battles over copyright infringement. While musicians are serious about protecting their intellectual property, many of them point out that they have no beef with their fans. The fans aren’t the enemy. Corporate America is. As Ellen Seidler puts it:

Online piracy isn’t about altruism, it’s about income. Today’s technology allows web pirates to steal content and monetize that content with a click of a mouse. Meanwhile, “legit” companies encourage and facilitate this theft while also profiting from it (ad service providers, advertisers, and payment processors).

Ms. Seidler explains that companies like Sony, Radio Shack, Pixar, ATT, Chase, Auto-Zone, and Netflix are generating an enormous amount of income by placing advertising on websites featuring streams and links to pirated content. Of course the ads also generate income for those operating the pirate websites. Says Ms. Seidler:

This dubious connection to piracy is not limited to the companies whose ads appear on various pirate sites. Even more problematic are those companies, like Google (via AdSense), that generate their own robust revenue stream by providing the interface for the pirate-site pop-up ads themselves. In this equation everyone except the actual content creator makes money from this theft.

According to The Trichordist, this piracy isn’t about fans sharing music. It’s about illegally operating businesses making millions of dollars a year from the exploitation of artists’ work and not sharing any of the revenue with artists.

To the uninitiated, it might seem odd that what seems like a simple question of right or wrong is even being debated, but these sites that exploit artists are supported and promoted by faux civil liberties groups opposed to protecting creators’ rights – and internet giants are happy to throw their support behind them. Together they have crafted a narrative of creator rights as quaint and outdated, offering artists a brave new online world where they can throw off the shackles of labels (or publishers, or studios, etc.) and give away their work to find fame and fortune. However, after a decade of half-baked ideas, faulty business models, and outright lies, we know this is simply untrue.

The artists at The Trichordist say they might not always be a fan of record labels, but at least the labels negotiate contracts, pay advances, market and promote artists, and are contractually accountable for wrongdoing. A musician has no such enforceable rights in what they call the Exploitation Economy. As for the view that the internet is a powerful tool for distributing music more cheaply, these guys are adamant that pirate sites have no place in this scheme. They say that nothing is stopping musicians from sharing or giving away their music through legitimate sites like SoundCloud and Bandcamp. As far as they’re concerned, there simply is no justification for the existence of pirate sites. Major companies such as American Express, Citibank, Direct TV, Levi’s, Macy’s, Princess Cruises, Target, United Airlines, and dozens of others have been cited as placing ads on sites that are receiving notices for copyright infringement. David Newhoff points out that this is about large American corporations supporting and legitimizing the exploitation of American workers.

I’ll say it again without equivocation. These sites are in the business of exploiting workers. Period. Don’t let’s get distracted by the fact that copies of files don’t cost anything to produce or distribute or that you think WMG is evil or you don’t like the RIAA. That’s all that bullshit again, and it has nothing to do with the way in which these sites generate revenue. All that “free” media represents hours or years or even decades of labor, either by one person or by hundreds of people.

And the idea that by downloading files illegally you’re “sticking it to the Man”? The truth, he says, is that the ardent file sharer is a corporate puppet that has no idea which companies are pulling its strings. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site. – RL

Alt Left: “The Venom of the Hindu Radicals, with Additional Reports from Goa, Kerala and Nagaland,” by Alfred Fernandes

I received this very nice piece by a Goan Christian. I do believe that my Christian brother speaks the truth!

The Venom of the Hindu Radicals, with Additional Reports from Goa, Kerala, and Nagaland

By Alfred Fernandes

Western governments and news media are targeting Islamic radicals because Islamic radicals are targeting White people. If Hindu radicals had also targeted White people, be 10

US Pastor Terry Jones has no problem with Hindu radicals burning Bibles in India. Hillary Clinton has no problem with Hindu radicals vandalizing churches and graveyards in India. Barack Obama has no problem with Hindu radicals encroaching on land belonging to Christians in India. Ban-Ki-Moon has no problem with Hindu radicals preventing Christians from getting government jobs and facilities. The United Nations Security Council has no problem with Hindu radicals threatening and attacking Christians in India.

Hindu radicals not only have a large number of sympathizers in the police, army, judiciary, intelligence, IAS/IPS, and administration but also have a very large number of sympathizers among middle/upper class Hindus, Brahmins and OBC Hindus.

The only three states in India where the Christians have not experienced the venom of Hindu radicals are Goa, Kerala, and Nagaland, but not for long, as Hindu radicals are expanding their networks in those states.

The only state in India where Hindu radicals don’t dare to spread their venomous tentacles is Kashmir. Even the Indian Government does not allow people from other parts of India to encroach on land in Kashmir because the angry Kashmiri youth will not tolerate migrants.

If the natives of Kashmir succeed in getting independence from New Delhi, then the natives of Goa, Konkani, Assam, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and the northeastern states will also start agitating for independence from New Delhi. This explains why the Indian government is doing whatever it can to prevent the Kashmiris from getting freedom from New Delhi.

The Indian government, armed forces, the police forces, intelligence agencies, judiciary, IAS/IPS officers, and local administration are not prepared to crush Hindu radicals. Under such circumstances what are the options left for Christians in India?

Should Christians migrate to Christian countries as suggested by Hindu radicals? Should Christians convert to Hinduism to avoid persecution? Should Christians in India undergo commando training and arm themselves with guns and bombs for self-defense purposes? Should Christians continue suffering at the hands of Hindu radicals?

The Indian Prime Minister, President, and Supreme Court need to advise Christians in India on which option is best to choose. The secularization of the church by the clergy and the separation of church and state are the two main reasons why 9

Wealthy Hindus in America donate millions of dollars to the Vishwa Hindu Parishads Branch in America, which is registered in the United States as a charitable organization in the 1970’s, where it has received and continues to receive funds from a variety of individuals and corporate organizations run by Hindus. The VHP also has registered charitable branches in Canada, UK, Australia, and various other Christian nations.

The VHP transfers the foreign funds to the various Hindu radical organizations in India which are involved in various Hindutva missions including attacking Christians and bringing down churches in India. Hindus left India to earn big money in the USA, UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia, and yet, while enjoying the relative tolerance of their new countries, fund hate campaigns in India against minorities, including Christians. Due to fear of Hindu radicals, some Christian parents with Christian names have given their children Hindu names in order to protect their children’s Christian identity.

In the last two decades there has also been a deep infiltration of Hindu radicals into the press, as well as other institutions – political, military, bureaucratic, civic, business, educational, and law and order – of India.

All senior leaders and Chief Ministers of BJP are selected by the people at the RSS headquarters at Nagpur. These senior BJP people in front of the media may talk of secularism but officially they do exactly the opposite. They give away government land for building temples and training camps to Rashtriya Swamyamsevak Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, and other rightwing Hindu organizations. They authorize the Hinduization of school textbooks. They select Hindutva sympathizers in the administration, bureaucracy, police, and judiciary. They do whatever is necessary to achieve the ultimate goal of making India a Hindu Rashtra.

When one Congress Party Minister talks of banning Hindu radical organizations, other Congress Party Ministers talk of losing Hindu votes if Hindu radical organizations are banned. Hindu radicals are absolutely right when they say that no party in India can come to power without the votes of Hindus, and of course a vast majority of Hindus in India sympathize with Hindu radicals, especially the middle class and OBC Hindus. Whether Hindus vote for Congress or BJP is irrelevant because both parties are two sides of the same coin.

Governments have failed to create infrastructure, industries, and job opportunities in rural and backward districts due to which millions of people from those districts will continue to pour into cities and towns of India for jobs, with the resulting growth of slums and illegal construction.

Governments have failed to strictly enforce the two-child policy, so the Indian population will continue to increase, with a corresponding increase in the stock of poor and unemployed people.

Governments have failed to set up fast-track courts to deal with divisive politicians, rioters, arsonists, black marketers, scammers, hoarders, marauders, female-aborting doctors, slumlords, black money Swiss account holders, slumlords, unscrupulous builders, money launderers, Hawala operators, corrupt IAS/IPS officials, bureaucrats, government servants, politicians, and municipality ward officers, etc. due to which these unscrupulous people who should have been behind bars are instead out on bail , living a luxurious lifestyle, and are also carrying on their unscrupulous activities without any fear.

Hindu radicals are absolutely right when they say that Christianity and Islam are foreign religions on Indian soil, but when Hindu radicals are reminded that Hinduism is also a foreign religion on Indian soil brought from Persia some 2,500 years ago by the Indo-Aryans (ancestors of present day Brahmins and Upper Caste Hindus), Hindu radicals go into a defensive mode.

Some Tribal/Dalit Christians have formed an association called the Poor Christian Liberation Movement (PCLM) and are demanding that the Christian missionaries stop conversions in India for the next 100 years and utilize the foreign funds for the benefit of the Tribal/Dalit Christians. The PCLM also wants the Christians/Catholic institutions in India to reserve seats for Tribal/Dalit Christians. Because of the various demands of the PCLM, the bishops, cardinals, and priests are at loggerheads with the PCLM. The PCLM has also urged the government that no clergy (bishops, priests and nuns) be appointed in government committees, commissions, etc.

It has been observed that due to such appointments, bishops, priests, and nuns are deviating from their original work of the church and misusing their positions and funds. Instead, the government should appoint ordinary Christians as the members in such committees and commissions. The PCLM also wants Dalit/Tribal Christians appointed in the various committees of the Church and its institutions (schools, colleges, hospitals, etc).

The PCLM has also urged the Union government to institute a law allowing the Christian minority institutions to admit 5

The PCLM has also claimed that due to the illegal sale of church properties in various dioceses, the Union government should set up national/state boards similar like the Waqf Board to protect church properties.

The PCLM has also urged the church leaders to prepare the laity for more responsibilities so that the real message of Christ becomes acceptable to all without offending any other religions. The key concept is to respect all religions equally.

The PCLM has made allegations that foreign funds coming into India are being misused by a section of church. The PCLM wants the church to use these foreign funds properly for the development and uplifting of Dalit/Tribal Christians.

St. Peter has two keys. One for Heaven and other one for the Treasury. The Treasury key must be handed over to the laity for transparency. Economic committees should be formed to oversee the fund’s expenditure. In every diocese, the treasurer must be a layperson appointed on rotational basis for two years. After that term is up, it must be changed.

Hindu fundamentalists have brainwashed the Hindu majority with a five-decade campaign that portrayed Muslims and Christians as disloyal, anti-national, or criminal. Militant nationalists always need an enemy in order to grow. Hitler had the Jews.

In India there are the minority enemies within alongside enemies on the outside in Pakistan, China, and the West. Hindu fundamentalists pack all the national parties with their people so they will be in command no matter which party comes to power. This explains why the Congress-led UPA has not banned any of Hindu fundamentalist groups (RSS, VHP, BAJRANG DAL, SHIV SENA, etc).

Hindu fundamentalists are evolving new ways of humiliating, marginalizing, and crushing their opponents (Muslims, Christians, Tribals, Dalits, etc ). They humiliate and disarm their critics by accusing them of being foreigners and anti-nationals. They provoke them beyond endurance and any self-defense is described as violent. They keep spreading misinformation in a studied and systematic way so that at least half of it will be believed. For this, they take inspiration from the manuals of the Nazis whom they greatly admire. They harass minorities with court cases so as to wear them down.

Hindu fundamentalists use the print, celluloid, audio, and video media to further their cause, especially during elections. One cannot underestimate the vastness of their designs. If you send a Christian or Muslim explanation to the press against false accusations, it is ignored.

The organs of the state bureaucracy, judiciary, police, and armed forces are polarized. When one officer takes action, another rushes to the rescue of Hindu fundamentalists. Anti-democratic attitudes are today widespread in the same urban middle class in India that was the backbone of democracy. Gone are the days of slogans like “Unity in Diversity”.

Hindu Fundamentalists’ (Sangh Parivar, RSS, VHP, BAJRANG DAL, SHIV SENA, etc) clear-sighted aim is to establish Aryan rule in India and impose the Manu Code with its caste norms. Just as for the Nazis, the Jews were a great threat, so Hindu Fundamentalists consider the Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Tribals, Socialists, Communists, and Modern Hindus a great threat.

Hindu Fundamentalists’ definition of nation is not acceptable. It is monocultural, negating other religions and people. The struggle between the Brahminical forces under the disguise of Hindu nationalism on the one hand and the dream of an egalitarian, pluralistic, and democratic Indian state and society on the other hand will determine the direction and destiny of the Indian state and society.

Why the Christians? Have Hindus so run out of Muslims and Sikhs that a small and insignificant minority should be threatened, attacked, and burned at will by rightwing Hindutva forces? This may sound strange, but in a real sense, the saffron mob has in deed if not in words run out of options. This is why they have now turned against Christians. They are the last soft target.

The Sikhs set the retaliation game in motion. They hit out, often randomly, at designated targets, making it known to Hindu sectarians that taking on a Sikh will not be a picnic any longer. This stopped further attacks against the Sikhs. The Muslims picked up this lead and set their own pace by orchestrating the Mumbai blasts of 1993, and several after that in quick succession. So the Muslims can no longer be hunted down either for casual Hindu amusement.

This only leaves the Christians. It must be borne in mind that Hindutva activists are at their predatory best when the kill is easy and their own safety assured in advance. This is why where Christians are in sizable numbers, such as in Nagaland, Kerala or even Goa, Hindutva sectarians dare not touch them. Instead they turn to areas like the Dangs in Gujarat or Kandmahal in Orissa where Christians are scattered and isolated. In these places it is easy to kill without the fear of being killed.

Hindu extremist parties and organizations all the way to the BJP can encourage, condone, and organize mobs to kill for Hindutva, but none of them are willing to die for it. Muslim terrorism in India has nothing to do with Al Qaeda, Taliban, Palestine, or even Iraq. These terrorists are home bred and are direct outcomes of Babri Masjid and Godhra.

Why don’t Hindutva activists go to Nagaland or somewhere else where Christians are a majority? Why is it that Hindutva activists are active only where their safety is guaranteed, like BJP ruled states? In places where there is no administrative encouragement, sanction, or connivance, Hindutva activists of whatever description dare not strike any minority community. Wherever Hindutva presence is built into the state administrative system, saffron forces are assured that every ethnic attack will be a picnic.

When it comes to linguistic and caste wars, there is social science involved, as jobs are to be won or lost on these grounds. But when Muslims or Christians are killed, nobody wants their income or livelihood. They are attacked only to make Hindutva organizations look good and nothing else. This is why, in such contexts, social science of any kind is irrelevant.

Mass Floods in India Bring Out the True Character of Indian Hindus

Mass floods have hit northern India. I don’t know a lot about what happened, but many homes were washed away and apparently a number of people have died. In addition, quite a few people are without food and shelter. Here India Land of Rapes, one of our finest commenters, lays out the real deal on Indian morality, or the lack of it as such. Only in a crisis can the real character of people and society can be understood. When the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, the people who survived stood in queue and took whatever their government gave them to eat and remained disciplined and organized without any violent incidents. The true culture of Hinduism is getting exposed in the recent Himalayan floods. Politicians rushing to save their own kith and kin. Traders selling food for 200 This is a true opportunistic culture folks. You wonder why India, despite all its fake spirituality, is such a shithole? It is because everything in India is a lie. You have to lie, stab each other and be a hypocrite to survive in that filthy place. Everyone in that nation is a crook; to be honest you have to be a worst crook and hypocrite to survive in India. Read the great story of Hindu morality. All the idiot trolls who spend their time spamming this blog and bullshitting their nonsense about glorious Hinduism, read the fucking comments on that article. This is a reminder to all those who believe in Hindu spiritual nonsense. Spirituality is for sale in India. It has always been up for sale, and morality is the last thing you will find in these people. Don’t let their fake smiles, cries and obedience fool you. As long as you have something they need, they will respect you. The moment you end up with nothing, these people stab you and move on to next host without any guilt or shame. Hindu culture at its best for you. It’s far worse than the USA in many ways. That’s why to most hypocrite Hindus, the USA is paradise. No wonder USA is turning into a shithole like India. Once Hindus entered US Companies and started their nepotistic work ethic, the entire business culture became corrupt. One wonders if there is a pattern here.

Postcard from India

A nice little postcard from a Western traveler to India appeared in the comments the other day. Here it is: I spent a couple weeks in India 4 years ago and I completely agree with this post. The day I arrived I caught something (Delhi Belly) after drinking a fruit & ice blended drink and I was sick for a month. Guess why? Because there’s shit in the water they make ice out of. The cities smelled like shit, especially the areas where the fishermen lived. I nicknamed the harbor in Mumbai, which is called the Queen’s Necklace by locals, the Queen’s Toilet. The water was brown because it’s probably full of shit. Many buildings were literally crumbling with holes in the floor, but it was all normal to them. Whenever I meet an Indian hyping up the country and how it’s going to be the next China, I either point out that it’ll take a long long LONG time to make progress in that country, or I just politely agree because there’s no use arguing with someone who’s delusional and going to take your comments personally. My opinion as an educated man with many friends in the class of top 1. Seriously fights & punishes corruption and bribery (many friends’ families use government connections to gain advantages over business rivals and especially foreign investors/businesses, the rich also tout their position, net worth, and bureaucratic friends to threaten cops or other officials who would dare punish them for violating laws). 2. Invests in infrastructure – build sewers, clean the water, increases the building safety code and regulations. 3. Increases public education (many people lack analytical skills, the lower class basically has a slave mentality). 4. Put some of the many homeless to work cleaning up the streets – there’s too much garbage everywhere.

A Debate About Communism and Capitalism

Steve wrote:

‘The system is already killing at least 4 million and probably a lot more anyway.’ [citation needed] ??? ‘Communist countries have done great things as far as feeding and housing people, giving them basic education and health care and putting in essential sanitation. India has failed at all of these things, mostly because they haven’t even tried.’ North Korea- questionable on health care and food sufficiency. Cuba- I don’t know much about Cuba, but the life expectancy is slightly higher than the US and people are well fed, so it must be doing something right. U.S.S.R.- sure it achieved those things but it was poor, and they only managed the basics. Compare it to the western half of Europe. China- I might address that on the other post. In any case, supposing you have a generally good point, I’d still say so what? Capitalist countries have achieved those things too. Europeans achieved all those things on both sides of the divide. The question is would a Communist government achieve them in India? India is not Europe or North East Asia. It is a tropical, caste ridden country with rampant corruption. Oh…watch the bodies pile up as they try to stamp out caste. ‘As they became more capitalist, they became much more corrupt.’ Really? I don’t know how you would measure it or prove that but I don’t think it is controversial to say that there was plenty of corruption in Soviet Union. And do you think Indian officials/politicians/police will stop being corrupt because they are communist? Really? “There won’t be any “economic development that will eventually lift millions of out poverty.” It’s not going to happen under neoliberalism. Don’t you ever get tired of neoliberals telling us to wait around for the “economic development that will eventually lift millions of out poverty?” Don’t you realize that under neoliberal capitalism reduction of poverty is a goal that has zero value, and I do mean zero value.” Economic growth is already happening in India. The economy will keep growing, as long as there isn’t a big war or global financial collapse or something. As the economy grows, the small middle class will grow and per capita incomes will rise generally. Incomes are already higher than in sub Saharan Africa. (The malnutrition is a separate problem related to Indian culture.) Income inequality is less in India than in China or America. Why won’t the economy keep growing? Maybe poverty reduction has no intrinsic value in capitalism but it happens anyway. It can anyway. If you are practical, the question is what will work? Compare North Korea to South Korea, Eastern Europe to Western Europe. And look at the Chinese economic growth in the past 30 years. It has been meteoric. The fastest industrial revolution in history. I only have to look at my own country and think of it 100 or 200 years ago. There was widespread poverty and squalor. People lived with terrible hardship. How did it get from that to this? This being high levels of development and widespread material wealth and comfort, probably unimaginable to my great great grand parents. Capitalism. Capitalism is better for economic development, or at least a strong element of capitalism. I’m not advocating libertarianism or neoliberalism. The public sector (in health care and education for example) and government regulations (like minimum wage, working hours etc) are important and have been important to my country. Capitalism must be harnessed. And poor countries must not be forced into structural adjustment policies. When capitalism is harnessed, it is more effective at providing economic growth and development than Communism, as it was in the 20th century. Let people get on with enterprising and they will produce growth. How big the public sector should be and what it should encompass is open for debate.

If the USSR is so poor and capitalism is so much better for Russia, why have only two republics recently surpassed the USSR in per capita income. Agricultural production is still far below the USSR. If capitalism is so much better for Russia, then why did the USSR produce more crops than Russia does now? The problem is you are comparing socialism to socialism. They haven’t had pure capitalism is Western Europe for many decades. You are comparing state socialism of the USSR with social democracy in Europe. They are both socialism – just different kinds. One would think that if a tropical country like China or Cuba could do great things, why wouldn’t India? India can’t even provide the basics for its people. I don’t give a flying fuck about “economic growth.” The capitalists have been saying sit back and watch the economic growth as the rising tide lifts all boats in trickle down, supply side economics forever now. The 3rd World has always been pure capitalist or colonialist, which was a form of mercantilism. When is it supposed to start working? When is capitalism in the 3rd World supposed to start working so this rising tide can lift all boats and raise everyone out of poverty? It hasn’t happened, and a lot of us are getting tired of waiting around. Poverty in the capitalist 3rd World is horrific, and capitalism has utterly failed to alleviate the problem in any way, shape or form. Yes, corruption skyrocketed as China, the CIS and Eastern Europe went to capitalism, and no, there was not a lot of corruption in the USSR or Eastern Europe compared to now. There is always vastly more corruption in a capitalist society than in a Communist one, and always far more crime too. Capitalism causes incredible amounts of crime and corruption. Neoliberalism only benefits the top 2 Why is this economic growth acceptable in China? Millions of people are dying every year in China from lack of health care. That wasn’t happening under Mao. Why is this ok? Why was it ok to shut down hundreds of thousands of schools. You realize that the privatization of health care and mass shutdown of schools all over China was part of Deng’s project that you are now cheering on? Why is that ok? Was it ok to do that just to get some “economic growth?” You know what? Fuck economic growth. If you have to kill millions every year and shut down hundreds of thousands of schools so tens of millions of children don’t even get a primary school education, why is that worth it? I say it’s not worth it! That so many live so well in the UK now is testament to social democracy. And keep in mind that the UK was a very socialist place until recently. The state even ran mines and all sorts of “commanding heights of the economy” type things. You argue for capitalism, but all over the world, the capitalists are all 10 The problem is that the only people who are advocating that capitalism should be harnessed in any whatsoever area us socialists. Almost all capitalists agree that capitalism should not be harnessed in any way whatsoever. Capitalists are all radical neoliberal, neoclassical Libertarians. Almost all of them are. They all oppose regulation in any way, shape or form, and they always will. That’s why capitalism is unreformable. Anyway, hardly anyone on the Left is advocating USSR style Communism anymore anyway.

Check Out Torrese

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8SO6nOwJjw] Torrese is the Neapolitan dialect spoken on the Italian coast 10 miles southeast of Naples. This is a port city with a very unique dialect. The hardcore Torrese does not even appear to be completely intelligible in Torre del Greco 5 miles to the north or in Castellamare di Stabia 5 miles to the south. The video above, apparently from Naples TV, is making the rounds with Italians on Youtube, mostly because no one seems to be able to understand what these women are saying. For sure, this is one wild, over the top dialect all right. There are also a lot of comments about people who can’t even speak proper Italian, about low-class, slummy, scummy, uneducated people, and about the slums of Naples. It’s true that the Naples region has a lot of run-down housing, especially in suburbs. There is also a tremendous amount of corruption, and the Camorra, or the local Mafia, is simply everywhere. They have even heavily infiltrated the police. For a while there, trash was piling up all over Naples because no one wanted to collect the garbage.There is not a lot of random violent crime, but there is a lot of property crime. Be careful even parking your car on the streets. The women in the video are apparently complaining about cockroaches in their building. They appear to be saying that they are as big as rats, which is dubious. The “Southern Question” has long been a problem of Italian politics. It’s a question that is heavily tinged with the racism that Northern Italians feel towards Southern Italians. A frequent comment, along the lines of “Africa begins at the Pyrenees,” is, “Africa begins in Naples.” Northern Italians often say that Naples is part of Africa. Southerners are said to be criminal, rude, belligerent, hot-tempered, violent, corrupt, stupid, uneducated and poor. In addition, they can’t even speak proper Italian. Drawing a line at where the South begins is difficult, but an argument can even be made that Abruzze is southern in culture. Where Rome fits is anyone’s guess. Perhaps a more proper division is North, Center and South Italy. The Southern Question shows no sign of resolution in my lifetime.

Alt Left: India: Hell on Earth

Here is an excellent piece about India that I got from an internet site. The author is unknown, but he may be a Dalit or low caste Indian. It sums up why India is such a Hellhole – Indians created it that way.

We had a commenter on here called Dota, an Indian Muslim who hates India way more than I do. He fled to Canada. He recently said that India is Hell, and its people are the scum of humanity. That’s a hard-hitting thing to say, but is it true? He lived there for many years and I did not.

It does appear that Indian society and culture itself is at the core of India’s problems, and I can’t help but think that the religion of Hinduism is a big part of the country’s problems. As Dota says, of all religions, Hinduism cares about people the least. A shocking statement, but is it true?

In another comment, I talked about the hundreds of millions of people starving, diseased, shitting outdoors and living in the streets or fetid slums of India. According to Dota, Indian elites feel that the Indian poor living and dying in Hell that is India deserve everything they get up to and including death. That’s why there’s so little effort to fix up the mess – the poor deserve their fate. They even deserve to die. A frightening remark again, but what if it is true?

And once again, this belief seems to circle back around to Hinduism once again. The Hindu religion seems to be at the very heart and core of India’s Hell on Earth.

Why Do 1 Million Indians Flee India Every Year?

Any crackdowns on illegal immigrants or restricting quotas abroad to Indians are a major concern to India’s politicians. The latest statistics from the US Department of Homeland Security shows that the number of Indian illegal migrants jumped 12

Here are some Indian facts:

Poverty Graph

According to the WFP, India accounts around 5

Around six out of 10 Indians live in the countryside, where abject poverty is widespread. 34.

The Current Account Balance of India

A major area of vulnerability for us is the high consolidated public-debt to GDP ratio of over 7

says the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Mr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy.

According to the CIA World Factbook, the current account balance of India is -$375.1 trillion (minus) while China is the wealthiest country in the world with $426.1 trillion (plus). India listed at 182 and China at 1 [CIA: The World Factbook].

Human Development vs GDP growth

The Human Development Report for 2009 released by the UNDP ranked India 134 out of 182 countries based on measures of life expectancy, education, and income. India has an emigration rate of 0.

Population

According to the Indian census of 2001, the total population was 1.028 billion. Hindus numbered 827 million or 80.

Thus the caste system leaves lower caste Hindus as an oppressed majority in India’s power structure. Going by figures quoted by the Backward Classes Commission, Brahmins alone (

The 2004 World Development Report mentions that more than 2

Living Conditions of Indians

8

According to National Family Health Survey data (2005-06), only 4

Education

India has over 3

About 40 million primary school-age children in India are not in school. More than 9

While Japan has 4,000 universities for its 127 million people, and the US has 3,650 universities for its 301 million, India has only 348 universities for its 1.2 billion people. In the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities by Institute of Higher Education published by Shanghai Jiao Tong, only two Indian Universities are included.

Even the two much-ballyhooed IIT’s in India found only a lower worldwide slot (203 and 304) in the 2007 report. Although Indian universities churn out three million graduates a year, only 1

Health

India today allocates lower than

107,000 leprosy patients live in India. 15.

There are only 585 rural hospitals compared to 985 urban hospitals in the country. Out of the 6,39,729 doctors registered in India, only 67,576 are in the public sector, and the rest are either in the private sector or abroad. According to a survey by NSSO (National Sample Survey Organization), 4

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in India. India accounts for one-fifth of the global TB incident cases. Each year about 1.8 million people in India develop TB, of which 0.8 million are infectious cases. It is estimated that  330,000 Indians die from TB every year [WHO India].

Economy under Siege by Elite Hindus

In India, the wealth of 36 families amounts to $191 billion, which is one fourth of India’s GDP. In other words, 35 elite Hindu families own one quarter of India’s GDP by leaving 8

The dominant group of Hindu nationalists come from the three upper castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas) that constitute only 1

India is also one of the most under-banked major markets in the world, with only 6 bank branches per 1,000 sq. kms., according to the World Bank, and less than 3

Corruption

According to TI, 2

Corruption is a large tax on Indian growth; it delays execution, raises costs, and destroys the moral fiber

says Prof. Rama Murthi. Transparency International estimates that Indian truckers pay something in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually in bribes to keep freight flowing. According to Rahul Gandhi, only

Discrimination Against Dalits

Crime against Dalits occur every 20 minutes in India. Every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit houses are burnt down! These figures represent only a fraction of the actual number of incidents, since many Dalits do not register cases for fear of retaliation by the police and upper caste Hindus.

Official figures show that there are still 343 million manual scavengers in India from the Dalit community. More than 165 million Dalits in India are abused by their Hindu upper castes due to their birth [HRW Report 2007].

Human Rights

When it comes to human rights issues in India, it has not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, and its citizens do not have the opportunity to find recourse in remedies that are available under international law. The victims are trapped in the local Hindu caste system, which in every aspect militates against their rights.

India has a very poor record of protecting the privacy of its citizens, according to the latest report from Privacy International (PI). India scored 1.9 points, which makes it an ‘extensive surveillance society’. A score between 4.1 and 5.0 (the highest score) would mean a country consistently upholds human rights standards. PI is a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations.

Fake encounter killings are rampant in India. These extrajudicial killings are inspired by the theological texts of the Brahmins such as Artha Shastra and Manusmriti which teach espionage and torture methods. Every such killing of an innocent person branded a terrorist has encouraged the killer cops to target socially excluded communities like Dalits, tribals, and minorities.

India’s intelligence agencies like IB, RAW, etc. seem to be thoroughly infiltrated by foreign secret services which support powerful weapon-producing nations. Formed in 1947, IB is engaged in wiretapping, spying on political opponents, and sometimes indicting people on false criminal charges. The IB also has files on numerous authors, bloggers, and media persons.

According to the National Human Rights Commission, as of 30th June 2004, there were 3,320,112 prisoners in Indian jails, out of which 2,390,146 were awaiting trial. More than 7

The bar association in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, has refused to represent 13 Muslim suspects accused of bombing courthouses in 2005. A large percentage of Indian police officers, attorneys, and judges appear regularly at events organized by notorious Hindu militant groups.

India is a parliamentary democracy, but nevertheless, it is not exactly a fully free society. The human rights group Freedom House ranks India as a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 the highest) for political rights and 3 for civil liberties. Elections are generally free, but, notes Freedom House,

Government effectiveness and accountability are also undermined by pervasive criminality in politics, decrepit state institutions, and widespread corruption.

The State Department observes:

There were numerous reports that the government and its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and insurgents, or staged encounter deaths.

Minorities

About 2

According to Mr. Tahir Mahmood, an Indian Muslim journalist,

The 2.

Discrimination Against Minority Muslims

Recently, Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report admitted that 138 million Muslims across India are severely underrepresented in government employment, including Public Sector Units. Ironically, West Bengal, a communist-ruled state, reported no Muslims in higher positions in its PSU’s! The share of Muslims in government  and the lower judiciary in any state simply does not come anywhere close to their population share.

The only place where Muslims can claim a share in proportion to their population is in prison! Muslims represent 19.

A Muslim child attends school for three years and four months, compared to the national average of four years. Less than

There is a need to re-orient official strategies for ensuring better access of Muslim children to schooling outside the madrassas which cater to only

Discrimination in Media

Hindu upper caste men, who constitute just

The Hindu Other Backward Class groups, who are 3

Discrimination in the Judiciary

India’s subordinate courts have a backlog of over 22 million cases, while the 21 high courts and the Supreme Court have 3.5 million and 32,000 pending cases (2006) respectively. In subordinate courts, over 15 million cases are filed and an equal number disposed of annually by about 14,000 judges! Every year a million or more cases are added to the arrears. At the current speed, the lower courts will need 124 years to clear the backlog. There are only 13 judges for every million people.

Recently a parliamentary committee blamed the judiciary for keeping out competent persons of downtrodden communities “through a shrewd process of manipulation.” Between 1950 to 2000, 4

Dalits and Indian aborigines make up less than 20 out of 610 judges working in Supreme Court and state high courts.

This nexus and manipulative judicial appointments have to be broken

the report urged. [Parliamentary Standing Committee Report on Constitutional Review, Sudarshan Nachiappan]. Among 12 states with high Muslim populations, Muslim representation in the judicial sector was limited to 7.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only 3

Discrimination Against Children

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, India has the highest number of street children in the world. There are no exact numbers, but conservative estimates suggest that about 18 million children live and labor in the streets of India’s urban centers. Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta each have an estimated street children population of over 100,000. The total number of child laborers in India is estimated to be 60 million.

The level of child malnutrition in India is among the highest in the world, higher than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, says the report Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition in India by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. While around 2

A quarter of all neonatal deaths in the world (2.1 million) occurred in India, says the UNICEF Report 2007. More than one in five children in the world who die within four weeks of birth is an Indian. Nearly 5

Discrimination Against Women

According to the 2001 census, female literacy in India is 54.1

There are an estimated 40 million Hindu widows in India, and the least fortunate of them are shunned and stripped of the life they lived when they were married. It’s believed that 15,000 widows live on the streets of Vrindavan, a Hindu holy city of about 55,000 population in northern India.

Many widows – at least 4

Nearly 9 out of 10 pregnant women suffer from malnutrition, about half of all children (4

Nearly 2

On average, one Indian woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. In an Indian marriage, the woman should bring jewelry, cash, and even consumer durables as part of dowry to the in-laws. If they fail bring enough valuables, the victims are burnt to death – doused in kerosene and set on fire. The in-laws routinely claim that the death happened due to an accident.

Rape is the fastest growing crime in India. Every hour, Indian women suffer two rapes, two kidnappings, four sexual assaults, and seven incidents of husband- and relative-instigated cruelty [National Crime Records Bureau Report 2006].

Fetus Killing

The female to male birth ratio was feared to reach 20:80 by the year 2020 as female fetus killing is rampant. Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either just before they were born or immediately after, the Indian Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury related to Reuters.

According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys. The availability of ultrasound sex determination tests leads to mass abortions in India.

Around 11 million abortions are carried out in India every year, and nearly 80,000 women die during the process, says a report from the Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI).

Human Trafficking

Out of the 593 districts in India, 378 or 62.

9

Of the total women who are involved in sex work in the country, 6

India has 4 million prostitutes nationwide, and 6

High Crime Rate and Communal Riots

India reported 32,481 murders, 36,617 molestation cases 19,348 rapes, and 7,618 dowry deaths in 2006. NCRB found that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes (1,940,711), followed by Maharashtra (1,910,788), Andhra Pradesh (1,730,909), Tamil Nadu (1,480,972), and Rajasthan (1,410,992) during 2006. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 1,822,602 riots in 2005 alone [Incidence Of Cognizable Crimes (IPC) Under Different Crime Heads,  Page 2, NCRB website].

On average there are more than 2,000 kidnappings per year in India. Under India’s notorious caste system, upper caste Hindus inherit key positions and control all the governmental branches. Violent crime goes largely goes unpunished due to the support of upper caste crooks.

Economic Crimes

Economic crime continues to be pervasive threat for Indian companies, with 3

* Corruption and bribery continue to be the most common types of fraud, reported by 2 * The average direct financial loss to companies was INR 60 Million (US $1.5 million) during the two year period. In addition, the average cost to deal with economic crime in India is INR 40 Million (US $1 Million), which is close to double that of the global and Asia Pacific average. * In 3 * In 5

Armed Conflicts in India

Almost every state has separatist movements, many of them armed.

A large number of Muslims were killed in the past few years across the country, and the numbers are on a steady rise.

On top of that, India has become a pariah for its neighbors. None of its neighbors appreciate their closeness to India, and they all blame it for meddling in their affairs.

6

According to an Indian official report, 165 of India’s 602 districts – mostly in Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh – are badly affected by tribal and Dalit violence, which the government terms “Maoist terror”.

India’s military spending was recorded at US $21.7 billion in 2006, and it planned to spend $26.5 billion during 2008/09 financial year. 8

India experienced a rapid increase in demand for security in the period following the Mumbai attacks, thanks to the world’s weapon industry! India is now one of the world’s most terror-prone countries, with a death toll second only to Iraq, says a report from the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington.

India’s crime rates, already some of the highest in the world, are also rising, as is the incidence of corporate espionage. Approximately 5.5 million private security guards are employed by about 15,000 security companies in India. As an industry, it is now the country’s largest corporate taxpayer [CAPSI report].

In 2005, Business Week reported that India became the largest importer of Israeli weapons, accounting for about half of the $3.6 billion in weapons exported by the Jewish state.

Do remember that 34 years ago, NSG was created by Americans? Hence it has been their onus to convince the group to grant the waiver to India to carry out the multi-billion dollar business as India is a large market,

said former Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Mr P. K. Iyengar.

The Booming Industry of Terrorism Experts and Security Research Institutes in India

With the emergence of Hindutva fascist forces and their alliance with neocons and Zionists, India witnessed a sharp increase in the number of research institutes, media houses, and lobbying groups. According to a study by the Think Tanks & Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, India has 422 think tanks, second only to the US, which has over 2,000 such institutions.

Out of 422 recognized Indian think tanks, around 63 are engaged in security research and foreign policy matters, which are heavily funded by global weapons industry. India’s retired spies, police officers, military personnel, diplomats, and journalists are hired by these national security and foreign policy research institutes which get enormous funds from the global weapons industry.

These institutions in fact have a hidden agenda. Behind the veil, they work as the public relations arm of weapon industry. With the help of their media and intelligence wings, they create fake terror stories and exaggerated crime waves the areas of tribal, Dalit, and minority areas in order to get public acceptance for weapon contracts.

By creating conflicts in this India, Brahmin spin masters get huge commissions from the sale of weapons to government forces. To these corrupt bureaucrats, India’s ‘national interest‘ simply means ‘their self interest’. Their lobbying power bring more wealth to their families via lucrative jobs, citizenship in rich countries, and educational opportunities abroad.

India is one of the world’s largest weapons importers. Between 2000 and 2007, India was ranked the world’s second largest arms importer, accounting for 7.

Over 1,130 companies in 98 countries manufacture arms, ammunition, and components. 9

The Defense Offset Facilitation Agency estimated that India will spend $100 billion importing weapons in the next five years. At least 38 court cases relating to arms agreements are still pending against bureaucrats and military officers. Hindu fascist forces currently enjoy the upper hand in the media, civil service, judiciary, defense, and education of Indian society.

Sooner or later, the 25,000-strong democratic institutions in India will collapse, and the country will be transformed into a limited democracy under the rule of a security regime like Turkey or Israel. The Hindutvas’ security-centric nationalism was never capable of bringing peace and protection to ordinary citizens.

According to Global Peace Index, India is currently ranked near the bottom (122 with 2.422 score). Interestingly, India’s top weapons supplier, Israel, is among the world’s worst performers when it comes to peace ranking (141). It remains a simple fact that peace cannot be attained by a sophisticated security apparatus.

Furthermore, India topped Asian Risk Prospects 2009 with the highest political and social risk, scoring 6.87, mainly because of internal and external instability (PERC).

Suicides of Farmers and the Collapse of the Agricultural Sector

In the last two years, more than 218,000 people across India committed suicide, mainly due to poverty, family feuds, strained relationships with loved ones, dowry harassment, and health problems. In research by the Indian National Crime Records Bureau, there were 118,112 and 100,000+ suicides in 2005 and 2006 respectively. Aside from farmers, women also have a high suicide rate.

Most of those who committed suicide were farmers, and the victims took their lives either by hanging or ingesting poison. Since 1998, about 25,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide because they could not repay their debts. These debts, however, have largely accumulated because these farmers were severely overcharged by moneylenders, who demand up to 3

7

7

Unemployment

Retail trade employs

Call centers and other outsourced businesses such as software coding, medical transcription, and back-office tasks employ more than 1.6 million people in India, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Heart disease is projected to account for 3

Internal Migration and Influx to the Cities

There are 5 million living on the streets of Mumbai every night, covered only in newspaper

says Dr. Werner Fornos, president of the Global Population Education think tank and the former head of the Population Institute in Washington, D.C.

India is spending more than $400 million (£200m) to polish Delhi’s image as a first-rate capital, a difficult task for a city that seems to exist between the First and Third worlds. A third of the capital’s 14 million-plus people live in teeming slums. According to crime statistics, in 2006, Delhi continued to be the undisputed crime capital of the country, a position it held for the previous 5 years in a row. 35 mega-cities in India collectively reported a total of 3,26,363 crimes in 2006, an increase of 3.

For the third year in a row, Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore together accounted for more than one-third of all crimes reported in Indian cities of over 1 million population.

India, a Closed Country

India’s share of the world tourism map has hovered between .3

Indian immigration policies do not welcome tourists. On VISA requirement and T&T index scales for how hard it is to visit a country, India ranked 106 while Malaysia ranked 15. VOA facilities are not available to anyone. The easiest entry to India is typically limited to countries with considerable Hindu populations like Mauritius or Nepal.

The Hindu elite leaders of the country are always more concerned about India’s physical boundaries and its holy cows rather than the life of its poor, 8

Indian Embassies are rated as the worst on Earth. They are notorious for red tape and “corruption- friendly service,” a complaint repeatedly made even by Non Resident Indians themselves. 9

Global Warming Effects on India

Water tables are dropping in those regions where farmers are lucky enough to have wells, and rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable. Economic losses due to global warming in India are projected at between 9-2

The frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal will increase. Cases of malaria will increase to the point where it will become endemic in many more states. There will be a 2

India got the most foreign aid for natural disaster relief in two decades, obtaining 43 such loans totaling $8.257 billion from World Bank alone, beating even Bangladesh, and now has the 2nd highest World Bank loan figure in the world.

Transportation

Despite the much-touted economic boom, only .

China has built over 34,000 km of expressways compared to less than 8,000 km in India.

According to Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM), nearly 42 million man-hours are lost every month by the delays from 7 million-odd working population of Delhi and NRC who take the public transport to travel to work because of traffic congestion during the peak morning and evening hours.

Road Safety

India accounts for about 1

An estimated 1,275,000 persons are badly hurt on the road every year. The Government of India’s Planning Commission has estimated there are 15 hospitalized injuries and 70 minor injuries for every road death.

According to NATPAC, the number of accidents per 1,000 vehicles in India is as high as 35, while the figure ranges from 4 to 10 in developed countries. An estimated 270 people die each day from road accidents, and specialists predict that will increase by roughly

According to World Bank forecasts, India’s road death rate will continue to rise until 2042 if no remedial action is taken. In contrast, the number of road accidents in China dropped by an annual average 10.

Doing Business in India

It takes 50 days to register a property in India compared to less than 30 days in China and less than 10 in the United States and Thailand. The average cost of a business start-up is over 6

India has the highest cost of electricity among major industrialized and emerging economies ($.8 per kwh for industry as against $.1 kwh in China), or in other words, a quarter of the gross electricity output, the result being the highest transmission and distribution losses in the world.

Transport costs are very high in India. They account for 2

Foreign Remittance from Non Resident Indians

In 2006, India received $27 million in remittances national overseas workers, the highest amount globally. Around $20 billion of this came from the Gulf expatriate workforce. Together, GCC countries are the largest trading partner of India, and home to 5 million members of India’s overseas workforce.

Nearly three million people in Africa are of Indian ancestry. The top three countries with the largest populations of Indians in that region are South Africa, Mauritius, and the Reunion Islands. Indians also have a sizable presence in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania in the East Africa and Nigeria in West Africa.

Foreigners Living in India

Historically, about 7

Under the current scenario, potential migrants or ‘invaders’ to India include a few ‘hired or weird’ Pakistani bombers, villagers from around India’s border with Bangladesh, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, and prostitutes from Nepal. The 92 year old Indian painter Maqbool Fida Hussain lives in Dubai after receiving death threats from Hindu militants.

According to Hindu extremists, Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin has passed all the tests for Indian citizenship. On the other hand, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, the Christian widow of Rajiv Gandhi, is still considered to be a foreigner, while Pakistan-born Hindu Lal Krishna Advani is ‘legally and morally fit’ to become India’s next Prime Minister.

Leave India!

Sixty years ago Indians asked the British to get out of India. Now they are doing it themselves. To live with dignity and enjoy relative freedom, one has to leave India! With this massive exodus, what will be left behind will be a violently charged and polarized society.

The Hindutvadis’ Fake National Pride in India

A 2006 opinion poll by Outlook-AC Nielsen indicated that 4

Even Parliament members of the Hindutva party are involved in human trafficking from India. Recently, police arrested Babubhai Katara, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, who was part of such a racket. He received $20,000 per person to move his victims to the US.

When Indians are fleeing India to anywhere else in the world just to find a job, how can these Hindutva idiots claim any “National Pride of India”?

India is the World Bank’s largest borrower. In June 2007, it provided $3.7 billion in new loans to India. According to figures provided by Britain’s aid agency, the total aid to India from all sources is only $1.50 a head, compared with an average of $17 per head for low-income countries [Financial Times]. Due to the fake ‘Shining India’ propaganda launched by Hindutva idiots, foreign donors are reluctant to help the poor people in this country.

Gridlocked in corruption, greed, inhumanity, and absolute inequality of class, caste, wealth, and religion: this is the real India. Hindutva idiots, your false pride and antics embarrass us.

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The Venus Project

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRAHvtPkla0]

Or the Zietgeist Project, whichever you prefer.

Let me know what you think of this.

One problem I have with this project, though it is clearly in a Marxist, Communist, socialist and even technocratic vein, is that he attacks Communism and socialism the same as capitalism. But he repeats many things I have been saying on here for a long time, namely that a for-profit system will always result in massive corruption, grotesque abuse of consumers, workers and the environment, for what reason? Because that is the inherent nature of the system, that’s why!

Under a social democratic state, the state intervenes to protect consumers, workers and the environment from the massive and often deadly abuse that the capitalists will inflict on them in the name of profit-seeking.

However, under capitalism, it is normal for the capitalists to capture the state via their money power and money-based elections.

Further, the capitalists institute a Gramscian hegemony whereby they create millions of “little capitalists,” workers, consumers and environmentalists either bribed by money power or brainwashed into thinking that their capitalist enemies (and the workers, consumers, environment and society are always the necessary enemies of the capitalists under any normal working capitalist system) are actually their friends. These brainwashed fools work for their enemies and work against their own interests.

As such, it is difficult if not impossible to get a proper regulatory state under capitalism.

Instead, you end up with a Dictatorship of the Rich. The Rich and the corporations rule, and everyone else gets screwed. There are two or more wings of the single Rich-Corporate Party.

As Gore Vidal said, we have a single corporate party with two right wings. One of the right wings is called “left,” and the other is called “right.” It’s true that the Democrats are to the left of the Republicans, but both parties are on the right. The Democratic Party is a reactionary party. Barack Obama is a reactionary. Sure, he’s more “left” than the other reactionaries in the Republican Party, but he’s generally a reactionary nonetheless.

Sadly, this is because the American people themselves are fiercely reactionary. This opposes a historical trend in which the common working people are for progress, and it is the rich who are reactionaries in places where reform has taken place and conservatives in places where there has been no reform yet. There is never any reason for an ordinary working person to be a conservative or a reactionary. It is in direct opposition to their class interests, always and everywhere.

The Venus Project points out the obvious. Jacque Fresco notes that the company will always, always, do whatever is most profitable. It’s a law of capitalism. There is an interview with a corporate executive whose plant is pouring effluent into a river in New York. That river took centuries or millenia to create itself. Why do it? Because the most profitable thing to do for the company is to dump the effluent directly in the river.

A US company had a blood product that was contaminated with the AIDS virus. The US government, regulating in the interests of the people, stopped them from selling it to Americans. But the US state allowed them to sell it overseas because otherwise they would take a huge loss. Hundreds of maybe thousands of hemophliacs were infected with the product and many died. All so the company could make a profit.

The US government then intervened and tried to protect the company, negotiating a settlement with them so they would have to pay minimal fines. This is because the US state was a corporate controlled state. The corporations own the state.

The US is a corporate dictatorship. Corporations control both parties and hence control society itself.

Free Market Capitalism = Crony Capitalism

Uncle Milton argues, for the umpteeth time:

By definition free market capitalism is not crony capitalism…you could argue, probably with conviction, that there is no such thing as pure Free market capitalism (as there is basically no such thing as pure communism…) As I told you before the concept of free market capitalism came about as a counter to crony capitalism wherein the king (or whatever ruler…) would grant special favors to his cronies. As with any human endeavor it has it’s flaws and needs checks and balances.

The problem is that the laissez faire minus the crony capitalism has never happened anywhere on Earth that I am aware of. Someone clue me in? Laissez faire capitalism is always, or nearly always, crony capitalism. The state is the only thing to throw the criminals in jail, and laissez faire gets rid of the state. The checks and balances in Milton’s model do not exist because the state is gutted, deregulated and corrupted by money. The criminals themselves always seem to infest and corrupt what’s left of the laissez faire state. This pure, non-corrupt free market crap only works in textbooks and mathematical models.

Great News!

Now at least we don’t have to prosecute the scumbag. The only reason his Dad went to prison at all is because Bernie Boy stole from the rich, and rich Jews at that. You might be able to steal from rich people in the US, but the Hell you can steal from rich Jews. We know who runs this country. Bernie messed up by not stealing from the poor like all other rich Americans do. If he would have stolen from the poor instead of the rich, Madoff could have had a Cabinet position now if he wanted it.

Israel Controls US Mideast Foreign Policy

Lock, stock and barrel. At least under George Bush they did. Amazing article. I don’t believe everything there, especially the part about the US planning 9-11, but I believe much of the rest of it. One problem is that Gordon Duff is a first-class nutball, a crazy anti-Semite and conspiratorial anti-Zionist. He’s basically coming from Ziopedia territory. The Jews are behind everything, you know. However, assuming that this is a real source, this highly-placed person certainly has a lot of great information. It’s things like this that make me realize how great Wikileaks is. Wikileaks sheds light on this sickening government of ours and all their disgusting underhanded, lying, cheating, stealing crap.

The Chinese Pro-capitalist Reforms Are Crap

Regular reader AJ writes in:

What are your thoughts on all the people who say that the only reason China is getting stronger and richer is because they are Communist in name only, and have been moving closer and closer to capitalism?

They have nothing like capitalism at all. It’s a very mixed system that is what I call socialism. You really need to study the Chinese system. It’s not capitalism or anything like that. Anyone knows that capitalism potentially creates tremendous wealth and it beats socialism at creating wealth. But at what cost. Capitalism in China, especially the foreign firms (which are definitely capitalist!) is killing 600,000 Chinese a year through overwork alone. Corruption and mass abuse of workers and citizens is rampant, all due to the reforms. There was little to no abuse of workers before. Health care and education have been decimated by the reforms. The reforms are crap. All so they can get rich? Fuck that! I am convinced it does not have to be this way. Belarus is a good example of a country without much wealth that shows how you can protect the rights of workers, citizens and society and at the same time develop your economy. Venezuela is another good model.

What Has the Latin American New Left Accomplished?

Tulio wonders what good the Latin American Left has done down there. How bout we shoot the question back at him and ask what good the Latin American Right did for 190 years for the majorities? Answer: Zero.

But what have the results been? Has there been any meaningful progress that’s happened because of the rise of the left in Latin America that can be solely attributed to leftist economics and politics? I’m not here to attack the Latin left per se. I don’t mind them much so long as they aren’t on this hate America tip and blaming the United States for all their home grown problems e.g. Chavez. I’ve never heard any anti-American hate speech from Brazil, Argentina or Chile under Bachelet.The bottom line though is what have these left wing leaders actually done? Everything is still horribly corrupt, there’s still massive inequality, still no universal health coverage, millions still live in favelas, there’s still lots of crime in a place like Venezuela. So what is so great about these left-wing leaders? Great, so we will live in a country like Cuba where there’s socialism yet everyone is still poor. Whoopie do. And that’s the best latin socialism has to offer.

Not really. Chile and Costa Rica both have socialism (social democracy) and they have some pretty good figures on life expectancy, infant mortality and whatnot. Comparable to the US or even better, with much lower per capita income too. All Latin America has national health care last time I checked. Public hospitals are free, assuming they exist. There’s a lack of hospitals, doctors, medicine, etc, but in some places like Chile, Costa Rica or Trinidad and Tobago, public health care is pretty good. I doubt there is one country in Latin America that lacks free public health care. The US is pretty bizarre on world scale in lacking this. As far as favelas, I know Chavez has been on massive spree building public housing and renovating other housing, fixing streets, wiring up areas for electricity and running plumbing lines. And he’s done a lot of land reforms, breaking up large estates and giving them to small farmers and co-ops. He has opened a tremendous number of new hospitals and clinics, often staffed with Cuban doctors. He’s opened up new state markets where the poor can buy subsidized food for affordable prices instead of practically starving like they were 20 years ago, when 8 Crime is a long-term problem in Venezuela and the region, and it’s not Chavez’ fault. Corruption is a long-term problem in the region, due to Latino culture, and it will be there no matter what kind of regime is in. Chavez has reduced income inequality and poverty more than anyone else in the region. It’s great what Chavez is doing down there! Incredible! We don’t need Cuban socialism. Canadian socialism would be fine. Correa in Ecuador has done well, but he’s hampered by the oligarchy in what he can do. He threw the US out of the their Manta Military Base, he wrote a new Constitution and doubled health care spending. Ortega just got in, and he’s not pushing a strong program, plus the oligarchy is against him. Honduras had a coup. The FMLN just got in in El Salvador and is unfortunately pursuing a moderate agenda. However, the Civil War Accords already broke up the big land estates and distributed land to small farmers and co-ops, similar to the Mexican Revolution. Whatever other problems you have down there, at least you can grow enough food to eat. Brazil’s Lula reduced poverty dramatically there. Morales has done some good things for Bolivia, for one thing nationalizing the gas and oil reserves. He also wrote a new Constitution. Kirchener did a good job in Argentina. She blew off the debt. Her efforts at further reform have been hampered by the oligarchy. Lately, she’s been trying to break up the media oligopoly, but she’s running into a lot of static on that. Bachelet in Chile did not do much. She was not pushing a very Left agenda. The guy in Uruguay just got in and he’s a moderate. Lugos in in Paraguay is new too, and he’s pushing a moderate line. People pushing a moderate line are not likely to get much done, and in most cases, really good reforms to benefit the people have been hampered by the oligarchs. But these are the best changes your average person in Latin America has ever seen. What’s failed has been more or less 180 years of rightwing authoritarian oligarchic rule in the vast majority of Latin America. That’s what in general has never done the slightest damned thing for the people from Day One. People have had it with it, so they are starting to vote in some pro-people governments, in many places for the first time in history.

The Market Virus

Repost from the old site. In the comments section, huy notes that, while he is a social democrat, he still sings the praises of the free market system. He points out drug companies and IT as two great industries. I disagree: Private drug companies are evil! Have you ever seen a more horrid bunch of gangsters and criminals? Here in the US all the pharmaceutical companies are all just flat-out crooks. They keep harmful drugs on the market and refuse to pull them. The only way to pull them is to sue them over and over, and even when we do that, they still keep them on the market a lot of times. These people are just flat out murderers. And when they get too pissed about being sued, they get their bought and paid for Congressswine to legislate “tort reform”, which means no more suits. Or SLAPP suits, in which you get sued for suing the POS corporation! They fake their studies, lie on their data, and buy and pay for doctors to lie for them. The medical field is becoming seriously corrupted by the big money behind these scum companies, and the # of doctors going corrupt as a result is really frightening. It’s a serious problem as even our best medical journals are in danger of being corrupted. Furthermore, it has been conclusively proven that we pay much higher prices for the same drugs that other nations in the West get for much cheaper. What advantage do we get from these high prices? Much higher profits for drug companies on US sales! I’m sure your average US consumer is delighted by that! Or maybe, if his mind is truly market-infected, he is delighted by that. The IT companies? It’s hard to say. Microsoft is an illegal monopoly, was one, and will be one into the foreseeable future. It’s hard to imagine how much damage they have caused to computing. Intel has a monopoly on CPU’s with similar major issues for consumers, notably outrageously high prices and forced install of Intel chips by computer makers. On the ground, there is no competition in broadband. The glorious days of dialup competition are gone forever. You have the cable monopoly or the phone DSL monopoly. They are both evil, and neither has any competition but the other. The cable monopolies are not regulated at all, and cable is insanely overpriced. The phone monopolies are barely regulated at all anymore, but some are better than others. The worst of all are the huge ones like ATT, which desperately needs to be regulated. An unregulated private monopoly is pure evil and needs to be smashed or at least heavily regulated. Capitalism in the US has created a Gramscian hegemony whereby a vast number of folks identify with the capitalists and the market. Once you do that, all regulation and control by the state is out the window. Very rightwing capitalists own all of our media and use it try to slam pro-corporate, pro-monopoly lies into our heads 24-7. A lot of workers and consumers, especially once they start getting some money, “go corporate” in their minds and essentially support the whole human-hating, society-hating, worker-hating and consumer-hating agenda of the corporations. Our lack of government involvement in broadband and cell phones has meant that we spend outrageously high prices for junk service. Other nations have involved the state heavily in their cellular and broadband systems. They pay dramatically lower prices than we do and get dramatically faster speeds and more features. We’re sitting here in the US getting ruined because we worship these corporate pigs who are reaming us. Why? Because the ideology of “the market” has infected every aspect of American life. Even the people who should be protesting getting hammered by these corporations are singing their praises even while they are getting reamed. Their minds have been colonized by a virus. The market virus.

The Sierra Nevada Red Fox

Repost from the old site.

The Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulves vulpes necator) has been rediscovered around Sonora Pass on August 11, 2010.

It was spotted by a camera that had been set up to monitor other wildlife in an area where Yosemite National Park, the Stanislaus National Forest and the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest all come together. The sighting was actually on the Humboldt-Toiyabe, not on the Stanislaus as many news reports had it.

Part of the confusion may have been that the sighting was near the border between the Humboldt-Toiyabe and Stanislaus Forests. I know that the fox was not seen right at Sonora Pass. Instead, I believe it was spotted in the area to the south of the pass. I am guessing that it was seen near the Leavitt Creek area.

Saliva analysis on a sock filled with chicken parts at the bait station confirmed that it was a Sierra Nevada red fox, and that it had a rare genetic signature previously only seen in museum specimens from the 1920’s.

This is the first proof of the Sierra Nevada red fox outside the Lassen area in a very long time. It’s great news!

The only confirmed population is a tiny population of only 20 foxes in and around Lassen National Park where the Northern Sierra meets the Southern Cascades.

This area has historically seen more sightings around Lassen than any other part of California (sighting map for Northern California). This concentration is focused in Lassen, Tehama and Shasta Counties in and around Lassen Park. There have also been a few sightings in Modoc, Siskiyou and Trinity Counties.

The existence of the Sierra Nevada red fox has recently been confirmed by a team led by John Perrine of UC Berkeley. The team has located a small population of 20 Sierra Nevada red foxes existing in and around Lassen National Park in the Cascades Range. A later study proved that these were Sierra Nevada red foxes and not Eastern Red Foxes, which are abundant at the lower elevations in California.

A good description of the Lassen study, along with several rare photos of the foxes, can be found here. In the Sierras, the Sierra Nevada red fox was typically found at about 9,000 feet, with one record at 4,000, another at 5,500 and another at 7,000 feet. In the Cascades, they are usually found at around 6,000 feet, dropping down to 4,000 feet in the winter and moving up to 8,000 feet in the summer.

A report by the DFG in 1987 said the Sierra Nevada red fox was endangered, but noted that sightings continue in the rest of the Sierra Nevada outside the Cascades within the traditional range of the species.

I am aware of some recent sightings on the East side near Mammoth Mountain at high elevations.

They reportedly still exist in Mineral King south of Sequoia National Park.

In the same region, there have been a number of sightings in the Sagehen Road area near Olancha on the Inyo National Forest in the past 12 years. The sightings were at the 4-6,000 foot elevation. This is near the South Sierra Wilderness Area. Map here.

There was a reliable sighting in 1993 at Sequoia National Park.

There have been sightings of the Sierra Nevada red fox in the past 30 years on the Sierra National Forest. In 1971, a Sierra Nevada red fox was sighted at Florence Lake at about 9,000 feet. In 1973, there was a sighting at Soda Springs near Mammoth Pool Reservoir at 4,500 feet. In 1987, there was a sighting along Highway 168 between Auberry and Shaver Lake at about 4,300 feet, a very low elevation. In 1991, there was a sighting at Papoose Lake north of Lake Edison at about 10,390 feet.

There have also been a few sightings in Yosemite Valley in the past decade or so.

The last documented sighting of a Sierra Nevada red fox as near Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park in 1990. This sighting was verified via photograph. The fox was photographed in the middle of winter at about 9,000 feet.

On the Stanislaus, there have been a number of sightings around the Emigrant Wilderness, in particular something called the Waterhouse Wilderness Study Area on the northwest edge of the Emigrant Wilderness.

In Mono County, Sierra Nevada red foxes have been reported from Bridgeport Valley.

In Nevada County near Lake Tahoe, there is a sighting from 1994 along Highway 89 north of Truckee.

In addition to the Lassen area, there is also a recent sighting around Antelope Lake and around Lake Almanor and Jonesville on the Plumas National Forest.

There are recent sightings around Little Lake on the northern edge of the Lassen National Forest.

There are recent sightings around Mount Shasta and around Glass Mountain on the Klamath National Forest.

There are also recent sightings around the Trinity River near Mount Eddy on the northern edge of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

There is also a recent sighting near Canby on the Modoc National Forest.

Between 1940 and 1959, 135 Sierra Nevada red fox pelts were taken by trappers, an average of 7 per year. That number dropped to 2 per year from 1970-1974. The California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) banned all Sierra Nevada red fox trapping in 1974.

The Sierra Nevada red fox has declined drastically and desperately needs Endangered Species listing.

This cool paper by C. Hart Merriam shows that Sierra Nevada red foxes were formerly common at high elevations in the Mount Shasta area, that tracks were seen almost every day (!), but the foxes were very wary and never entered the traps the researchers had set. It is interesting that fishers were also present in this area at the time.

This report makes one wonder just what it is that has driven V. v. necator to near-extinction. I strongly suspect grazing.

One of the best historical sources on the Sierra Nevada red fox is this chapter from Joseph Grinnell’s hard-to-find Furbearers of California from 1937. One thing it makes clear is that the Sierra Nevada red fox was much more common in the first four decades of the century than it is now. You can view it here.

At the time of Grinnell’s writing, this fox was preying heavily on Sierra Nevada snowshoe hares and White-tailed hares, both of which are now pretty rare in the Sierras. I wonder if that is related to their decline? The decline of the White-tailed hare in the Sierra, formerly common on the East Side, is related exclusively to grazing.

All high-elevation grazing needs to be banned from the Sierra, as it is a catastrophe. Cows do not belong in high elevation meadows. We can start by getting rid of grazing in wilderness areas (Allowing grazing in wilderness areas was the only way that the Wilderness Act of 1964 could be passed).

I am not impressed with the ability of the US Forest Service to preserve wildlife in general, not to mention sensitive or endangered species. I spent years monitoring the Sierra National Forest, and the workers I met with were some of the most corrupt and dishonest people I have ever dealt with.

The mentality was devoted to resource extraction, and even wildlife biologists, botanists and fisheries specialists routinely issued “no significant harm” findings on virtually every single Environmental Assessment Report I saw.

Even less impressive is the CDFG, though at least their heads were in the right place. Individuals working with the DFG are good people, but the Commission is run by political clowns.

There are all sorts of species that need to be listed as threatened or endangered, but the DFG has hardly made even one such listing in the last decade. The DFG has been routinely denying petitions to list any species as threatened or endangered for a decade or so now.

Further, there are questions about how much a CA T& E designation even helps a species, as the DFG seldom intervenes to help even the species they have listed as T & E.

In the early 1990’s, the CA DFG produced some excellent volumes – Reptiles and Amphibians of Special Concern in California by Mark Jennings, Fish of Special Concern in California by Peter Moyne and Threatened and Endangered Species of California.

The reports by Jennings and Moyne listed numerous species that should be listed as species of special concern, threatened or endangered. To my knowledge, 15 years later, not a single one has been listed. A prime example is that the Sierra Nevada red fox, which the DFG even admitted in 2004 was critically endangered, is still listed as “threatened” instead of “endangered”.

Even a petition to uplist it will surely be denied. The game here has been to devastate the DFG with budget cuts, even during times when the state is flush with cash. Then the DFG gets to say that they don’t have any money to list any new species. Cool game, huh?

It seems every year, the DFG gets hammered with new budget cuts, and in lush years, the money never gets reinstated. Any environmentalist who is a fiscal conservative needs to have their head examined.

The FS complains of budget cuts too, but in contrast they are actively hostile to the environment. When I was monitoring them, their whole agenda was to let grazing and logging go on to the greatest extent possible and to deny all negative impacts on the environment of such.

Go into a local FS office and the whole place, even the wildlife biologists, is avidly listening to Rush Limbaugh! Most of them, including once again wildlife biologists who supposedly believe in evolution, are members of fundamentalist churches! Go figure.

Such is the state of things in the supposedly pro-environment US. Large majorities support the environmentalist agenda, but of course the Republicans and incredibly even the Clintonista triangulating Democrats are both very hostile to the environment. There is no logical reason for either party, especially the Democrats, to take this stance.

The only explanation is that both parties are dedicated to the corporate and pro-business agenda, and the entire rest of the population, even if that means 55-9

References

CDFG. 1987. Sierra Nevada Red Fox: Five-year Status Report. California Department of Fish and Game, Sacramento, California, USA.

Grinnell, Joseph. 1924. Animal Life in the Yosemite. Berkeley: University of California Press, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Kucera, T. E. 1995. Recent Photograph of a Sierra Nevada Red Fox. California Fish and Game 81:43-44.

Merriam, Clinton Hart. 1899. Results of a Biological Survey of Mount Shasta, California. Washington D.C.: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Biological Survey.

Perrine, J. D., J. P. Pollinger, B. N. Sacks, R. H. Barrett, and R. K. Wayne. 2007. Genetic Evidence for the Persistence of the Critically Endangered Sierra Nevada Red Fox in Northern California. Conservation Genetics 8:1083-1095.

Southern California Edison Company. 2001. Final Technical Study Plan Package (FTSPP) for the Big Creek Hydroelectric Projects (FERC Project Nos. 67, 120, 2085, and 2175). Terrestrial Resources – Chapter 13 – Mesocarnivores. Rosemead, CA.

Wildlife Conservation Board. 2002. Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Americas, Animals, California, Canids, Carnivores, Corruption, Cows, Democrats, Domestic, Endangered Species, Environmentalism, Fish, Foxes, Government, Law, Local, Mammals, North America, Politics, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, Reptiles, Republicans, Sierra Nevada Red Fox, US Politics, USA, West, Wild3 Comments on The Sierra Nevada Red Fox

Wikipedia Jews Again

Repost from the old site.

Looks like some of the Wikipedia Jews are operating out of Israeli government computers and the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. Well, I guess Wikipedia has really hit the bigtime when the diplomats and spy-types start trying to write it.

This blog has obtained a secret copy of emblem of the Wikipedia Jews, used by them in internal communications via instant messenger and email to ward off spies and infiltration attempts. They make sly references to this motif throughout their communications with each other. This is the first publication of the cabal’s secret sign, and hopefully it will stimulate further research into the workings of this very secret and devious cabal.

Even read Thomas Pynchon’s book The Crying of Lot 49? It’s quite difficult to read, but if you’re smart, you can handle it.

I feel it deals with Information Theory. Supposedly Information Theory is this, but my take on that is, “He who controls information, controls the world”. Right?

Well, that’s what’s up with the Israeli government rewriting Wikipedia. Supposedly other governments are doing this too. Only problem: it’s against Wikipedia’s mission and policy of being an unbiased (LOL!) encyclopedia. So, really, it’s not ok. Wikipedia’s not ok either, but neither is government encyclopedia manipulation.

The comments are really interesting too. Lots of Zionist Jews chiming in with the usual crap, excuses and lines.

Everyone does it.

That’s one of their favorites, from murder to spying to this or that or anything.

The Palestinian propaganda network is just as bad, if not worse.

ROTF.

I used to hear this one all the time in the Middle East Usenet groups. Zionist Jews have this peculiar notion that there is this vast worldwide Palestinian or pro-Palestinian network that almost controls the world’s press. Sort of like the Protocols of the Elders of Palestine or something.

It’s complete crap.

The Palestinians have nothing, just some terrorists ramming dozers into pedestrian vehicles – the latest attack – 3 dead, 70 wounded – is another Hezbollah revenge attack for the Mossad killing Mughniyeh. I knew Hez would make Israel pay for that. And crappy rockets that don’t even shoot straight.

I’ve been on Wikipedia and edited articles on Israel and Palestine in a completely fair manner, usually using the Israeli government’s own statistics to rewrite articles. I was more or less alone in this endeavor. All who went before me were thrown off Wikipedia.

For this crime, I was put on a neo-Nazi list by the Wikipedia Jews and their buddies like this twit Chip Berlet, had 10

That Berlet twerp is in very tight with the top Wikipedia leadership, and seems to work very closely with Ape Foxman, I mean Abe Foxman, of the spies and thugs of the ADL.

Berlet seems to specialize in finding “rightwing” movements where none can be seen for miles, and in finding all manner of “anti-Semitism” that often never seems to exist either. The man’s got quite an imagination. Lately, he’s been working on the Jewish Lobby or Israeli Lobby thingie. There is no such thing, you know, sez Chip. And if you mention it, you’re an anti-Semite. Neener neener.

Chip also insists that the US is in the midst of some sort of White nationalist and anti-Semitic seizure exemplified by fascist White racist thugs running amok on the streets destroying everything gay and non-White. There’s a few of these guys around, but if I were a gay or non-White, I’d rather worry about lightning, heart disease or car accidents. US neo-Nazism is a comically minor movement with almost no support.

Since these Wikipedia toads banned me, I have received repeated letters from editors who tried to put a bit of fairness into articles on the Middle East conflict on Wikipedia. Everyone I talked to was in the process of being taken out by the Wikipedia Jews. Last time I checked, the Wikipedia Jews and their buds were in firm control over anything Jewish or Israeli-related on Wikipedia.

Yeah, Wikipedia’s a hotbed of pro-Palestinian propaganda. Snark.

Amazing the crap some folks believe. Almost like they live in some Matrix reality.

Article written by Charles Levinson, an Jewish American journalist based in Cairo and Baghdad since 2002 and in Jerusalem since 2006. Charles did a great job here. Shout out!

The Wikipedia Jews, 2010 Update

A commenter disputes my notion that Wikipedia is still seriously Jew-fucked by the Wikipedia Jewish Cabal.

Here is my original, and actually now famous, article on the subject: Wikipedia, Ziopedia or Judeopedia?. The wildly anti-Semitic site Ziopedia actually was inspired to take its name from that article.

Your experiences on Wikipedia sound like they sucked, but I think you are too hasty on exiting the battleground and dismissing Wikipedia as impossibly Jew-corrupted.The fact is, for heavily trafficked articles subject to heavily ideological warfare from all sides, over 9

As you know, fights in Wikipedia are long and slow battles of attrition fought mainly on talk pages and through committees. You have to play the game and compromise to get anything done (sort of like real-life politics).

Maybe things have gotten better since I wrote that in April 2006, 4 1/2 years ago. But I doubt it. It’s not true that most articles are huge edit-wars. Most of Wikipedia is fair. There are tons of cabals always trying to get formed, and there actually exist all sorts of cabals, usually nationalist ones, on Wikipedia. But most don’t get anywhere because the admins stop them dead in their tracks via fairness. But for some reason, the Libertardian, Jew and Hindutva Cabals have been able to run amok, probably because Jimbo and his admin pals sympathize with them.

Everyone who was in my boat also got thrown off Wikipedia and banned by the Wiki Jews. I looked into it. It’s a tight cabal, but the group is not large, only 25-30. Also the Wiki Jews deviously sneaked some of their own people into the top echelons of Wikipedia, like admins, etc. Those admins would always side with the Jews on the bans. Also, the Gentiles on Wiki are mostly insanely Judeophilic. Jimbo himself is wildly Zionist and gives speeches before big Jewish groups. He should just convert already. Also, there were a few Gentiles in the Wiki Jew Cabal. One is called Slim Virgin.

I checked back a couple years later and they were still in firm control. Also they had thrown off almost all of the strong pro-Pallie types.

The reverts those shits do was just flat out fuckin vandalism. I changed a lot of their fucked up lie data, using the IDF’s own surveys. This was on pages called Terrorism Against Israelis. Their figures were all lies. I contradicted them via the IDF’s own stuff. I spent hours and hours doing it, and it was all reverted instantly with no debate. I tried to comment, but my comments were immediately deleted or no one would respond to me. Soon after, I was put on a Wikipedia Neo-Nazi List, and soon I was indicted on fake charges and all of my edits were stopped.

I did factual edits on many other subjects before the Jew thing, and they all stayed. Then the evil Wiki Jew Scum went back to all my non-Jewish shit that I worked on for months and reverted all of it out of sheer vandalism. Next they launched fake charges against me to run me up against one of their Wiki Jew Kangaroo Courts. That’s when I posted my Fuck You commentary on my homepage and then life-banned me.

Some concerned Wiki editors said the life-ban was unfair and done for ideological reasons, but the Wiki Jews overruled them.

The Wiki Jew thing is an excellent example of a Jewish conspiracy in real life, how it operates.

I now do edits anonymously on grammar, and 10

I ain’t a masochist. I am not getting a new account and going back to Judeopedia or Ziopedia or whatever the fuck it’s called.

Note that the only Jew-corrupted stuff is Judaic, about Jews or Israel. They leave the entire rest of Wikipedia alone. And 9

There is also a Hindutva Indian nationalist Cabal on there that is just as evil as the Jews. My friends are Pakistani nationalists, and they said all the articles about India and Pakistan have been destroyed by Hindutvas. Plus all Pakistani nationalists are very quickly banned by the Hindutvas, usually Wiki Jew Cabal techniques. The Hindutvas, like the Jews, have wormed into the top Wiki echelons. The top tier of Wikipedia are non-Indian Gentiles who love Hindutvas and Jews. Most of them are “libertarians.” Jimbo Dickwad himself is a libertardian.

Wikipedia is fucked. Jew-fucked, Hindutva-fucked, Libertardian-fucked.

I’m done.

A Primer on Mark to Market

Repost from the old site.

Some conservatives, of course, are blaming the current economic chaos on too much regulation instead of the obvious cause of it that any moron can figure out, lack of regulation. This is especially popular on White Nationalist websites, where the line is that all regulation of business is evil for White people.

I would like to point that although the conservatives are reeling from this latest economic meltdown and their philosophy is in tatters (rejected by the media elite who used to support them to the hilt more than anyone else), some conservatives are starting to fight back.

The market meltdown was not caused by the lack of regulation that everyone knows caused it; instead, it was caused by the conservative bogeyman of too much regulation. But this is not going over very well. Outside of the Fanatics’ Bullpen and the Republican Party, no one is buying. Even the US rightwing media is not so stupid as to buy into this one.

The “mark to market rule”* controversy is an interesting one.

But nevertheless, mark to market is being put forward as one of the stupider regulations that supposedly either helped bring this mess on or is making it worse. So says Paul Craig Roberts (unapologetic Reaganite incredibly featured on Counterpunch) here, here and here, and Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek columnist and apologist for neoliberal globalism and US imperialism disguised as reasonable and thoughtful analyst.

Mark to market was put in to keep these corporate rats from lying about their assets and their bottom lines. Amid the catastrophes caused by the rampant accounting fraud and crime accompanying Enron and the other messes, the mark to market rule was instituted. What it means is simple: corporations have to list assets and debts as they really are, not as they think they are in their fairy tale fantasies.

What corporations were doing was this: Suppose I have assets that are worth $10X. That looks pretty bad for my bottom line, so I “re-evaluate them” with the help of some friendly local accountant firm criminals, and now automagically they are actually worth $100X. Why?

Because my accountant criminal buddies and I decided that my assets are actually undervalued, and are worth much more than the market says they are worth. So I get to fool investors, inflate my bottom line and pretend that my insolvent company is actually rolling in it.

Seems like an obvious abuse, no? Seems like a reasonable regulation, no?

Turns out after all that mark to market is sheer government evil. Evil big government is forcing angelic corporations to tell the truth about their net worth instead of lying as they always do, even in their sleep, and thus harming the glorified US economy.

Nowadays, banksters and other financial criminals are holding all sorts of assets that are said to be worth, say, $100X. In truth, no one even knows what they are worth, and there is no way to figure it out. Their true value is so low that the banksters act like these assets are toxic waste.

Mark to market means they have to mark them at $30X or $2X or whatever the market says this crap is worth. But what they really want to do is lie and pretend that it’s worth $100X.

Why? Because if the corporations tell the truth about how much their assets are really worth, instead of how much they lie and inflate their worth at, investors will pound their two-bit penny stocks into the ground where they deserve to be pounded.

But that’s bad for the economy. We can’t afford to have the stocks of insolvent companies pounded into the dirt on the basis of honest accounting of assets and debits. Instead, it is necessary to lie, paint a turd to look like a Michelangelo, and keep the sucker/investors marching in the door and laying out the cash. To tell the truth will wreck the economy. To save the economy, we must legalize lying once again.

Does any of this make sense in any rational world? Of course not.

These are the rarefied debates that occupy our ruling elites in these trying times.

*I am not an economist, and I may not have correctly characterized the mark to market rule or the arguments for or against it. If you think I have this wrong, head to the comments or email and let me know.

From Trotskyites to Neoconservatives (Short Version)

A commenter asks if there is something about Trotskyism that turned them into neocons:

Do you think there is something fundamentally sinister about Trotskyism that makes such transformation inevitable?

Not really, but they are super-revolutionaries. They believe in worldwide revolution. Spontaneous worldwide revolution. They don’t believe in socialism in one country, remember? They want the whole world in revolt.

The Trots used to just be a bunch of Jews. They liked Trotsky because he was a Jew and supposedly Stalin sacked Trotsky due to anti-Semitism. Trotsky was running around telling everyone that Stalin was an anti-Semite. Also, Stalin was a conservative and a nationalist and he undid a lot of the radical changes that the Trot types had done before 1927. So anyway, if you were a Commie and a Jew in the West, you were supposed to be a Trot.

Then with Khrushchev’s secret speech, the full weight of Stalin’s atrocities, 3.2 people just murdered in peacetime, came out. Actually they were throwing around numbers like 20-110 million. Lot of Commies in the West, including most of the Trots, abandoned Communism and turned into Cold War liberals in the 1950’s associated with a CIA publication called Encounter. They were regularly trotted out to show how liberals hated Communism as much as conservatives. My Dad came out of this mold. Fierce liberal who hated Communism.

With the 6-day war in 1967, the group radicalized. They supported Israel, and they got behind the Vietnam War in a big way as a Cold War thing. Also they became these cultural conservative Jews who were sort of waging war on their fellow Jews. They saw the Counterculture as a bunch of traitorous Jews, and they were pissed. So they were pro-Vietnam War, pro-Israel, pro-Cold War and anti-counterculture.

In the 1970’s this movement grew around a few very obscure journals which have since gone under the names of which elude me. The group coalesced around Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s office in the Senate. He was known as the Senator From Boeing. Jackson represented Washington State. He was this “liberal” who was all tied in with the military industrial complex, a hawk on Vietnam in the 1970’s and a Cold Warrior. My father loved him.

He was a Gentile, but the neocons saw him as Israel’s best friend. All of these guys, Perle, Wolfowitz and the rest of them, come out of this environment. They still wanted to be Democrats though because they were still liberal Jews at heart.

When Reagan came in, they saw their opening and joined on board for the pro-Israel Cold War ride. They formed a BS committee called The Committee on the Present Danger. The whole reason for its existence was to say that the CIA was lying in its estimates on Soviet strength and that the Soviets were stronger than we were and about to conquer us.

This was all lies and apparently they knew this, but they pushed it anyway. They got the CIA to revise its estimates of Soviet strength to dramatically overestimate it. This was the Reagan defense spending ramp up thing. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Frank Gaffney, Perle and other scoundrels were all involved in this.

Most of them were turning into Republicans already when Bush Jr came in, and they made a rush to sign up. Most of his administration came out of the CPD and JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. The purpose of JINSA is, through corruption and propaganda, to sort of merge the Israeli military and its MIC with the US military and its MIC. It has sort of worked.

The rest is history.

Trace the trajectory of Norman Podhoretz of Commentary Magazine and Irving Kristol of Public Affairs Magazine (William Kristol’s father). Those were some of the original proto-neocons who are now full-on neocons.

More on the Evil Wikipedia Cabal

Repost from the old site.

A diabolical cabal stalks Wikipedia. It monopolizes the editing, breaks every rule in the book and then enforces the same rules against everyone it doesn’t like, throws people off for no reason, and then hilariously pretends to be objective.

Wikipedia, from the sleazy porn merchant God in Flesh Jimbo on down, is like a conspiracy-riven Arab dictatorship. Nobody’s honest, nobody’s decent, everyone’s corrupt, and you never know when it’s going to be you with the knife in the back mumbling, “Et tu, Brute?

Essjay, a top Wikipedia administrator, has resigned after a wicked mailing list was uncovered that revealed top administrators plotting to break rules to keep their nefarious activities shrouded in Cheney-like secrecy.

He also cleverly faked an entire persona as a university professor, gay, living with a partner named Robbie, with a cat named Mia and a lab named Ami.

He made up the following degrees for himself: Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies (B.A.), Master of Arts in Religion (M.A.R.), Doctorate of Philosophy in Theology (Ph.D.), Doctorate in Canon Law (JCD). He rapidly made his way up the Wikipedia ladder. At the end, he held the following positions, despite his massive fraud:

  1. Administrator, En-Wikipedia
  2. Administrator, Wikiquote
  3. Administrator, Meta-wiki
  4. Administrator, Wikimedia Commons
  5. Checkuser oversight
  6. Bot Approval Group
  7. Handles user renaming requests
  8. Bureaucrat
  9. Bureaucrat
  10. Official Freenode Group contact
  11. Owns and operates Vandalism Control Network
  12. Chairman of Mediation Committee
  13. Election official, Board of Trustees 2006 election
  14. 17,000 edits

He appeared to have absolutely no life whatsoever outside of editing Dorkipedia 14 hours a day, and many wondered how he was able to handle a full teaching load at the university in spite of this.

He always cloaked his IP, and no one was ever able to figure out who he was. Some were convinced he was working for an intelligence agency or he was actually a committee, not a single person.

When he was finally uncovered, the slimeball Jimmy Wales defended Essay’s fraud.

Figures.

Hey Jimmy Wales.

You’re a dick.

Essjay is gone. That big black box suggests that he is dead, and for a moment, my heart leapt to the skies. But unfortunately he’s only been killed from Wikipedia . Bye Essjay. You will not be missed.

This exercise in mass corruption is insanely hailed the purest form of democracy in modern society. Fine, maybe it is. In that case, give me Stalin. I’d probably stay alive longer under him anyway. Stalin may have been a bastard, but he was never a crook.

Trailer for Oliver Stone’s South of the Border

Here.

Looks pretty good. Interviews with Raul Castro in Cuba, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Kristina Kirchner and her husband Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Fernando do Lugo in Paraguay and Lula da Silva in Brazil.

Those South American accents the Presidents are speaking are really wild. I could barely understand a word any of them were saying.

Comes with another silly article in the Guardian by an interviewer who conducted a 1-hour interview with Chavez for the Guardian. Stephen Sackur’s interview is a bunch of distorted crap, as usual.

Yes, there is inflation in Venezuela, mostly due to an overheated economy but also due to the fact that the poor have so much more money now that they are buying so much more stuff. Also the producers are withholding products from the market to create artificial shortages in order to drive prices even higher. The US allies in Venezuela think that prices are not high enough!

Yes, there is an economic downturn, similar to one occurring all over the world, like in the US and Europe. I suppose the downturn there is due to the fact that capitalism is a failed system too?

Yes, there is unemployment in Venezuela, but the rate has been cut in half from 1

Chavez is not “manufacturing poor people” as the opposition media owner claims. The poverty rate has collapsed under Chavez. He cut poverty in half.

He has not turned the oil, agriculture and power industries into vast state bureaucracies . The oil sector has always been state-run, but it was run by the elite for their own benefit. Chavez made it into a company that works for the people. He got rid of the elitist bureaucrats. The vast majority of the ag sector is in private hands, mostly in large estates. The state has only conducted some land reforms and turned idle land over to landless peasants. The power industry has been nationalized, true, as it has been in many European countries. So what?

Yes, the bolivar was devalued, a good idea. This was an economically necessary move and there was nothing wrong with it.

7

RCTV was shut down for many reasons. Keep in mind that they supported the coup in 2002. If a TV station was a co-conspirator in a military coup to overthrow the US government, would it still be on the air. Anyway, they were kept on the air for years after the coup. They failed to abide by many reasonable regulations that they were asked to abide by, including keeping decent records.

They refused to abide by these rules in order to force a showdown with Chavez. Yes, they got suspended, but all they did was go to cable, where most of the Venezuelan media is anyway, like the US broadcast media. So they are still on the air and as wildly anti-Chavez as ever.

The owner of Globovision was arrested for economic crimes that he committed. The arrest warrant was issued not by Chavez but by a court. The charges are crimes related to his auto business. Chavez is cracking down on crooked businessmen all over the country. Too bad.

Yes, there is state corruption in Venezuela. It effects both Chavistas and economic pols in the states and cities that they rule. Corruption is a long-standing problem in Venezuela dating back to the early days of the Republic. It’s not going away anytime soon.

New Anti-Illegal Immigration Bill in Arizona

Arizona just passed a new anti-illegal immigration bill which has people freaked out all over the country.

There is really a lot less to it than either side recognizes. All it does is make Arizona law the same as federal law, so it ought to be immune to court challenges. It also stipulates that cops can only check for immigration status after they stop someone for a legitimate reason, for example, for a traffic stop or if they are a suspect in some other crime. So there are not going to be any roundups or stops on the basis of someone looking Hispanic or speaking Spanish.

The Left has gone nuts over this bill, and the Obama Administration has registered their disapproval. That bills like this are being passed at all reveals frustration over the Feds’ refusal to enforce immigration law. So the solution, says everyone, is some crap called “comprehensive immigration reform.” Every time you see that word “comprehensive” with regard to immigration, start running away. That word is code for “amnesty.” Comprehensive = amnesty. It’s that simple.

It’s actually much worse than that.

The pro-illegal crowd not only wants amnesty for 12 million illegals, they also want to end “the militarization of the border.” What that means is that they want the Border Patrol pulled off the border.

They also want “an end to the raids.” What that means is that after we do amnesty, all of the new illegals will get a free pass into the country.

There won’t be any Border Patrol at the border, so the illegals will just walk across. Once the illegals are in the country, there won’t be any more raids, so they will get to stay here as long as they like. Until the next amnesty, that is. In other words, Open Borders.

The Democrats are trying to sell this “comprehensive immigration reform” stink bomb on this basis: We will legalize the 12 million already here, and then we won’t let one more illegal stay in this country. After we give them all amnesty, we are going to massively beef up border security and finally get control over the borders. They we will bust all the employers hiring the illegals, and we will make constant raids on any new illegals. The line is, “Sure, we are doing this amnesty once, but after that, there will never be another one.”

Forget it. Ain’t gonna happen. The US is never going to get control over its border because it doesn’t want to. The Republicans want the illegals to flood over for cheap labor, and the Democrats want them pouring over because that’s what their traitor Hispanic constituency wants.

The US is never going to bust all the employers. Ain’t gonna happen. There is already a workable program called E-Verify that can easily determine if any employee is an illegal or not. The Democrats have killed mandatory E-Verify and will continue to kill it forever.

The raids necessary to remove all of the illegals are never going to happen either.

Keep in mind that this was how they sold us that last treasonous amnesty in 1986 under Reagan. First it was only supposed to be for 500,000 illegals. It ended up legalizing 3 million of them. Back then, they said the same thing. We will give them amnesty this once, then we will get control over the border, crack down on the employers and remove all the illegals already here. None of these things happened because the powers that be want these millions of illegals here.

Furthermore, there will not just be 12 million illegals legalized. There will be another 30-40 million of their relatives coming in subsequent decades under family reunification, a much abused immigration law that needs a serious working over.

Let’s get this straight. Comprehensive immigration reform means not just amnesty for 12 million illegals and adding their 40 million relatives. It also means Open Borders. Because the pro-amnesty stance is essentially an Open Borders stance. Comprehensive immigration reform = amnesty = Open Borders.

I am going to tentatively support this law until we see how it actually works out. Supposedly, this makes me a fascist and a conservative. Fine, I’m a conservative and a fascist then, no problem.

Arizona has also done two other cool things.

They passed a law banning all ethnic studies programs at K-12 schools. There are Chicano Studies programs in many Arizona high schools, and they’re terrible. They are all being taught by Reconquista Aztlan MECHA and La Raza Hispanic traitors. This curriculum is furiously anti-White and openly treasonous. It has no place in US K-12 schools.

It’s lamentable that it exists at universities too, but all sorts of nonsense is taught at university level, and you can’t much get rid of it without running the risk of censoring higher education, which I don’t want to do.

Arizona also passed a law mandating that all English teachers in Arizona K-12 schools must be fluent in English and speak without a strong accent.

One wonders why such a law was needed.

Here is what happened. A while back, Arizona had bilingual education, which I actually support, since I have a Masters in Linguistics, and I know bilingual ed works for those who need it. Opposition to bilingual ed is not pedagogically sound or proper.

Eight years ago, Arizona got rid of all bilingual ed, a very bad idea. The schools had hired all these Hispanic bilingual ed teachers for their bilingual program, many of them from Latin America. Many of these folks spoke English only as a 2nd language and were not native English speakers.

After the state got rid of bilingual ed, the schools shifted the bilingual ed teachers to other subjects, mostly to teaching English. This bill is an attempt to deal with that problem. The bill is pedagogically sound. Indeed, only native English speakers should be teaching English in the US, where English is the de facto national language.

More states are going to pass such laws. Utah and Texas have introduced copies of Arizona’s bill. This will be nice because the more states that pass these bills, the harder it’s going to be for the pro-illegals to pull off their, “We are going to boycott this state!” threat. It’s fairly easy to boycott one state, but when it gets to two, three and more states, it’s going to be harder and harder to boycott so many states.

More Lies About Hugo Chavez: Corruption, Food Shortages and Infrastructure Deterioration

mikey, a Venezuelan expat commenter living in Canada, writes:

Hey guys, I only lived there from 2005-09, so I guess that makes me typical opposition. I saw the deterioration, shortages and increase in crime with my own eyes. You seem to be seeing things through “Hugo blinders” Ask anyone if they think their nice red franelas make up for the lineups for sugar, cooking oil, coffee, chicken etc. The answer is always no.

Chavez and his crook friends and family are skimming @ $2usd/bbl for their personal fortunes, the rest is being wasted on his pet projects, which are nothing more than troughs for his lick spittle followers. Wake up guys!!

The shortages are occurring because the capitalists are deliberately creating them to try to create chaos and bring down the government. Chavez has put in price controls on a lot of those goods so that low income people can afford them. In the past, in Venezuela, most people had a hard time getting enough food to eat.

Chavez is trying to make sure people have affordable food with the price controls, and the capitalists have responded by deliberately withholding food from the market to create artificial shortages. There is not much Chavez can do about this economic sabotage, but in some cases, he is just nationalizing capitalist saboteur firms.

The long lines are usually for the cheap, government subsidized food in the new state markets that Chavez has set up. At regular markets, there are no long lines. It sucks to have long lines, but at least they have cheap food for once.

There has been no deterioration at all. In fact, Chavez has been rebuilding the infrastructure of Venezuela. Previous governments never spent one nickel on infrastructure other than in the moneyed areas.

I agree that there are environmental problems, but that’s a regional thing and the previous governments were terrible on the environment too and if the Opposition gets in, they would thrash the environment just the same.

There is corruption under Chavez, but Hugo himself is not involved. Corruption has been going on as long as Venezuela has existed. All of the previous governments were corrupt, an Opposition government would be extremely corrupt, and yes, Chavez’ regime is somewhat corrupt.

But in most corrupt regimes, the corrupt people just steal all the state funds, and there is nothing left for the people. In Chavez’ case, there is a lot left over for the people, so I’m more sympathetic. Venezuelans are just profoundly corrupt people period.

That Chavez projects are boondoggles that benefit no one but his pals is a long-term Opposition claim. The Opposition simply disagrees with using state funds to better the lives of Venezuelans. In the whole history of Venezuela, the state never spent any money to help the people. For the first time in history, the state is doing just that, so the Opposition is furious. Keep in mind that any state development and funding will always be characterized by the Opposition as wasteful, useless, corrupt pork boondoggles that benefit no one.

What’s the truth? Interviews on the street show that your average Venezuelan feels that the regime has improved their lives in myriad ways. In the barrios, state funds fix up deteriorating housing, pay for wiring, water, sewage, roads and plumbing, things these places have never seen before. Food is more available and more affordable than ever before, as is medical care, education, cultural activities and local media. Chavez is bettering the lives of the poorer majority, and they appreciate it, which is why they keep re-electing him by huge margins.

Another commenter noted that Chavez’ government is talking about regulating the Internet. If you read the US MSM, it would seem that Chavez has shut down almost the entire Opposition media in the country. First of all, we need to understand what the Opposition media is like. They are like Fox News on steroids, 24-7, 365, no let-up.

I remember a few years back, a European diplomat went to Venezuela. He had heard all of the stories about Chavez the dictator and how the Opposition media had all been closed down. The diplomat spoke Spanish, and he turned on his TV in his hotel room. Going through the channels, almost all of the political ones were Opposition channels. Their attacks on Chavez were so outrageous, continuous and over the top that it was almost comical. The diplomat started laughing and decided that the “dictator” thing was a bunch of crap.

The diplomat met with Chavez later and said that the Opposition stations had been calling him The Devil. Chavez laughed and said, “That’s the least bad thing they get to say about me.”

This particular Internet site is run by a large Venezuelan Opposition radio channel. They’re always over the top and crazy, but no really cared before.

However, recently they published big headlines on their website saying that several of Chavez top officials had been killed. It wasn’t true, and it caused a lot of panic in the country. What’s going on here is they are publishing death threats. What if Fox News ran headlines for hours on end saying that several top Obama officials had been killed, presumably assassinated? What would Americans’ reaction to this outrage be?

Another thing the Opposition has been doing lately is giving out the names, home addresses and phone numbers of top Chavez officials. They have also published photos of some spas where they work out and schools where their kids go to school. The implication is obvious: threat.

Keep in mind that the Opposition riots almost every week in Venezuela. Lately they carry guns when they riot. Recently there have been some sniper shootings and Chavez supporters have been killed. Opposition rioters regularly destroy property and burn tires. One of their favorite things to do is to attack the “missions” that Chavez has set up in the barrios. These are generally health clinics but also dish out a lot of other government aid. Opposition thugs regularly attack the missions with objects and try to burn them down.

Keep in mind that the Opposition media cheers this shit on all the way. What if there were violent riots in the US all the time, and Fox News was cheering it on? What would Americans say?

It’s hard to understand the media situation in Venezuela because you can’t compare the media and political situation to the US.

Capitalist Society as Land of Gypsies

English has many synonyms.

For instance, look at these words:

Capitalist Businessman Corporation Shyster Liar Organized criminal Gangster Gang member Organized crime gang Mafia Mafioso Fraudster Thief Ripoff Artist Con Artist Sociopath

The fist thing you will notice is that some nouns represent one person and some represent more than one person. Leaving aside the differences between singular and plural nouns, what exactly are the differences between the above words. At first glance, they all appear to mean the same thing, except some cannot be inverted. For instance, corporation and and criminal are obvious synonyms, but it doesn’t work the other way, since many criminals are not incorporated businesses with state charters.

One could argue that there are shades of differences between the above. I would agree with that.

We have many proponents of capitalism in the comments section. Yet capitalism, as practiced everywhere on Earth, automatically turns into an orgy of White-collar crime at best, street crime at worst. There doesn’t seem to be any way around it. Wherever you have capitalists, you have Roman legions of shady businessmen and professional liars and thieves, stretching as far as the eye can see. Capitalist apologists, even if they agree with this, say that that is why the state is needed, to enforce anti-fraud laws.

Yet Gramsci, Marx and anyone with their eyes open can see that under capitalism, the business class and oligarchic rich tend to capture the state. The ruling class and the state are synonymous. The ruling class parasitizes the state and fills the state with its agents, so essentially the state is simply another faction of the ruling class. And the agenda of the capitalist class and the rich, everywhere on Earth, is to get rid of state law enforcement into “business crime.”

Yep, businesses want the freedom to be fraudsters and thieves, even if they are honest themselves. Have you noticed that the US Chamber of Commerce typically throws a 2 year old temper tantrum whenever states start prosecuting more businessmen for fraud? Why? Because the C of C, here, and presumably everywhere, wants fraud to be legal. I guess they think you can settle with the guy in court or something. Especially when he’s offshored most of his operations. Yeah right.

Have you noticed that the overwhelming majorities of both parties decry “regulation of the Internet?” So the Internet is unregulated. Therefore, it’s a sewer with more shady characters and crooks than your average teeming ghetto corner at noon. The reason that 8

Let’s examine this more closely. Do both parties really prosecute fraud equally? Typically, when a state has a Republican attorney general, fraud and white collar crime rates go through the roof. Same thing when a Republican administration comes in. The Bush and Reagan Administrations were synonymous with corruption. Yet when you get a liberal Democrat in, like here in California, he typically vows to go after white collar crime and fraud. Why should this be only the job of liberals?

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Republican Party thinks that fraud and White collar crime is a-ok. Apparently it’s all part of doing business. Which brings us back to the synonym test above.

Since fraud as thick as locust clouds seems to be automatically inherent in just about any possible capitalist society, what do you capitalist apologists in the comments section propose to be done about this? Are landslides of white collar crime that bury society the price one pays for living in a capitalist society? Inquiring minds want to know.

Exhibit A.

Sure, you argue that not all businesses are like this, but that’s a typical Internet business. “Internet business” and “scam” are more or less synonymous. And they are synonymous in large part because of the “don’t regulate the Internet” line pushed by both parties and the entire IT industry. So deregulation just means antelope herds of fraudsters galloping through your life. Can’t you guys see this? Capitalism and crime are in praxis one and the same.

Interesting Take on the Outrageous Supreme Court Decision

When these clowns Roberts and Alito came up for nomination for the Supreme Court under ultra-rightwing George Bush’s Administration, the few of us who are sane were saying all along that these guys were a nightmare in waiting. Almost none of my “liberal” friends believed me. After all, I’m Chicken Little. The Democratic Party completely caved in to the ultraright radicals that Bush nominated, saying in effect that they were just fine. Alito in particular was outrageous, lying for days on the stand.

Now we’ve come full circle and as usual, Chicken Little me was right and my liberal friends and the idiot Democratic Party were dead wrong. Perhaps you have heard of the Citizens United vs. FEC case (full court brief)that was decided on January 21, 2010. First of all, the case is the most egregious case of judicial activism. Based on in stare decesis, the Court is supposed to allow lower court rulings to stand, in this case an appellate court ruling. Further, the finding that the court ruled on was one that the plaintiffs had already agreed to drop in lower court.

In order to overrule the lower court, there must be a clear, present and immediate public need involved. What is the clear and present public need in overturning all of our campaign financing laws?

It’s much worse than that. We are now not allowed to put any limits whatsoever on campaign contributions by the corporations and the rich. Medical lobbies spent $1.5 million/day during the Heath Care Reform debate to kill progressive reform. There are now estimates that we could see lobbies spending up to 30-50 times as much as they are currently spending. That’s a tsunami of campaign cash.

Those of you who don’t live in the US don’t know what it’s like. Especially during election season, you are bombarded with an endless barrage of big-money and corporate commercials on the TV. Turn on the radio and it’s similar. Open your mailbox and and an avalanche of corporate brochures piles into your lap. Open a newspaper and there are huge big money and corporate full page ads all through our biggest papers.

Never mind that nearly all of the TV and radio stations, large newspapers and newsmagazines are already more or less exact mouthpieces of these same corporate and big money interests.

In every way that makes sense, America is now an oligarchy. Like similar oligarchical shitholes scattered all of over the ruined Third World, the class interests are foreordained. On my Maoist list, a Maoist recently said that it is the position of the moneyed classes everywhere on Earth to be ultraright.

This is their logical position. They can’t be blamed for it anymore than a shark can be blamed for attacking a swimmer. In the ruined Third World, the rich and the upper middle classes and sadly often the entire business class always lines up with the most ferociously reactionary wing of the oligarchy.

Tragically, much of the middle class often does the same. Recall that Marx said that the middle classes always ally themselves with the rich. In the US, typically once anyone gets any money at all, they usually move into this ultra-right position. This is particularly true if they make their fat cash working for a corporation.

So this is what we’ve become. A wealthy version of a Third World oligarchical ultra-right shithole. The stolen elections are already here. The oligarchs have a death grip on the media. Civil liberties are winding down. So what’s next?

In the event of any profound Left uprising, even unarmed such as Guatemala 1954, El Salvador 1980, Aristide in Haiti, Chavez in Venezuela, Allende in Chile, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Dominican Republic 1965 or Brazil 1964, I would assume the US would quickly witness military coups, death squads and possibly even armed guerrillas on the Left as a response. If a Left regime came to power, we may well see armed contras, probably funded by the rich and the corporations.

The law shreds 100 years of laws by state and federal governments that attempted to limit campaign contributions. David Souter dourly noted this in his dissent.

The following is an interesting argument from a website I’m a member of suggesting that the decision was treason. Reason being that the court refused to say that foreigners could not also spend as much as they wanted to influence US issues and elections. This means that the only way to stop foreigners from flooding our political debates and campaigns with cash to buy their way to control over our nation is for the Congress to stop them by passing a law.

But such a law can never be passed because an openly treasonous party, the Republican Party, will never pass any law limiting foreigners right to spend whatever they can to influence our debates and elections. So we’re screwed.

Many are suggesting an Amendment of the Constitution. This will not work. We need 67 votes in the Senate, and we don’t have them. Then we need 7

By any fair legal definition, the decision yesterday by The Supreme Court 5 constitutes nothing less than an act of treason against the people of the United States. Having read and analyzed the entire 183 page decision and all of its concurring and dissenting opinions ourselves, we are fully prepared to support this accusatory conclusion.

Having so grossly abused its jurisdiction by presuming to decide a question expressly waived by the petitioner in the Court below (p 12), this rogue Supreme Court ruled for the first time that no corporation can be constrained from unlimited influence over our elections.

And even assuming that the Court intended the decision to only apply to American corporations, the Court expressly declined (pp 46-47) to reach the question of whether foreign ownership stakes in American corporations should likewise be given carte blanche to put their thumbs on the scales of our democracy.

Thus, until Congress further acts (and it must, though it could not have escaped the attention of The Supreme Court 5 that the current Republican minority has vowed to obstruct anything of consequence that Congress might try to pass), there is now nothing to constrain foreign nationals, even our most sworn enemies, from usurping what even the most die hard Tea Bagger takes as an article of faith, that the rights of citizenship of this country are only for Americans.

This must be construed, within the four corners of our Constitution, as deliberately and knowingly exposing the United States of America to harm in the interim, by giving “aid and comfort” to our enemies (Constitution Article 3, section 3), should our enemies now wish to take advantage of this unprecedented and rash decision. In simple constitutional terms . . . treason!!

The fact is that we now live in a world of giant transnational corporations, with allegiance to no sovereign government, let alone our own, sworn only to exploit the most vulnerable and desperate workers they can find in any country of the world. How does The Supreme Court 5 propose parsing which of these extra-national legal artificialities should be allowed to corrupt our democratic election process? Apparently in their minds, all of them.

So what is it that we can and must do? The first and most prominent proposal we heard yesterday, and which we of course support, was to amend the Constitution to clarify that corporations have no such rights as people (which is to say U.S. citizens).

While this certainly could not hurt, and would obviously help (assuming such an proposed amendment could garner 67 votes in a Senate already stalemated by obstructionism, let alone be ratified by 3/4 of the states, including many “red” ones), what we must first assert is that there is nothing wrong with our Constitution, and demand that Congress do whatever it can to protect it.

Because just as importantly, we are on ominous and clear notice that there is no further outrage these 5 gangsters in black robes are not gleefully and arrogantly capable of. Indeed, in his dissenting opinion (that the majority did not go far enough), Clarence Thomas characterized the decision as only a “first step” (Thomas opinion p. 1).

It is worth nothing that the authorship of the majority opinion is claimed by Anthony M. Kennedy, heretofore generally considered the least wing nutty of the 5. Therefore, the immediate and unavoidably necessary recourse must be impeachment for all five, treason already being a high crime, otherwise the horrors yet to issue from their treacherous minds is too terrible to contemplate.

Corruption Index By Nation

As you can see in the table below, the White European countries and the nations with stock descended from these people, along with some mostly NE Asian countries, are the most honest countries on Earth. Even more disturbing to me, as someone who hates Nordicism, is that it’s the more Northern European countries that are the most honest. The Southern Europeans are quite a bit less honest.

It’s not all Black countries at the bottom, as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq are White countries, albeit not European Whites. Myanmar is a SE Asian country.

I’m really sick and tired of the poverty excuse. Any fucked up country full of fucked up people is automatically written off before the court of God and Man as innocent due to poverty. This is really tiresome.

These same people are usually opposed to socialism and promote capitalism. Since you all promote capitalism, and capitalism has automatic poverty built into it, how are you ever going to get rid of poverty? Answer: you can’t and you won’t. I’ll be dead in 30 years, and there will still be billions of poor in the world.

Since your project can’t eliminate poverty, what you are saying is that these places are going to be fucked up nests of moral degradation and general misery for eternity. Well excuse me but screw that. If that’s what you all are serving, I’ll pass and go without dinner tonight.

Anyway, it looks like it’s not even true. Giving the lie to the obvious rejoinder that these poor nations of liars, cheaters, thieves and all-around scumbags just can’t help being moral sleazebags is the position of Equatorial Guinea. Equatorial Guinea (EG) has a good PCI of $21,000/year, yet the corruption level is unfathomably high. Furthermore, poverty is insane in EG, and health figures such as maternal mortality and life expectancy are abysmal. Apparently a tiny elite of moral garbage at the top steals almost all of the considerable oil income in that blighted land.

I actually had high hopes for Africa. I thought if only they could garner some income, a lot of their problems would go away. But more and more it seems as if Sub Saharan Africans (I don’t include US and Caribbean Blacks in this category) are not capable of running modern societies. When I die in 30 years, I’m willing to bet that they will still be incapable.

Honestly, I don’t have any explanations for this, but having an average IQ of 67 can’t possibly help matters.

There is also the King Syndrome in this region. Africans evolved in tribes whereby the King or Chief was supposed to provide enough food and sustenance for his people, but anything beyond that, he was allowed to hoard to preposterous extremes. So his people would be living in mud hats subsisting on maize and yams while the King would be living in a golden palace 50 feet high with 50 different concubines. In traditional African culture, the King’s subjects either could not or would not say anything about this state of affairs.

This is still the way it is in Africa. The “King” (the rulers) gets to do whatever he wants, and no one can say “boo” to him. I’ve met Africans in the US. I asked one Nigerian why his country was so fucked up. He gave the usual answer of, “Bad leaders,” with a helpless shrug of his shoulders. I really don’t understand this mindset. If your leaders suck, why don’t you just elect some leaders that don’t suck?

There seems to be something similar going on in the US. US Black politicians have always been horribly corrupt, and in recent years in general much more corrupt that White politicians, which is pretty bad right there! But US Blacks don’t seem to give a damn about corrupt pols. As long as he brings home the bacon and does good for the community, they will keep on electing the crook until Kingdom Come.

It’s as if Black voters either expect politicians to steal and just blow it off if they do, or else they don’t have any moral qualms about stealing in office. Either one implies that US Black voters have questionable morality on this question. Furthermore, the similarity between them and African voters and rulers on this issue is uncanny and unsettling.

It’s interesting that Barbados is ranked very high. I don’t know much about the place, but it is quite wealthy. It’s also very Black. This suggests that it’s theoretically possible for a Black nation (albeit a Caribbean one) to be honest, something I was starting to seriously doubt. Dominica and Botswana also score high. Botswana also has a high standard of living is one of the most democratic and free countries in Africa. Dominica, in addition to having low corruption, also has a very low homicide rate. Both have an almost all-Black population. What are they doing right?

Let’s take a look at the Turd World countries from which we are mass importing immigrants, legal and illegal.

If the top score in the table below is 9.4 and the bottom score is 1.1, the median score should be 4.2. Truth is that even a median score is horrible. Italy, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Kuwait, Ghana and Georgia are in this range, and those countries range from very corrupt (Italy) to ridiculously corrupt (Ghana and Georgia). So anything below 4.2, obviously really sucks in the honesty department.

High-immigrant nations to the US:

Nation             Corruption Index

El Salvador        3.4
Guatemala          3.4
India              3.4
Mexico             3.3
Dominican Republic 3.0
Tonga              3.0
Armenia            2.7
Ethiopia           2.7
Vietnam            2.7
Honduras           2.5
Nicaragua          2.5
Philippines        2.4
Russia             2.2
Cambodia           2.0
Laos               2.0
Venezuela          1.9
Haiti              1.8
Iran               1.8
Somalia            1.1

What’s the point of mass importing immigrants from countries that are corrupt as Hell into a relatively honest country like the US? One wonders if the people coming from countries with endemic corruption will knock it off when they get to the US. In many cases, they probably will not.

Miami, run by Cuban gusanos, is one of the most corrupt cities in the US. Maywood, California is an almost completely Hispanic city that is made up of probably 70-8

In some cases, new immigrants may be able to put the corruption habit behind them. I’m not aware that Armenians are all that corrupt here in California. But in many other cases, you can take the man out of the Third World, but you can’t take the Third World out of the man.

You may have noticed that this fine country is looking more and more like a Third World country. It stands to reason that mass importation of Third Worlders into a First World country will at some point transform the First World country into more of a Third World Country in one respect or another. That’s exactly what seems to be happening.

Rank Country/Territory CPI 2009 Score Surveys Used Confidence Range
1 New Zealand 9.4 6 9.1–9.5
2 Denmark 9.3 6 9.1–9.5
3 Singapore 9.2 9 9.0–9.4
3 Sweden 9.2 6 9.0–9.3
5 Switzerland 9.0 6 8.9–9.1
6 Finland 8.9 6 8.4–9.4
6 Netherlands 8.9 6 8.7–9.0
8 Australia 8.7 8 8.3–9.0
8 Canada 8.7 6 8.5–9.0
8 Iceland 8.7 4 7.5–9.4
11 Norway 8.6 6 8.2–9.1
12 Hong Kong 8.2 8 7.9–8.5
12 Luxembourg 8.2 6 7.6–8.8
14 Germany 8.0 6 7.7–8.3
14 Ireland 8.0 6 7.8–8.4
16 Austria 7.9 6 7.4–8.3
17 Japan 7.7 8 7.4–8.0
17 United Kingdom 7.7 6 7.3–8.2
19 United States 7.5 8 6.9–8.0
20 Barbados 7.4 4 6.6–8.2
21 Belgium 7.1 6 6.9–7.3
22 Qatar 7.0 6 5.8–8.1
22 Saint Lucia 7.0 3 6.7–7.5
24 France 6.9 6 6.5–7.3
25 Chile 6.7 7 6.5–6.9
25 Uruguay 6.7 5 6.4–7.1
27 Cyprus 6.6 4 6.1–7.1
27 Estonia 6.6 8 6.1–6.9
27 Slovenia 6.6 8 6.3–6.9
30 United Arab Emirates 6.5 5 5.5–7.5
31 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 6.4 3 4.9–7.5
32 Israel 6.1 6 5.4–6.7
32 Spain 6.1 6 5.5–6.6
34 Dominica 5.9 3 4.9–6.7
35 Portugal 5.8 6 5.5–6.2
35 Puerto Rico 5.8 4 5.2–6.3
37 Botswana 5.6 6 5.1–6.3
37 Taiwan 5.6 9 5.4–5.9
39 Brunei Darussalam 5.5 4 4.7–6.4
39 Oman 5.5 5 4.4–6.5
39 Korea (South) 5.5 9 5.3–5.7
42 Mauritius 5.4 6 5.0–5.9
43 Costa Rica 5.3 5 4.7–5.9
43 Macau 5.3 3 3.3–6.9
45 Malta 5.2 4 4.0–6.2
46 Bahrain 5.1 5 4.2–5.8
46 Cape Verde 5.1 3 3.3–7.0
46 Hungary 5.1 8 4.6–5.7
49 Bhutan 5.0 4 4.3–5.6
49 Jordan 5.0 7 3.9–6.1
49 Poland 5.0 8 4.5–5.5
52 Czech Republic 4.9 8 4.3–5.6
52 Lithuania 4.9 8 4.4–5.4
54 Seychelles 4.8 3 3.0–6.7
55 South Africa 4.7 8 4.3–4.9
56 Latvia 4.5 6 4.1–4.9
56 Malaysia 4.5 9 4.0–5.1
56 Namibia 4.5 6 3.9–5.1
56 Samoa 4.5 3 3.3–5.3
56 Slovakia 4.5 8 4.1–4.9
61 Cuba 4.4 3 3.5–5.1
61 Turkey 4.4 7 3.9–4.9
63 Italy 4.3 6 3.8–4.9
63 Saudi Arabia 4.3 5 3.1–5.3
65 Tunisia 4.2 6 3.0–5.5
66 Croatia 4.1 8 3.7–4.5
66 Georgia 4.1 7 3.4–4.7
66 Kuwait 4.1 5 3.2–5.1
69 Ghana 3.9 7 3.2–4.6
69 Montenegro 3.9 5 3.5–4.4
71 Bulgaria 3.8 8 3.2–4.5
71 FYR Macedonia 3.8 6 3.4–4.2
71 Greece 3.8 6 3.2–4.3
71 Romania 3.8 8 3.2–4.3
75 Brazil 3.7 7 3.3–4.3
75 Colombia 3.7 7 3.1–4.3
75 Peru 3.7 7 3.4–4.1
75 Suriname 3.7 3 3.0–4.7
79 Burkina Faso 3.6 7 2.8–4.4
79 China 3.6 9 3.0–4.2
79 Swaziland 3.6 3 3.0–4.7
79 Trinidad and Tobago 3.6 4 3.0–4.3
83 Serbia 3.5 6 3.3–3.9
84 El Salvador 3.4 5 3.0–3.8
84 Guatemala 3.4 5 3.0–3.9
84 India 3.4 10 3.2–3.6
84 Panama 3.4 5 3.1–3.7
84 Thailand 3.4 9 3.0–3.8
89 Lesotho 3.3 6 2.8–3.8
89 Malawi 3.3 7 2.7–3.9
89 Mexico 3.3 7 3.2–3.5
89 Moldova 3.3 6 2.7–4.0
89 Morocco 3.3 6 2.8–3.9
89 Rwanda 3.3 4 2.9–3.7
95 Albania 3.2 6 3.0–3.3
95 Vanuatu 3.2 3 2.3–4.7
97 Liberia 3.1 3 1.9–3.8
97 Sri Lanka 3.1 7 2.8–3.4
99 Bosnia and Herzegovina 3.0 7 2.6–3.4
99 Dominican Republic 3.0 5 2.9–3.2
99 Jamaica 3.0 5 2.8–3.3
99 Madagascar 3.0 7 2.8–3.2
99 Senegal 3.0 7 2.5–3.6
99 Tonga 3.0 3 2.6–3.3
99 Zambia 3.0 7 2.8–3.2
106 Argentina 2.9 7 2.6–3.1
106 Benin 2.9 6 2.3–3.4
106 Gabon 2.9 3 2.6–3.1
106 Gambia 2.9 5 1.6–4.0
106 Niger 2.9 5 2.7–3.0
111 Algeria 2.8 6 2.5–3.1
111 Djibouti 2.8 4 2.3–3.2
111 Egypt 2.8 6 2.6–3.1
111 Indonesia 2.8 9 2.4–3.2
111 Kiribati 2.8 3 2.3–3.3
111 Mali 2.8 6 2.4–3.2
111 Sao Tome and Principe 2.8 3 2.4–3.3
111 Solomon Islands 2.8 3 2.3–3.3
111 Togo 2.8 5 1.9–3.9
120 Armenia 2.7 7 2.6–2.8
120 Bolivia 2.7 6 2.4–3.1
120 Ethiopia 2.7 7 2.4–2.9
120 Kazakhstan 2.7 7 2.1–3.3
120 Mongolia 2.7 7 2.4–3.0
120 Vietnam 2.7 9 2.4–3.1
126 Eritrea 2.6 4 1.6–3.8
126 Guyana 2.6 4 2.5–2.7
126 Syria 2.6 5 2.2–2.9
126 Tanzania 2.6 7 2.4–2.9
130 Honduras 2.5 6 2.2–2.8
130 Lebanon 2.5 3 1.9–3.1
130 Libya 2.5 6 2.2–2.8
130 Maldives 2.5 4 1.8–3.2
130 Mauritania 2.5 7 2.0–3.3
130 Mozambique 2.5 7 2.3–2.8
130 Nicaragua 2.5 6 2.3–2.7
130 Nigeria 2.5 7 2.2–2.7
130 Uganda 2.5 7 2.1–2.8
139 Bangladesh 2.4 7 2.0–2.8
139 Belarus 2.4 4 2.0–2.8
139 Pakistan 2.4 7 2.1–2.7
139 Philippines 2.4 9 2.1–2.7
143 Azerbaijan 2.3 7 2.0–2.6
143 Comoros 2.3 3 1.6–3.3
143 Nepal 2.3 6 2.0–2.6
146 Cameroon 2.2 7 1.9–2.6
146 Ecuador 2.2 5 2.0–2.5
146 Kenya 2.2 7 1.9–2.5
146 Russia 2.2 8 1.9–2.4
146 Sierra Leone 2.2 5 1.9–2.4
146 Timor-Leste 2.2 5 1.8–2.6
146 Ukraine 2.2 8 2.0–2.6
146 Zimbabwe 2.2 7 1.7–2.8
154 Côte d´Ivoire 2.1 7 1.8–2.4
154 Papua New Guinea 2.1 5 1.7–2.5
154 Paraguay 2.1 5 1.7–2.5
154 Yemen 2.1 4 1.6–2.5
158 Cambodia 2.0 8 1.8–2.2
158 Central African Republic 2.0 4 1.9–2.2
158 Laos 2.0 4 1.6–2.6
158 Tajikistan 2.0 8 1.6–2.5
162 Angola 1.9 5 1.8–1.9
162 Congo Brazzaville 1.9 5 1.6–2.1
162 Democratic Republic of Congo 1.9 5 1.7–2.1
162 Guinea-Bissau 1.9 3 1.8–2.0
162 Kyrgyzstan 1.9 7 1.8–2.1
162 Venezuela 1.9 7 1.8–2.0
168 Burundi 1.8 6 1.6–2.0
168 Equatorial Guinea 1.8 3 1.6–1.9
168 Guinea 1.8 5 1.7–1.8
168 Haiti 1.8 3 1.4–2.3
168 Iran 1.8 3 1.7–1.9
168 Turkmenistan 1.8 4 1.7–1.9
174 Uzbekistan 1.7 6 1.5–1.8
175 Chad 1.6 6 1.5–1.7
176 Iraq 1.5 3 1.2–1.8
176 Sudan 1.5 5 1.4–1.7
178 Myanmar 1.4 3 0.9–1.8
179 Afghanistan 1.3 4 1.0–1.5
180 Somalia 1.1 3 0.9–1.4

“Who Are The Maoists And What Do They Want?” by Rita Khanna

Great stuff here. Who Are The Maoists and What Do They Want? A good overview of the Maoist revolution in India.

Now from a generic Left POV, I would have to say that this post makes it clear that all of the previous solutions have completely failed to address the needs of the vast majority of Indians.

That includes the Congress Party, of course the BJP and the Right, the “Indian socialism” of the first 20 years of India’s statehood, and even the parties of the Left, including, to their shame, the Communist Parties in power. Not to mention the neoliberalism of the last 15 years or so. Failed, all failed.

Now that leaves your generic Leftwinger a couple of choices. To continue to support the various failed projects of the past, Left, Right or Center, or to try something new for a change. It’s clear that the Maoists, for better or worse, are the only people in India who even have a chance at addressing the various problems outlined below. Therefore, I support the Maoists! Not because I’m a Maoist myself (I’m more of a grocery list Leftwinger, and I even support social democracy in many places as the greatest good for the greatest number) but because their model is way better than all of the atrocious alternatives.

There aren’t enough Communists in India to put this project forward, nor enough in the world to support them. So the Maoists need the support of all Communists, socialists and even progressives in general for their cause, and they ought to welcome support from the non-Marxist Left and even non-Leftist liberals and progressives.

After reading this, all I can say is, “Go Maoists Go!”

War Against the Maoists: But Who Are They and What Do They Want

Rita Khanna

Radical Notes Journal

November 19, 2009

Author’s Note: This is meant to be a simple and brief exposition of the goals and strategies of the Maoist movement in India for people who may not have much awareness about it and are confused by the propaganda in the mainstream media. This does not go into the arcane debates about mode of production in India, the debates among communist revolutionaries over strategy and tactics etc. This aims at people who, for example, are perplexed why the Maoists, instead of trying to ensure safe drinking water like an NGO, rather, often resort to violent activities against the Government.

The Indian government is launching a full-scale war against the Maoist rebels and the people led by them in different parts of the country. The initial battles, without any formal announcement, have already started. For this purpose, they intend to deploy about 75,000 security personnel in parts of Central and Eastern India, including Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand. The government will organize its regular air force in addition to paramilitary and specially trained COBRA forces. The air force has begun to extend its logistic support.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P. Chidambaram have declared the Maoist rebels to be “the biggest internal security threat” to India and a hindrance to “development.” The mainstream media seem to have taken them at their face value.

Their publications and television programs seem to be building a war hysteria against the Maoist rebels regardless of the fact that this attack by the government will be directed against some of the most deprived of the Indian people. Indeed this is turning into a war of the state against its own people!

While paying lip service at times to the notion that the current people’s insurgency led by the Maoist rebels has its root in decades of vicious exploitation of the poor, especially the Dalits and tribals, the blare of government propaganda tries to convince us that the Maoist rebels are dangerous, bloodthirsty terrorists determined to establish their areas of influence.

The Government is preaching that the Maoists can go to any extent to maintain their influence in these areas – by either preventing the government from undertaking development activities or by using the power of their guns and killing disobedient individuals. Their ideology is to terrorize the common people, wrest power from the democratically elected governments and destroy the entire fabric of the society.

The government and the media want us to believe that the only people, apart from a few romantic misguided intellectuals, who willingly support Maoists are the poor, ignorant, uneducated, uninformed tribal people. They seem to claim that no sensible, intelligent person living in a society like ours would support them voluntarily. But is this a true picture?

Could it be that the Maoist rebels are supporting and organizing the poor, exploited people to fight oppression, to establish a more egalitarian society where the wealth of our growing economy will be spread among all, not merely among a very small minority? Could it be that in the name of suppressing the Maoists, the state is going all out to break the backbone of these poor peoples’ fight? Could it be that the government is planning to wage a war, in our name, against our own sisters and brothers to help line the pockets of the rich?

In this hour of crisis, we must ask those questions that the government seeks to suppress.

What do we really know about the Maoist rebels, their ideology, their plans and programs? Why does the government need to go to war against its own people and inside its own territory? Are the Maoists really blocking development? Who are these Maoists anyway and what do they want?

Let us take one question at a time.

Who are these Maoists?

The Maoists are revolutionaries mainly extremely poor people, including a large number of Dalits and tribals. They come mainly from the toiling masses of India, and they are trying to organize the vast population of such masses of this country. They seek to arm and train them so that these masses can resist the onslaught of the rich. In this effort, they go beyond the idea that mass movements should focus on some specific issues like wage increases, better health care, more honesty of public servants and so forth.

The view of the Maoist rebels is that the poor and exploited people must first and foremost establish their own democratic political power and their own state power in various places. This is because without controlling state power, the poor and the exploited can at most hope for only limited improvements in their living conditions, i.e., so long as it does not inconvenience the rich who usually control the state power.

So, the Maoists mobilize the poor to fight against the existing state, even with arms if possible, as they consider the existing state to be a set of agents acting for the big multinational corporations, rich landlords and the wealthy in general.

The fight is an extremely challenging and unequal one, as the rich are aided by the government bureaucrats, the police and even the military. Also, contrary to what the Government and the mainstream media are propagating, the Maoist rebels are actually completely opposed to individual killings; they openly denigrate such stray terrorism-like acts. What they have been attempting to build up is a mass movement, even armed, to take on the violence of the ruling classes and its representative state machinery.

The Maoist movement was born in India in the late 1960s, after a radical section of political workers broke away mainly from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM) because they felt the CPIM and other such parties like CPI, RSP, etc. had discredited themselves with their opportunist politics of placating and compromising with the rich. The movement has a long history of development. The present party, CPI (Maoist), came into being in 2004 by the merger of a number of fraternal organizations.

Is development in India arrested because the Maoist rebels are blocking it?

What is the state of the people of India at present? With its current high rate of growth, this is also a country of abject poverty and extreme inequality. Home to 24 billionaires (second largest in Asia according to Forbes), India can also boast of 230 million people who go to bed on a half-empty stomach (World Hunger Report).

A country whose economy grows at

In this so called “hub of knowledge economy,” only 1

Maoists do not oppose “development” at all, they only oppose the “pro-rich development” at the expense of destitution or often total destruction of the poor. For example, in the Dandakaranya region of Chhattisgarh, they oppose the setting up of helipads, but there, the poor themselves, led by the Maoist rebels, have built irrigation tanks and wells for help in agriculture, something the Indian government did not bother to do.

The Indian government routinely blames the Maoist rebels for blowing up schools! But what the government tries to suppress is that these blown up school buildings were actually being used or requisitioned as  camps for security personnel!

And what changes do they want? Why do they want these changes?

(1) Overhauling the entire structure of oppression instead of piecemeal reforms

In addition to all the woes described above, India is also a country where thousands of Muslims can be butchered in broad daylight by fascist Hindu forces (the most widespread and gruesome such pogrom in recent times happened in Gujarat in 2002), while the ministers and police look the other way.

And these features are not the stray results of the misdeeds of a few villains. The existing sociopolitical system in India has a built-in mechanism which ensures that the common masses will be oppressed by a rich and powerful few. Widespread systemic violence is required and is routinely applied by the Indian state so that common people remain disciplined and do not revolt in the face of oppression.

(2) Land to the tillers and destruction of the landlord class

About 6

In the last four decades the proportion of households with little or no land (landless and marginal farmer households) has increased steadily from 6

The Maoist revolutionaries want to change this to ensure equitable distribution of land. They do not deter the landless and poor peasants and the poor rural labourers from collective armed fight against the existing state power for achieving this goal.

(3) Freedom from money lenders and traders

Indebtedness in rural India has been increasing by leaps and bounds, especially in the recent decades. Public rural banks are closing down due to relaxation of government regulation. Therefore, instead of securing credits from public institutional sources, rural folk are now being forced to approach the village money lenders (who are often big landlords or rich farmers as well) on a larger and larger scale.

Unscrupulous traders are adding to the misery of poor peasants. They sell spurious inputs to small and marginal peasants at exorbitant prices. They also make huge profits by buying their harvest at throwaway prices and selling them in urban areas at a premium.

Not-so-well-off peasants, in this no-win situation, of course end up needing substantial credit. Private moneylenders and various for-profit financial companies take advantage of this situation by extracting enormous sums from peasants. Interest rates can be as high as

The Maoist rebels want to change this.

(4) End of caste system and eradication of untouchability

It is well known that the caste system is still thriving in India. Economically it keeps the overwhelming majority of the people in dire poverty and politically it suppresses their fundamental democratic rights. Often the lower castes are robbed of their human dignity. They are even denied access to public facilities like some sources of drinking water, schools etc.

An Expert Group of the Planning Commission reports that in 7

According to an NCDHR report, on average, 27 atrocities (including murder, abduction and rape) against Dalits take place every day. The well-off landed sections in the villages still come mainly from the upper castes. They use Brahminical ideology to try to keep all other sections of the population under domination.

The same is true for usurers, merchants, hoarders, quarry owners, contractors – all mainly come from the upper castes. In short, the upper castes are still very much in command in all aspects of rural life. Often they run a parallel raj with their own private army of goondas.

The Maoists want to break this stranglehold of the upper castes and ensure equal rights for Dalits and Adivasis.

(5) Freedom from exploitation by foreign multinationals and its local partners

Since 1991, foreign capital, in alliance with big capitalists like Reliance, Tata and state bureaucrats, has penetrated vast sectors of the Indian economy. Every sphere of our life, starting from road construction, electricity generation and communication networks to food retail, health and education are under direct control of this coterie. In the name of “development” thousands of acres of land are being transferred to big business and multinationals.

For example, in Bastar, Chattisgarh, in the name of the Bodh Ghat Dam project, tens of thousands of Adivasis are being forcibly evicted from their “jal-jangal- zameen” (water-forest- land). In Niyamgiri, Orissa the land which is the abode of several Dongria tribes has been handed over to the multinational Vedanta group, which will completely destroy the livelihood of these tribes, affecting more than 20,000 people. The state government and the mainstream opposition parties of the state are actively supporting such activities.

The Maoists, over the years, have been resisting such plunder.

(6) Ensuring people’s democratic rights

It is well known that elections are often a sham in India. The parliament, as we have seen several times, is a bazaar where the rich and super-rich can buy the MPs. According to the ADR (Association of Democratic Reform), the average asset of an MP has gone up to 5.12 crore in 2009 from Rs 1.8 crore in 2004. In our democracy the erstwhile rajas and maharajas, like the Scindias, are still proliferating and control the local economy and polity in many places.

And we also know the state of the judicial system in our country. The Salman Khans and Sanjeev Nandas can kill by running over commoners with their cars, yet they can still escape the law for a very long time, perhaps forever.

B.N. Kirpal, the judge, who arbitrarily ordered that Indian rivers be interlinked, ignoring the resulting ecological and human calamity, joined the environmental board of Coca-Cola after he retired.

The Maoists want to establish people’s court where poor people can get true justice. In fact, such courts run in many places where the Maoist movement is strong.

(7) Self-determination for the nationalities

The Indian government ruthlessly suppresses the national aspirations of many people. These people and their land became part of India by accident – because the British raj annexed their homeland or a despotic king wanted their land to be a part of India. Lakhs of Indian troops have been deployed in Kashmir and the northeastern states to curb the  struggles of the people in these states for their national self-determination.

Since 1958, AFSPA has been imposed in northeastern states, which allows armed forces to conduct search and seizure without warrant, to arrest without warrant, to destroy any house without any verification and to shoot to kill with full impunity. In Kashmir, there is 1 military personnel for every 15 civilian.

Cold blooded murders, like those of Thangjam Manorama Devi, Chungkham Sanjit, Neelofar and Asiya Jan, are carried out frequently in the name of “countering terrorism.” The Maoist rebels seek to establish freedom of self-determination for all nationalities.

So, to sum up, the new society the Maoists want to establish will have the following components:

  • Land to the poor and landless. Later on cooperative farming is to be established on voluntary basis.
  • Forest to the tribal people.
  • End of the rule of the rich and the upper caste in villages and the uprooting of the caste system. Uproot all discrimination based on gender and religion.
  • Seizure of the ill gotten wealth and assets of multinational corporations and their local Indian partners.
  • Self-determination for the nationalities, political autonomy for the tribes.
  • Establish a state by the poor and for the poor, where the present day exploiters would be expropriated.
  • Participation of people in day to day administrative work and decision making. Democracy at the true grassroots level with people having the power to recall their democratic representatives.

In summary: ensuring freedom, rights and democracy for all sections of the toiling masses.

What have the Maoists-led people’s struggles achieved so far?

Information in this section is taken, purposely, from the Expert Group Report to the Planning Commission, which is available on the web.

Contrary to what the media try to portray, the government’s own report says that the movement led by the Maoist rebels cannot be seen as simply blowing up of police stations and killing individual people. It encompasses a mass organization. Mass participation in militant protest has always been a characteristic of such mobilization.

Although the Maoists by their own admission are engaged in a long term people’s struggle against the oppression by the present India state, their movement has already achieved some short term successes in improving the condition of the poor people.

The Maoist movement in India was built around the demand of “land to the tillers.” Numerous struggles, led by the Maoists, have been fought all over the country, especially in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, to free land from the big landholding families. In many such cases landlords have been driven away from the villages and their land has been put in the possession of the landless poor. But the police and paramilitary do not allow the poor to cultivate such lands.

In Bihar, landless Musahars, the lowest among the Dalits, have struggled and taken possession of fallow government land. This has had the support of Maoists.

Under the leadership of the Maoists, the Adivasis have reclaimed forest land on an extensive scale in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, Orissa and Jharkhand. The Adivasis displaced by irrigation projects in Orissa had to migrate to the forests of the Visakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh in large numbers. The Forest Department officials harassed and evicted them on a regular basis. The movement led by the Maoists put an end to this.

In rural India, the Minimum Wages Act remains an act on paper only. In the forest areas of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand, non-payment of legal wages was a major source of the exploitation of Adivasi laborer. Maoists-led struggles have put an effective end to it. These struggles have secured increases in the rate of payment for picking tendu leaves (used for rolling beedies), washing clothes, making pots, tending cattle, repairing implements etc.

The exploitation previously had been so severe that as a result of the sustained movement led by the Maoists, the pay rates of tendu leaves collection have over the years increased by fifty times.

The movement has given confidence to the oppressed to assert their rights and demand respect and dignity from the dominant castes and classes. The everyday humiliation and sexual exploitation of laboring women of Dalit and tribal communities by upper caste men has been successfully fought. Forced labour, begari, by which the toiling castes had to provide obligatory service for free to the upper castes, was also put an end to in many parts of the country.

In rural India, disputes are commonly taken to the rich and powerful of the village (who are generally the landlords) and caste panchayats, where the dispensation of justice is in favour of the rich and powerful. The Maoist movement has provided a mechanism, usually described as the “People’s Court” whereby these disputes are resolved in the interests of the wronged party.

Why then does the government need to go to war against its own people led by these rebels instead of hailing them as true patriots?

There is a simple answer. Chattisgarh, Orissa are rich in mineral wealth that can be sold to the highest multinational bidder. The only obstacle standing between the corrupt politicians and ALL THIS MONEY are the poor, disenfranchised tribal people (and the Maoists leading them). So, this war. This is not something new in India or for that matter in other parts of the world.

Mobutu’s corrupt regime selling off the Belgian Congo piece by piece to the US, Belgium and other countries comes to mind. In the sixty years of independence from direct colonial rule, the Indian state has been doing the same. It has systematically impoverished the overwhelming majority to serve the interest of a powerful few and their foreign friends.

The impending war to evict the tribal people from their villages, on the pretext of eliminating the Maoists, will be fought at the behest of big corporations, who want to control and plunder our resources such as minerals, water and forests. It is high time that we recognize this pattern of waging war which will be fought by the poor on both sides, but will benefit only the big capitalists and their cheerleaders in the government.

Note: For an interested reader, the Banned Thought site contains an enormous wealth of information about the Maoist rebels, including their own documents.

Fraud and Cronyism Under Neoliberalism – A Feature, Not a Bug

Repost from the old site.

In the comments section, Uncle Milton suggests that the massive fraud perpetuated under the Bush regime (I would add under Reagan too) was antithetical to a free market system. A true free market system is supposed to make fraud illegal.

By any definition of classical economics, what happened to the real estate market was fraud on a massive scale. PS No bid contracts in Iraq as you might guess as nothing to do with free market economics. Crony capitalism and corruption are in conflict with free market economics. If you take a turd, paint it white, and call it beautiful.. it’s still a turd.

 

By your definition, Unc, free market economics hardly occurs anywhere. This seems to be the problem. Once these neoliberal systems are put in, they are very prone to corruption and crony capitalism. Extremely prone! Everyone wails about it, but it seems to be almost an inherent part of the system. A feature, not a bug.

And the proponents of the free market tend to be very tolerant of massive fraud to the point of not even tolerating it. The more free market the system, it seems the more fraud and cronyism.

As more socialist leaning groups come in, they tend to reign in the fraud to some extent. Europe has very low levels of fraud (it’s considered to be a safe place to do business), and it has high levels of socialism in its system.

China moving from socialism to capitalism was followed by massive fraud and cronyism. Same with Russia and to a much lesser extent Eastern Europe. The neoliberal revolution in Latin America coincided with a tremendous amount of crony capitalism and fraud as state enterprises were sold off to friends of the state in a cronyist fashion for pennies on the dollar.

The way to reduce fraud and cronyism in a capitalist system is to empower the state more (social democracy). Culture also plays a role though.

As an aside, I would point out that the free market ideologists spreading the gospel of neoliberalism had almost nothing to say about the massive cronyism, fraud, graft and out and out theft associated with their neoliberal revolution.

While the billionaires looted Russia bare and bled the country dry, the Jeffrey Sachs’ (the mastermind of the plan and yes, he is Jewish) of the world said nothing. The corporate media mostly just cheered.

The Friedmanites out of the Chicago School have for the most part been fashioning a free market vision in which fraud, graft, cheating, lying and even out of out theft seems to be legal when done by big capitalists wearing suits under a legalistic veneer. There were few persecutions for the massive fraud that occurred under Reagan and now under Bush.

If, as Unc notes above, the financial crash was predicated on massive amounts of out and out crime, it should be clear to us in the next year or so that almost no one is going to go to jail over it.

The FBI looked into investigating the financial crash and seems to have decided that there were far too many criminals committing far too many crimes for the FBI to even begin to get involved at current staff levels, especially with the needs of the War on Terror, so it looks like most of the criminals are just going to get away with it.

As I note above, increasingly, it seems as if mass cronyism, fraud and financial crime in general under neoliberalism is more of a feature than a bug.

Harry Baker and Roman Polanski

A commenter comments on the Harry Baker Versus Roman Polanski Pedo Final Playoffs at Loli Stadium. It’s in overtime, and the ball’s on the 13 Yard Line. All the cheerleaders are on the sidelines playing with Barbie Dolls .

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Pedobear gives this post 7 Vienna Sausages, a very high rating for inappropriate content.

No offense, Robert, but your position with regard to Harry Baker is in contradiction with the position that you took with regard to Roman Polanski

With Roman, it was 30 years ago, he did it once, he already did some time for it, and it’s old case, water under the dam, that needs to be dropped due to the length of time passed.

Harry Baker has been doing this forever and getting away with it. The charges are recent, as in two years. It’s not some old case that all the sane people want to go into the memory hole forever. Furthermore, the girls are pressing charges against him. There are two girls who want him charged.

There are bunch of other girls with whom he has apparently committed similar crimes, and they are not charging him, nor is there enough evidence for the cops to go after him. Harry has done this act hundreds or thousands of times over decades to dozens, maybe scores, maybe hundreds of girls. The number of times he has committed this crime and the number of female victims the law says he has victimized is astounding.

In Roman’s case, there was one victim. One time, one act. 31 years ago. He’s already been arrested, already done some time, already suffered from being on the lam for decades. The girl got paid off and she doesn’t even want to press charges. It’s an old case, water under the dam, a single act with a single victim on a single day, the girl doesn’t care. So forget about it.

I also feel there is quite a bit of difference between a single act with a 13 Year Old by a 46 year old man and multiple acts over many years with an elderly man in his 70’s and 80’s with victims as Young As 13.

Qualitatively and quantitatively, the cases are dramatically different. I am not opposed to going after middle aged and older men who go after, seduce and frankly prey on Young Girls all the way down to 13-15, especially where it is a habitual case. It’s been going on forever, but it ain’t right.

I also have to admit that I’m pissed at Harry Baker. Class privilege is just not right. I live in the same area as Hairy Ass Baker, I’m 29 years younger and a Hell of a lot better looking than some old man who’s older than God’s parents.

Due to Pedophile Mass Hysteria, I can’t even look at Teenage Girls around here, much less talk to them. I can’t even say, “Hi, nice day.” I can barely even look at women aged 18-20, and sometimes up to 23 or so, and those are legal. I can’t talk to them either, not even when I’m ordering a cup of fucking coffee from them.

If I cast eyes on them on let one sound come out of my lips, according to these lame cunts, I’m automatically trying to fuck them. What a joke. These chicks must think about sex 10 times more than I do. No! You dumb bitches! Just because I ask about the weather, doesn’t mean I’m trying to fuck you!

If I do anything but look at the floor and zipper my lips when any female under 21 is around, I’m a Sicko, a Pervert, a Creep, a Pedophile , a Child Molester, a Dirty Old Man, a Predator and a Weirdo.

But Harry Fucking Baker, who’s so old he looks like he babysat the Redwoods, gets to fuck all the Jailbait he wants for decades and get away with it cuz he’s a gazillionaire. So there’s a socialist reason to see this guy hung out to dry.

No to poor men going to prison while rich men go free. No to class privilege in law enforcement and imprisonment. What the Hell is this country anyway, a Banana Republic of the Democracy’s Founding Shore?

*For an explanation of why I title case and bold some words, see here.

The Strange Saga of Harry Baker

Harry Baker, 81, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Madera County, California, has been arrested on charges of child molestation after it emerged that a video of him was taken in which he is naked and engaging in sex acts with a 13 Year Old Girl. The affidavit for the search warrant in the Harry Baker case is here. It runs to 67 pages, but the good stuff is on pages 26-37.

The incident occurred in a Fresno motel room two years ago. Baker apparently did not know he was being videotaped.

There was a woman in her twenties present, this woman is named Lisa Marshall, age 27. She apparently cannot be located. The girl’s mother is a Gypsy named Tillie Steve. She cannot be located either. Baker had a 5-year relationship with the Gypsy mother, Ms. Steve.

A woman and her husband and two others have been arrested on Child Pornography and Extortion charges. They are apparently Gypsies. The incident occurred in May 2007. The girl, now 15, is now claiming that Baker molested her. After the video was made, the Gypsies presented it to Baker and demanded blackmail money.

Over a two year period, the Gypsies collected $250,000 from Baker, who is a very wealthy man.

Baker owns Sierra Telephone, which has, in my opinion, an illegal monopoly on phone and Internet service in Eastern Madera County that has been, in my opinion, illegally abusing phone and Internet customers and competing business, such as Internet providers, for many years. Internet service through Sierratel is very expensive for slow service. They do this because they have a monopoly up here and can afford to shaft the consumer.

If you know anything about blackmail, the problem with it is that it never ends. They don’t just come for money once, take the money and say thanks and go away. The keep coming back asking for more and more money all the time. This is what happened with Baker. As noted, he paid out $200,000 over a 2-year period with no end in sight.

Baker wanted to put a stop to it, so he went to an attorney, Richard Berman of Fresno (I don’t know this guy) and told him about the blackmailing. Apparently due to mandatory reporting laws, Berman was obligated to report Baker’s having sex with the 13 year old girl to the police.

After an investigation, Baker was arrested by Fresno police on charges of Having Sex with a Child under the Age of 14 (otherwise known as Child Molestation). His bail was set at $500,000. Baker easily posted $50,000 of that and was released eight days ago.

Baker is a former Madera County Supervisor who served on the Board of Supervisors for 12 years. He bought Sierra Telephone from his parents in 1950 and turned it into a very lucrative business. He was a well-known philanthropist in the area and spread his money far and wide.

Baker has now been suspected in another child molestation case. This time the Las Vegas Police are involved. The girl in this case, I believe, was also 13 year old girl. She resides in the Bay Area in California, and she is saying that Harry Baker had sex with her in Las Vegas.

I’m not sure if having sex with a 13 year old girl is child molesting. The law claims it is, but the law is calling all kinds of bullshit child molesting lately, including adult males having sex with 17 year old girls and female school teachers having sex with high school boys. Obviously, none of that is pedophilia. The medical definition of pedophilia would be a man who has a very strong attraction to prepubescent children or little or none to mature persons.

Nowadays, such a person would be 11-12 years old. So medically speaking (as per the DSM-IV) this is not Pedophilia, as 13 year old girls are already going through puberty. Legally speaking, it is considered child molesting, as the law usually defines sex with minors 13 and under as Child Molestation. So you can pick your definition here.

My opinion is that any man over age, say, 18, having sex with a 13 year old girl is just flat out wrong. At that age, they still look like little girls. It looks like a little girl with boobs and starting to get some woman curves. I can’t see messing with a young girl like that at all, and I’ve been propositioned by them before, more than once. Unlike Harry Baker, I turned them down.

13 year olds are no longer children, but they are not yet adults either. They are “girl-women.” That’s what teenage girls, aged 13-17 are, girl-women. They are neither girls nor women, neither children nor adults. They are adolescents. Conflating sex with a girl 17 years and 11 months old with sex with a 7 year old girl is just nuts and wrong.

However, it is just wrong for middle aged and older men, certainly, to go after young girls, especially if the girls are 13, 14, 15. It may be ok for a primitive society, but we live in a civilized society. I doubt if the girls are harmed if the sex is consensual, but you should not allow it. It does damage to society, so society has a right to ban it.

Men over age 40 going after girls 13-15 are usually pursuing them. Young girls that age will only rarely voluntarily approach a man that age and try to seduce him. If they do it would be a 15 year old. 13 and 14 year old girls will not chase men over 40.

To those of us old-timers who have been in the mountains for a long time, there is nothing surprising about any of this. I have been hearing stories about Baker ever since I came to the mountains in 1990.

Here are some of the stories that have been told to me over the years. All of the informants wish to remain anonymous, and of course all of the stories are unverified rumors. But at some point, rumors are a flood that can’t be denied anymore.

1991: An Oakhurst “hippie woman,” about 35 years old. She had been to Harry Baker’s parties in the recent past, when Baker was 62 years old. After about 15 minutes, she took off running out the door. It was the worst and most outrageous party she had ever been too, with underage girls, drugs, and drinking.

1992: A 20 year old Oakhurst girl, now married, said she had been one of Harry Baker’s girlfriends at age 15-16, in 1987 and 1988, when Baker was 59-60 years old. She supposedly had photos of her naked with him, but I never saw them.

Early 1990’s: My father went to see Harry Baker in his office to discuss a community issue. They kept getting interrupted by a very young girl knocking on the door, “Harrrrrry…Harrrrrrry…..” The man who told me had taught school for many years, including junior high and high school.

He said that the girl sounded very young. He estimated by the sound of her voice that she was 13-14 years old, junior high age. My father was quite shaken up by the incident due to the fact that the girl seemed so young. At this time, Baker was about 66 years old.

2009: A 45 year old Oakhurst woman said that when she was in junior high and high school in Oakhurst 27-33 years before, Harry Baker used to appear at the schools quite regularly. In particular, he liked to show up whenever there was a birthday party for a student, especially if the student was an attractive girl aged 12-18. He would appear at the parties and smooch around with the young girls.

It was well-known at both the junior high and the high school that Harry Baker had a standing offer to any young girl to provide them with pot if they would go out into the bushes on school grounds with him and let him cop a feel. She said most of the girls did not do it, but some of them went for it and messed around with him.

In general, these girls were from broken homes. This would have occurred between 1976 and 1981, when Baker was 48-53 years old and the girls were age 12-18. The implication here is that the teaching staff and administration at Oakhurst-area schools during this time was aware of what Baker was doing and went along with it. Therefore, they were complicit.

2009: An Oakhurst woman, aged 71, said that the word from Madera County Victim Services is that they have worked with a number of teenage girls who had sex with Harry Baker over the years. In fact, case workers say that there is more than one “little Harry Baker” in Madera County as a result of these liaisons. In other words, some of the girls that Baker had sex with got pregnant and bore his children. It’s probable that if this is true, Baker has been supporting these women over the years.

1991-2009: During this period, I have heard many stories about Harry Baker. The word on the street is that he likes “young girls,” as in underage girls. Asked for further clarification, they said it meant teenage girls, either underage or right around the age of consent. Baker has also had a reputation as a womanizer, who had many affairs with females over 18. I don’t have much information on that.

In addition, I have heard many stories about the parties at his house. For 19 years, I have heard that marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine are used at these parties. Pot is smoked, cocaine is snorted or smoked as crack, and sometimes speed is sniffed. There is also quite a bit of drinking going on at these parties. These parties reportedly occur at his ranch in Ahwahnee. The young girls are all apparently quite willing. In return for sex, Baker gives them money, drugs, etc.

In the course of their investigation, Fresno police interviewed motel and hotel owners in Fresno. They reported that Baker had been checking into rooms there for the past several years. Often young girls would show up later asking for his room. They always claimed they were his “nieces,” but they often did not even know his last name. Lodgers had begun to grow suspicious over the years because the girls seemed so young.

To us, this arrest is nothing new . We are just amazed that he finally got caught.

Harry Baker is one of the richest men in the county. He basically owns Eastern Madera County, along with a few other powerful men. The political structure is very backwards, almost semi-feudal, Southern, banana republic, or Third World.

Law enforcement are said to be in cahoots with powerful figures, who are protected. Good old boys are let go or allowed to file fake charges against “newcomers” or “city people” who are often disliked for not being rednecks. In other words, my experience with Eastern Madera County Sheriff’s Department is that they are corrupt (and yes, unfortunately, I have had some often unpleasant experiences with them).

The Madera County District Attorney’s office has long been corrupt, in my opinion. And yes, unfortunately, I have had some unpleasant experiences with those crooks too, in particular Ernest LiCalsi, who I always felt was corrupt and a crook. LiCalsi wanted to bat 1.000 as a prosecutor and tended to prosecute cases, even where it was obvious that the defendant was innocent or even that no crime, or certainly not that stated crime, had even occurred.

He was a sleazy, slimy prosecutor who cared nothing about whether defendants were guilty or innocent or even the facts of the case. He just wanted to get his damned convictions. Recently, as I assumed, he was Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Americas, California, Corruption, Crime, East Indians, Heterosexuality, Law enforcement, Mass Hysterias, Pedophile Mass Hysteria, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, Roma, Sex, South Asians, USA, West8 Comments on The Strange Saga of Harry Baker

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