Helen Keller would shit in her pants

You read the headline correctly. This public health would have made the original American idol furious enough to protest by releasing her next most convenient BM into a pair of her own pants, just so she could have something more pleasant to occupy her mind.

Here's the story (1 in 5 parents refuse daughters' cervical cancer jab):

British folk who declined their daughter's HPV vaccine were worried about A) lack of long-term data, B) promiscuity - being immune to a virus that infects 80% of all people means you will have sex with those 80% of mankind, and C) "religious reasons."

The author, Sarah Boseley, looks then at a different angle: "Uptake ... lower in schools with a high proportion of girls from ethnic minority groups and those entitled to free school meals."

So society has officially succeeded in getting the poor and the non-white to dig their own graves with respect to their own health and - less obviously - personal finances. Here we have a free government-sponsored program and only the rich and white are taking it up in numbers. Will cervical cancer become stigmatized as the lower class woman's disease?

It's a well documented, though less well known fact that Helen Keller embraced several unpopular political causes. One was radical socialism, and it was because of classist health problems like her own blindness that she had the courage to look squarely at the issue.

Contempt for the middle class

Required reading:
The princess's cake gets an added crunch - Wolfgang Münchau (Financial Times)
Response: Contempt for the poor - Free Exchange (the Economist)

Position:
It's amazing how much life certain economic models get from their political expedience. The popular fiction of the Phillips curve often serves to remind us that attempts to question systemic inflation will not be tolerated. As is only human nature, public reasoning rarely precedes private decision making.

The median annual income in the United States is less than 40,000 USD. The median family has next to zero equity. Yet Wolfgang Münchau has hit on something in his statement on inflation ("Higher inflation is the transfer of wealth from the poor to the middle classes.") - the winners in the middle and upper classes are in the minority, far above median levels of income and wealth. Of inflation's effect on the relative poor the Fed may not be ignorant, but in choosing to benefit a small but well-connected minority they most certainly are insensitive.

Bloomberg:

Fox reporter fishes for sound bites... not biting

Blog=Trash?

It seems these days that every mainstream media outlet (including the good guys) is blogging away. While you might expect this to bring respect to the - dare I type it - blogosphere, you'd be wrong. Seems like traditional journalists are pumping out blog posts because the informality of it can save editor time (i.e. good excuse to hire fewer editors). These inane posts are still shackled by corporate censorship and that is not why the world got interested in blogs to begin with.

In light of the global focus on food this year, I'm posting my response to a vapid entry on the Guardian's food blog:

I'm continually shocked by our need to excuse the habits of conscientious eaters. Yes wartime rationing did affect eating habits, I'll admit. But avoiding waste without being forced to is a virtue.

The 'appeal' of drinking water used to cook veggies is that you are not throwing away delicious micronutrients. With your improved diet, you might even be able to cut back on fortified starches and meat. Sipping broth is a moral decision, a health decision, a personal finance decision, and perhaps a sign of sophisticated taste buds.

Readers who dare introspect momentarily on their eating habits should give the Guardian's George Monbiot's recent column a read.

My 'quirk', developed over many years in low income countries, is filling my bowl with traditional dishes and finishing every last bite. I'm also a gravy mopper - give me bread and a dirty dish and I'll show you a healthy snack.
Don't call me quirky. Call me smart.

So how badly have individual blogs been hurt by the mainstream? Sound off in the comment, why not.

The global food crunch: murder by exclusion

George Mondbiot writes on the Guardian:

The World Bank points out that "the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol ... could feed one person for a year".

...

I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat. This is a freshwater fish that can be raised entirely on vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency - about 1.6kg of feed for 1kg of meat - of any farmed animal.

read more

X Sama is moving!

I've finally had it with all of this template editing. X Sama is moving to blogspot so Blogger can take care of the web coding stuff, and I can focus on bringing you the nut-busting truth. Update your bookmarks to http://xsama.blogspot.com

This ain't your granddaddy's credit crunch, or is it?

One can imagine that undemocratic tinkering with the lifeblood of free capitalism requires a careful smokescreen: enter bank runs and public panic.
It's interesting to note that in 1933, the United States and the world entered an era of persistent inflation. So, the effect of creating the FDIC to restore 'confidence' was to give the financial class the means to tilt the scales in their favor. It wasn't until the 1960s that this effect surpassed productivity gains and the average working stiff started to see a drop in income - far to late for the public to connect the effect with the 1913 and 1933 causes.

The origins of cyborg Reagan

Listen to the last authenticated radio broadcast from human Ronald Reagan before he was replaced:

http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/youtube.pl?IDLink=3536877

No title required

Country Music Stars Challenge Al-Qaeda With Patriotic New Song �Bomb New York�

The deals behind secret prisons

BBC's Dispatches did an in-depth report on the no-longer-secret 'rendition' operations conducted by the CIA around the world. Acting in cooperation with allied authorities around the world, the agency has conspired to kidnap individuals and 'render' them to prison facilities where they can be tortured, detained, and murdered outside the public eye. In some cases, entire communities are moved and detained in prison camps, but they appear to be the exception.

Let's start back when the story was first unraveling. Agents were found to have taken many people accused of terrorism on international flights, without any legal authority. Who needs a judge when you have the air traffic controllers? My point in raising this issue is not to dredge up the results of previous investigations. We know the kidnappings were illegal, and like Guantanamo - nobody cares.

The critical conclusion which the public is too afraid to face is that terrorism has effectively replaced religion as the world's most unquestionable truth. Putting aside Noam Chomsky's observation about who the historical purveyors of state-sponsored terrorism are... yes even putting that aside we still must conclude that CIA rendition ops represent a new breed of terror exports.

Factor 1: the US intelligence/military machine has surplus capacity. We can't simply unleash its full power on the world because US interests do not demand it.

Factor 2: Western authorities have little to offer in political negotiations besides their quiet cooperation.

Factor 3: oppressive foreign governments lack the sophistication to safely extend their power into civilized corners of the world where rule of law exists.

Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia (not to mention our African allies) do not have the public credibility to kidnap people under the name of counter-terrorism. They cannot intimidate their political opponents across international borders. In simple political economy terms, there is a deal to be made here between authorities. Imagine CIA agents debarking a private jet with their prisoner like tuxedo-clad deliverymen:
"Sign here please... and here. Enjoy your secret prisoner, and thank you for terrorizing with us. The president will be calling with our bill."

I'm tempted to leave you on that humorous note, but my conscience bids me sign off with a warning: the truth may not be palatable, but it's also not optional.*


*If you are a parent or teacher, you have a responsibility to nurture the questioning (and questing) of children. When you deny the truth to the young, when you ask them to accept truth on faith and authority, you condemn them to live as brutal beasts - protected by their own ignorance, yet barred from the salvation that only thinking people can receive.

The political cost of pissing me off

In response to The Economist's briefing titled, "The political cost of inflation"

We should note that Vietnamese workers are showing signs of unrest despite being under the thumb of a controlling, one-party government. There is indeed a political cost to be paid for double-digit inflation, but let's not forget that individuals are paying the real costs of inflation around the world.

At least the common man can begin to appreciate the growing income gap under a high inflation regime. Rising prices can have almost zero political cost, so long as you put the frog in the pot before you start boiling.

Reply to David Selbourne

In response to Mr. Selbourne's article in the Guardian:

Is the writer truly suggesting that the real danger lies in extremist terrorists dividing up the world and impose a true police state on the world? That argument may fly with some, but I find it impossible to ignore the present costs of mainstream, state-sponsored terrorism perpetrated or tacitly accepted by powerful nations. Even if we aren't counting the bodies everyday at home, we'd be naive not to treat the domestic political battle as seriously as an open conflict.

Don't 'bemoan' my freedom or speak to me about moral authority. Those of us who do study history know that any ism is easily hijacked, including socialism, patriotism, communism, and capitalism (managed).

I do agree with one statement, however:

"no civil society can rest upon the possession of rights alone"

How true. Rights are transient and illusory. Truly civil society must strive to be free.


Some other important comments were also made...

redfoot said:
Bravo, no rights without responsibilities, etc etc. Great, but what exactly is the author talking about here. I've been away from the country for the past 7 months, has anyone raised anything concrete yet? Incidentally am living in a country that doesn't really recognise rights, but is bang on with duties. Except, of course, each non-compliance with "duty" is in theory punishable by a fine, imprisonment, corporal punishment, or in cases of opposing the g'ment, being bankrupted so you can't ever do it again. And in this carefully managed environment, you still get fast food containers in the river, casually thrown there for someone else to pick up, and signs all over the place reminding people to flush toilets. Guess it works, eh? So, are we going to couple every right with a sense of moral responsibility, backed up with a fine/mandatory sentence/ village stocks? I'd come back to see the politicians have first go.

crabapple said:
The left are espousing vacuous notions of liberty? I did read it several times and am still afraid I may have had a brainstorm and misinterpreted something. I was under the impression that this leftist government is actually eroding our liberties. I'll go back and read it again,

peteran said:
My keyboard was awash with tears as I read Mr Selbourne's piece. Who would not be moved by the thought of the poor, defenceless little state pleading with its citizens, begging them to fulfil their piffling duties while all the time the mean-minded plebs screamed for more and more rights?

And then I thought about it. How often has the state failed to exert its 'rights' by forcing its people to fulfil their duties? The entire bodies of both our criminal and civil law are designed to make the people fulfil their duties to the state and each other. You don't feel like fulfilling your duty to pay tax? You don't want to fulfil your duty to go off to war when parliament's enacted conscription? You can't afford to fulfil your duty to pay your TV licence? The poor, defenceless little state will beg you to do so... and then lock you up if you don't.

The state has always exerted its rights and ruthlessly imposed duties on its citizens. Some of us are arguing that it's time that the people be granted formally just a few inalienable rights. The Human Rights Act was a start - which presumably is why so many on the right hate it.

But the idea that some pendulum has swung too far towards indulging citizens with too many rights is frankly ludicrous.

ordinary said wryly:
The writer is correct in two respects.

First, left and right are, and in modern times have always been, a sham. The "strategy of tension" that is the argument between the radical individualism of the collectivist left and the radical individualism of the anti-collectivist right sucks in all uncritical minds, and leaves moot in public understanding the fact that kinship, or connectedness, is the true measure of human concern.

The second respect in which MR Selbourne is moving in the right direction is his understanding, scarcely stated, that Leviathan is rising. I would expect all serious-thinking Guardian readers to understand this.

The question which begs is: Is the ethnic and cultiural mess that requires a security solution created for that purpose?

and QuincyME said adroitly:
What a vacuous article. I was looking forward to reading a robust critique of the libertarian position, but I didn't get one.

If you're going to make sweeping generalisations about what 'the left' thinks/does, or the illusory nature of libertarian arguments, you need to provide some examples.

Let me do some of this work for you by naming just a few of the things people - including me - are unhappy about. The banning of protests near parliament. Sweeping new powers of arrest for police. 28 day detention without trial. A national ID card and biometric database. More CCTV per person than in any other nation in the world. Intrusive 'health and safety' regulations. ASBOs.

I could go on. The point is that every single one of these recent innovations is a serious restriction on liberty. If you are going to argue that this doesn't matter or is overegged, you need to explain why, using examples. You do precisely none of this. Instead you just assert, aggressively, your apparently baseless point of view.

I hope your book reads better than this, or I wouldn't hold out much hope for paying out that advance.

Thoughtcrimes arrive!

We've yet to see the new law in action, but several as yet undisclosed greenies are already slated for their mock trial. The full story here.

Real ID controversy ignites civil war

New Hampshire, Maine, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Washington, and Montana secede from the Union! full story here.