Recently, Jon Stewart did his piece “I give up” on the fact that while the conservative political machine has been painting the public workers (like teachers and firemen) as the greedy ones who are bleeding the nation dry, in reality it is corporations like GE who are the problem because despite a $9B profit, GE paid $0 federal income tax and got a $3.2B tax benefit. Now, it is considered common or ‘folk’ knowledge that corporations exploit all kinds of tax loopholes and lobby heavily to ensure that tax laws leave open several such loopholes to be exploited by these corporations. So why are Stewart and other so-called pundits (including news organizations) ‘noticing’ this only now and then pretending to be salient critics of such incongruities while at the same time depending on, and profiting from, the very same incongruities.  This is a real conflict of interest! One that hasn’t been adequately explained. My discussion on Facebook yielded the following.

Acting as an apologist for Stewart and co, it may be argued that while they do not contribute anything for affecting a change or reform, at least they enlighten us on how we are being screwed over. Many times we already know of it, and at other times it is news. But through it all, at least we are laughing. Then again, isn’t it a little bit like Elle Driver reading to Budd “Sidewinder” about the effects of the venom of a Black Mamba, in Kill Bill Vol. 2, after the Black Mamba has bitten him?

Consider the following hypothesis: This country has been and continues to be run by corporations. The political parties and the politicians are simply the means by which the corporations accomplish this task. There is little by means of democracy or “the system” that can be done to change this fact. So the only way out is perhaps a revolution. And the existing power brokers want to ensure that it never happens. They do this by drugging the entire population, intellectually speaking, of course.

The population in question can be broadly classified as the “vulgar” (and by vulgar I mean “Of or associated with the great masses of people”) or the “intelligentsia“. The vulgar have the numbers and the ability to affect such a revolution, but they lack the knowledge and understanding to accomplish this; the intelligentsia, on the other hand, have the knowledge and the intellect to use the abilities of the vulgar to affect the revolution. So together, the population can make the change. But they will not, by design. And here’s why.

Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and others serve as the ”opiate of the vulgar” in ensuring that the masses focus their frustrations, anger, and action against all the wrong issues and attribute the problems to all the wrong reasons. Simultaneously, Stewart, Colbert, and others serve as the “opiate of the intelligentsia” by convincing their audience to simply resign to the status quo and not advocate for any change. Between the two, the existing power structures ensure perpetuation.

The reaction to such recruitment has ranged from outrage to ambivalence to resignation. But the effect of recruiting felons into the military has not been sufficiently illuminated. The military has been accused of hiding any moral or pragmatic ill effects that may have been precipitated by such large numbers of felons in the military. Incidentally, the evidence of such ill effects and complacency of the military have traditionally been anecdotal.

We may finally be seeing the effect of such “moral waivers”. Recently, a court martial in Washington sentenced a US soldier to 24 years in prison for murdering Afghan civilians with intent.It looks like unlike with Abu Gharib and Iron Triangle murders, the US military has stopped protecting soldiers who commit crimes (while in active duty). While there is no evidence to say that the soldier was a “moral waiver” recruit, I don’t think that matters. As Dr. Stjepan Mestrovic argues in his book Rules of Engagement, certain events, behavior, or tolerance creates a social atmosphere which affects the moral compass to the individuals in that society so that acts that would otherwise been considered immoral or wrong suddenly becomes acceptable, is rationalized, and condoned. The murder of Afghan civilians by US soldiers could well point to the creation of such an unhealthy social environment that has metastasized the soldiers’ moral inclinations and driven them to misanthropic acts that have occurred almost beyond the individual’s volition.

I hope I am wrong. But I seriously doubt it.

In fact, the whole offensive has bipartisan support. So it’s fair to say that there are very few within the government (including the opposition party of ‘no’) who do not support the action. The major reason for this offensive is that Gaddafi did not heed to the demands of the international community which were [source]:

Gadhafi must stop his troops from advancing on Benghazi, pull them back from Ajdabiya, Misurata, and Zawiyah, and establish water, electricity and gas supplies to all areas. Humanitarian assistance must be allowed to reach the people of Libya. Let me be clear, these terms are not negotiable.

The fear is that if the unrest in Libya is left unchecked, then the entire nation will descend into a civil war and there will be human-rights violation which is something the US is very protective of. Interestingly, doesn’t that argument make a stronger case for intervention in Darfur, Sudan? Of course it does! Then I wonder why the US refuses to intervene in what is arguably the worst abuses of human rights since Pol Pot’s regime.

We all know what’s going on. Libya has oil and Gaddafi is not a US puppet. Currently Gaddafi is struggling to maintain complete control over Libya. So US has both the motive and the opportunity to change the status quo. To place a figurehead in an oil-rich country so as to serve US interests. Lately, the US is being increasingly candid about its intentions. I suppose it is a good thing in some ways. For example, the US intentions are now common knowledge, instead of being mutual knowledge.

The most blatant admission of America’s abandonment a moral compass came from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen. Given that the rulers in Bahrain and Yemen have used force against anti-government demonstrators, and yet, the US has intervened only Libya and not Bahrain or Yemen, Admiral Mullen argued [source]:

“We haven’t had a relationship with Libya for a long, long time. The Bahrainis and that country has been a critical ally for decades. So we’re working very hard to support a peaceful resolution there, as tragic as it has been, and we certainly decry the violence which has occurred in Bahrain. I just think the approach there needs to be different”

Translation: We don’t like Gaddafi, and so it’s ok to attack Libya under this pretext. We like the rulers of Bahrain and Yemen. They serve US interests. So we don’t care enough to ensure that the citizens of those countries actually enjoy any of the freedoms that we constantly exalt. All that matters is that US is better off in the end. Everything else is just a puppet show anyway.

Lincoln used it brilliantly in his Cooper Union speech that made him an instant political star. He was politically a nobody when he gave that speech, and he started with “The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them.” He started by lowering expectations and making the contents of his speech sound like something anyone could have come up with. It couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, it is argued that this speech was responsible for his nomination and eventual victory in the presidential race.

George W. Bush was a master of dubitatio. He started off many of his public engagements as a knucklehead and sparking the meme “bushism“. But no one can argue the success of this rhetorical move because it make him ‘likable’, ‘relatable’, or in rhetorical terms virtuous, to his audience. Once he had his audience seeing him favourably, and trusting him to lead like they would have liked to, he (by definition) became an effective leader. Now, whether the leadership was merited, or  how this leadership was utilized, is an entirely different matter.

The fact remains, both were masters of dubitatio, and they used it well.

I find it hard to believe that such excrement is still sold like it is worth something. But, to Half-Price’s credit, its priced at less than half the original price. In fact, $5 is more like 25% of the original price.

Seeing that price tag, I couldn’t help but mimic Palin saying, “sucky, sucky. Five Dolla. Me love you long time!“

Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon, nor has it been associated only with Islamic radicals or people of Middle Eastern, African or South Asian ethnic origin. This dynamic belies the American belief that our free, open and integrated multicultural society lessens the allure of radicalism and terrorism for US citizens.

Who do you think said that? Micheal Moore? Noam Chomsky? Nah! ‘Actually, its the CIA. That’s right, the American Central Intelligence Agency. Wikileaks has more…

After reading this exposition on the issue by Great Bong. I realized that if Park51 were actually an effort by terror-loving organizations, then it’s a master stroke indeed! I find it hard to believe that Soho Properties did not foresee any issues or controversies with announcing a major construction project to benefit Muslims so close to Ground Zero. Knowing the tea baggers, Fox News, Sarah Palin, and their ilk. It is preposterous to claim innocence to not having anticipated such a backlash. So what forced them to proceed ahead with the plan?

Consider this: let some radical Islamic terrorist organization X want to indulge in a negative PR campaign against the US. Specifically, create a propaganda that depicts US as an intolerant nation, thereby denying US its moral high-ground in the so called “war on terror”. All X has to do is create a political catch-22 situation for US by capitalizing on the severely polarized political atmosphere near an election season. The Park51 fits the bill perfectly. The Right and the republican party simply plays into X’s ploy and is vituperative in its opposition to the construction despite having no constitutional or legal basis for doing so, whereas the Left and Libertarians play their part by opposing the Right. The catch-22 here is that if Park51 does not come through, the the US is demonstrated as a bigoted nation with none of the freedoms that it is putatively defending through its “war on terror”: bad PR. On the other hand, if Park51 does come  through, then Islamic organizations like X can claim victory in Islamization of the US (again potentially bad PR if not handled well), which will further enrage the Right to act Islamophobic (definitely bad PR!).

So are the entities responsible for Park51 unfortunate victims of the far Right’s bigotry? It is entirely possible. But are we sure that there not more than what meets the eye here? That’s something to think about.

P.S.: Even if my conspiracy theory was true, IMHO pulling the curtains on Park51 is a far worse proposition then letting it go through and then engaging in a careful discourse and PR campaign to mitigate the damage from the far Right’s Islamophobia.

One is forced to wonder: why is Pat Robertson saying such things knowing fully well that he is hurting people through his statements and hate? There has to be a logical explanation for it, and I think I have found one. My explanation is based on three important assumptions: (a) Pat Robertson believes that Jesus died for everyone’s sins, (b) he believes that the end times is near ^[1], and (c) he is a capitalist^[2].

Now, given that Pat Robertson is a capitalist, he must believe that the capitalist economic principles can be applied everything in life, including sin. So according to him, there must be some smallest unit of sin (arguably the smallest unit corresponds to the quality of sin in the ‘original sin‘), and also that Jesus’s death is worth only so many (finite) units of sin. Given that the end times are around the corner — being a shrewd capitalist one needs to get the best ‘bang for the buck’, so to speak — Pat Robertson probably wants to make Jesus’s death more worthwhile by sinning as much as he can so that the quota of sins for which Jesus died may be used up.

After all, every ‘true’ Christian’s goal is to make Jesus’s death worthwhile (in that Jesus’s death should not be in vain). So, it turns out that Pat Robertson is actually out sinning to make Jesus’s death count for something! Now he also knows that you sin then you will probably go to hell, and yet he pursues this path of validate Jesus’s crucifixion. Could there possibly be a greater sacrifice?

^[1]In fact, in the 70s Pat Robertson has predicted that the world would end in 1982!

^[2]This is more of an inference, than an assumption, based on the fact that Pat Robertson is a businessman, owns a broadcasting station, and sells books for money.

The resolution essentially says that the US Justice Systems are too irrepairably broken to admit a fair and just death penalty. In its own words:

.. more fundamentally Section 210.6 is simply inadequate to address the endemic flaws of the current system. Section 210.6, which in many respects provided the template for contemporary state capital schemes, represents a failed attempt to rationalize the administration of the death penalty and, for the reasons we discuss in greater detail below, its adoption rested on the false assumption that carefully-worded guidance to capital sentencers would meaningfully limit arbitrariness and discrimination in the administration of the American death penalty.

It lays out six important reasons for such disrepair [sourced from the actual text of the resolution (in PDF)]:

1. Section 210.6 advocates for an individualized determination of a crime (specifically murder, under certain circumstances) to be considered for death penalty as appropriate sentencing. However, several states have statutory identification of which murders should command the death penalty, and furthermore, such statuary discretion leaves the jury with a ‘formula’ to award the death sentence (rather than individualized determination).
2. Furthermore, the wide scope of murders/crimes that are currently eligible to extract the death sentence, under various state laws, is antithetical to the “spirit” and gravity of the punishment. The problem is that no state has successfully confined the death penalty to a narrow band of the most aggravated cases. Death eligibility in prevailing statutes remains breathtakingly broad, as aggravating
   factors or their functional equivalent often cover the spectrum of many if not most murders.
3. There is an almost unforgivable racial bias in the ratio of the number of minorities sentenced to death compared to the total number. Persistent efforts by various groups to address this issue has yielded little fruitful results in terms of a legal remedy to this issue.
4. The cost of administering the death-penalty is extremely high, and combined with the ineptitude of the defendants’ legal representation, the state incurs high costs in putting people to death who, arguably, do not deserve the punishment in the first place. The resolution noted: “Despite the fact that “effective assistance of counsel” is a recognized constitutional right, the scope of the right and the nature of the remedy have precluded the courts from being able to ensure the adequacy of representation in capital cases.”
5. In light of DNA evidence and upcoming forensic technologies, the acceptable risk of having some persons sentenced to death later, and perhaps too late, be shown to not have committed the crime for which they were sentenced. This issues is highlighted in House v. Bell, in which, the petitioner sought federal review with substantial new evidence challenging the accuracy of his murder conviction, including DNA evidence conclusively establishing that semen recovered from the victim’s body actually came from the victim’s husband, as well as evidence of a confession to the murder by the husbandthe Tennessee Supreme Court refused to consider whether new DNA evidence presented during death penalty appeals necessitates a new trial, and declined to answer other questions posed.
6. The politicization of judicial and gubernatorial elections has made death penalty a campaign issue, which leads to populist-style administration of the death penalty. Additionally, the politicization of the issue of capital punishment in the legislative sphere limits the capacity of legislatures to promote and maintain statutory reform. The kind of statutory reform that many regard as the most promising for ameliorating arbitrariness and discrimination in the application of the death penalty is strict narrowing of the category of those eligible for capital crimes.

In light of these observations, the resolution concludes: “these conditions strongly suggest that the Institute recognize that the preconditions for an adequately administered regime of capital punishment do not currently exist and cannot reasonably be expected to be achieved.”

“I figured out size does matter in the canine brain. Bill – golden retriever – very smart animal. When he was a puppy and I had to potty train him, if he pooped on the living room carpet, I stuck his nose in it. Three time later, he figured out ‘Oh, I am not supposed to crap here!’. Next two dogs, the same thing.

Now the little brain-dead Chihuahua comes along. She poops on the living room carpet, I stick her nose in it; three times later she thinks ‘Oh, I am not supposed to crap ever!’….. And that’s why they shake.”

The TSA did pretty much the same thing. On December 26th 2009, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane as it was preparing to land in Detroit. The usual noises followed ranging from blaming Obama for the incident to demanding that all Muslims be made to go through special security checks.

This incident could have been prevented if Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was not allowed to board the plane in the first place. All the warning signs were there: Umar’s father had warned the CIA about Umar,  anti-terror chiefs were warned five months ago that an al-Qaeda cell in Yemen was plotting a deadly attack using “The Nigerian”. Disregarding both these (vital) pieces of information, here is someone who bought one-way tickets from Nigeria to Yemen to the USA paying only cash and with no baggages to check-in. This should have raised suspicions, and he should have been singled out for additional security and through additional scanners.

Metaphorically speaking, TSA pooped on the living room carpet and the Nigerian stuck their nose into it! One would expect a rational response to be better mechanisms to profile passengers, not according to race or religion (which seems to be what all the rage is about), but according to passenger behavior. In this case, someone on the “alert list”, paying cash for a one-way transcontinental flight, with no check-in baggage would qualify as suspicious behavior. That would be saying “Oh, I am not supposed to crap here!”.

Instead, the TSA chooses to think “I am not supposed to crap ever!” and decides to put ALL passengers through additional security increasing [Bangkok Post, EUObserver, NY Times].