Worth reading

Amit Verma wants this from India's Second Freedom Struggle (link):

One: Limit the power of government
Two: Unleash Private Enterprise. Remove the License and Permit Raj
Three: Reform the Indian Penal Code
Four: Ensure Free Speech in India
Five: Respect Taxpayer’s Money
Six: Treat the Right to Property as Sacred

I only included the first six of his list of eight. 7 and 8 are moot if 1 and 2 happens.

When messengers become too important

For a few months now, western news reports about Libya and Syria have had a common theme - they all complain about how western reporters are not allowed freedom of movement and liberty to report. For instance, NPR's Cairo-based Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson starts many of her otherwise impeccable reports with how she has been cooped up in her hotel, not allowed to cross a certain border, or somesuch hardship.

I cry foul. Not because of lack of sympathy for news staffers who risk life and limb to do their jobs, but because:

1. In the backdrop of the profound historical events happening in the Middle East right now, focusing on the reporters' difficulties is absurdly out of place. Even in normal circumstances, it is unprofessional to do so.

2. In this age of cell phones and Twitter, it is hard to understand why basic reporting should be hostage to the physical presence of foreign reporters. With some wads of cash, a few satellite phones and a network of informants, all that remains for foreign reporters to do is sit at their desks and put their spin on field reports. Western governments have no scruples about fomenting violence and insurrections in foreign countries with supplies of cash and weapons to locals, why are western news publishers shy of using subterfuge for the legitimate purpose of getting information from locals?

In a free market, one should be able to walk away from an unprofessional service provider to another who is not, but with global news there are none I know who think their newspersons are less important than the news. Even Al-Jazeera, which is rooted in the Middle East, seems as stodgy and bureaucratic as the others.

Coming to terms

It was at the height of the Iraq war that I started earnestly tracking American politics. Because of my anti-war position, I naturally often found myself aligned with liberals, whose anti-Iraq-war stance I mistook to be a genuine anti-war sentiment. Hobnobbing with them to the point of calling myself liberal, I shared jokes with them at George Bush's expense and roundly criticized the war policy many a time.

But come 2011, come the Libyan war, and I found myself betrayed and left alone. Where were my liberal friends now? When, in response to a Congress reprimand, Mr. Obama claimed there were no hostilities in Libya, where was the uproar from the liberals? There was none.

It has since dawned on me that the anti-war stance of the liberals in case of Iraq was simply partisan positioning. It was not the Iraq war they were against, they were only against Bush's Iraq war. Liberals do stand for many things, but pacifism is not one of them. As I write this, many liberals are bending backwards in Congress and outside it to defend the Libyan war on behalf of "their" president.

The president is hardly to blame; as the leader of a warmongering nation, he is only fulfilling his mandate. It is civil society that has failed itself. As I pointed out earlier, in a democracy, all sides agreeing on something is dangerous.

* * *

The president has an unlikely bedfellow in his defence of the Libyan no-hostilities war: Senator John McCain, who has been berating his own party colleagues and warning Americans of the risk of isolationism. This is only another episode in Mr. McCain's never-ending war.



When I speak,
the military-industrial complex speaks.

Some high standards in journalism...

...pertain to the level of readers' tolerance/apathy.

This blogger was just reminded why he never goes to the Times of India website, instead filtering their content through Google News. Here are three headlines, which were found in close proximity to each other:

1. "Jaipal Reddy's niece's husband arrested" (Say what??)

2. "Aung Suu Kyi ready to shun non-violence" (No other journalist in the world seems to have made that interpretation from her speech)

3. "I am ugly, so no chicks: Rahul" (With reference to Rahul Bose; I can't decide if the copy editor is innocent, cynical, or trying to be funny)

I am ordinarily too indolent a person to be WTF'ed easily, but here I am.

More on equality

On Cafe Hayek (link), Don Boudreaux compares muscles with wealth to make a point about economic inequality.

A slippery slope to equality

There is an Indian fable about two quarreling cats and a monkey. The cats are fighting over a treat when a monkey offers to help out by splitting the treat into two equal parts for them. He brings out a weighing scale, cuts the treat into two, and places each part in a pan. Finding that one part is slightly heavier than the other, the monkey bites off a little chunk to make them equal. Sure enough, the other part is now heavier, so he takes a small bite off the other. And so on, till he finishes the entire treat himself before the cats know what is going on.

Large, centralized governments are like the shrewd monkey. Their quests for equality only make them fatter.

Instances of the slippery slope to equality are numerous. Corn ethanol producers want subsidies because the oil industry has it. Now soy growers want it too because the corn/growers have an unfair advantage. That immediately raises the rent on land that wind farms operate on, so they want a break too. The solar lobby clamors for a subsidy since they are now at a disadvantage. Coming a full circle, the oil industry now wants another break since the subsidies are now too much in favor of other energy sources. And so on goes the downwards spiral.

One prospective sled sitting on the slippery slope to equality is a bill in the U.S. Congress (H.R.1834) that is proposing to give American multinational companies a repatriation tax holiday so they can bring in billions earned worldwide back home while paying little taxes. Proponents such as Google, Apple and a host of other companies claim that up to $1 trillion in earnings are sitting outside the country, waiting for a tax holiday. Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers tugs at our heart-strings by telling us that all this money is "trapped overseas" (awww, poor money) by punitive federal tax laws.

Of course, the backbone of the argument for this tax holiday is that the money coming in will help spur new jobs and help the economy. Remember what this smells like? The bank bailouts, which were supposed to help the economy and people and not the banks themselves. Once the bailouts were done with, people said "if you bailed out the banks, why not us?". Once the corporations have their tax holiday, guess who will be asking for it next?

And so it goes on...

The way of the proud

When it comes to the debate on abortion I am generally in favor, from the perspective of the bearer's right and the belief that humankind has irresponsibly over-reproduced. Yet, convince me that a fetus is human, and I may be willing to reconsider my position from the point of view of common law.

However, when it comes to euthanasia, it is hard to believe there is a viable argument against it. We have no say over our own births, we should have a right to decide when it has been enough.

BBC2 recently aired a documentary on assisted dying. Watch part of it here, and judge as you will. Be warned, it shows a person swallowing a prepared poison and passing away.

Dark lining in the cloud

Ten U.S. Congressmen have sued the president for violating the Constitution by going to war with Libya without Congress' authorization.

Momentarily encouraging,except that even if the president had gone to Congress, there is not a slim chance that he would have been rebuffed.

Censorship by consensus

There is a cliche in American political culture about autocratic societies where individual speech and mass media are controlled. Conjure up the popular image of China, Iran and the former Soviet Union. The narrative that goes with the cliche is that opinions that don't agree with that of the ruling power are suppressed, which leads to terrible things.

There is surely some truth in that; yet, terrible things also result where there is textbook freedom of speech. Case in point is the USA Patriot Act, for which the Warmonger-in-Chief signed an extension on May 26.

The liberal president wanted it because he has no reason to not want it. The majority conservatives in Congress did not oppose it because it was originally drafted under their watch. The minority liberals in Congress did not oppose it because they have nothing to gain from opposing it. The media did not mention it because there is no controversy surrounding it.

Indeed, there has been a stunning mainstream media silence about the extension of the Patriot Act. Maverick liberals and conservatives in Congress have raised voices against the extension but those voices have barely made it through the media filter.

When the ruling power, the opposition, and the media all agree on something, it creates a proxy for censorship. Consensus is supposed to be good for democracy but then again maybe not. Think of horrors like racism and slavery which lasted too long not because opposition to them was stifled, but because there was overwhelming political consensus that it is okay for these institutions to exist.

The lack of a vocal opposition and debate by elected representatives or civil society on any public policy issue is dangerous.