Smart?

By no means is the following any kind of endorsement for Hillary Clinton, but...

In his first debate with Hillary, Donald Trump offered Americans and the world a lot of food for thought in respect to his candidacy and the entire system of capitalism. At one point in the debate, Hillary suggested that Donald has not released his tax records because they reveal that he did not pay any taxes or even give any money to charity. Donald effectively admitted that Hillary was right by responding with: "That makes me smart."

Leaving aside any criminal aspects of tax evasion, it seems that Donald does not understand that the president is a role model. So what would happen if the entire population of the USA were to be as selfishly smart as Donald? Obviously, no one would pay taxes. And if no one pays taxes, then Donald's federal government would have no money to pay off any debt or implement any social, economic, political, or military program, including Donald's secret plan to defeat ISIS and his not-so-secret plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico (unless, of course, Mexico actually does pay for that wall... in advance). Pretty soon, the US would look worse than any Third-World country. And that's how Donald would make America great again. What Donald has not yet admitted (but implicitly and repeatedly demonstrates) is that he wants to make America great only for his personal business interests.

So here we have tremendous insight into not just what sort of president Donald would be but also what sort of principles capitalism promotes. Can anyone believe that Donald would not exploit his power for the primary purpose of extending his personal wealth? According to Donald's avowed standards, failure to do so would not be smart.

Saint or sinner

Around 1977, I lived for almost a year in Kolkata. Several times I visited Mother Teresa's flagship project, her home for the dying in Kalighat, Nirmal Hriday. Each time I went, I was appalled by what I saw. Clearly, almost none of the many millions of dollars that were raised for that project actually went into the project. (Apparently, almost all of the money was passed along to the Pope.)

Conditions at Nirmal Hriday were primitive. And, despite the name of the project ("pure heart"), the treatment of patients was so heartless and substandard that the place should have been shut down by the government. But, of course, that never happened. Jyoti Basu (the communist and atheist Chief Minister of West Bengal) and Mother Teresa (the Catholic nun) were friends. They pretended to have a common love for the poor, each basking in the other's popularity.

That same year, I also met personally with Teresa. I formally requested her support for nothing more than a high-level and independent investigation into the alleged poisoning of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar by a prison doctor. She flatly refused to endorse that.

So what I can say about Mother Teresa is this. Despite her religious guise – and possibly because of her religious dogma – Teresa was a very worldly person. If she was a saint, then she was the first saint who never opposed - who always propped up and who was in turn propped up by - any sundry governmental or religious authority.

Brexit

Not that I don't love England, but now that Brexit is official...
Go Scotland, go!

Is Rachel Landers the Hilton bomber?

A PDF copy of the new Rachel Landers book, Who Bombed The Hilton? (published by NewSouth Publishing), has been acquired. And if Rachel Landers did not bomb the Hilton Hotel back in 1978, then she certainly did it now (metaphorically speaking). A cursory glance at the content of Rachel's book reveals it to be highly noxious and peppered with obscenities. The only definite conclusions to be reached from the book are about the author herself. Rachel Landers is clearly a troubled person, both delusional and obsessed.

Who Bombed The Hilton? is an opportunistic, bottom-feeding book. It is based almost entirely on double or triple hearsay and feckless conjecture. Someone may or may not have said something to the police. The police filed a report to the government that may or may not be an accurate representation of the testimony (if any). The government stored in some archives that report, after someone in the government may have redacted it (or even tampered with it). Then, almost 40 years later, Rachel comes along and inspects those archives, selectively extracting and interpreting what suits her fancy (and the fancy of her sponsors). With such flimsy context, on the rare occasions when Rachel admits that something she says is "potential hearsay" or "pure speculation", we know that it is very tenuous indeed. But just scroll down a few paragraphs, and soon you will find Rachel repeating that preposterous fabrication as if it had probative value.

In her epilogue, Rachel tries to compensate for her lazy style of yellow journalism, devoid of human decency. However, in the very first paragraph of that epilogue, wherein she attempts to rationalize her unethical conduct, she only exposes her hypocrisy and ignorance instead. Rachel declares: "When I made the decision to explore the Hilton bombing archive I also made a vow not to trust the living." One can only wonder what source Rachel imagines all of the information in the archive would have emanated from (several decades and several layers of hearsay ago). Were the Special Branch and ASIO using Ouija boards? And one can only wonder what makes those moldy documents more appealing to Rachel than the living people who generated them and, even more important, the living people who were given no voice, no representation, in those documents. What makes those moldy documents more appealing to Rachel than the people still living today, the people whose privacy Rachel blithely violates, the people whom Rachel nonchalantly defames, not even taking the trouble to speak with them and hear their side of the story?

There is good reason why legal systems around the world stand on the fundamental human right to a presumption of innocence. Sadly, Rachel did not consider ethics before she reopened this scar on the psyche of Australia. Rachel tells us that former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser advised her that this is "a stupid topic to research and instead of wasting [her] time trying to winnow out the truth of the bombing [she] should be focusing on the contemporary plight of refugees". The honorable Mr. Fraser had it right. The plight of refugees is indeed horrific, and Australia's treatment of refugees is utterly deplorable. Furthermore, as it turned out, the Landers book is little more than a regurgitation of unsubstantiated opinions and a shameless exhibition of bigotry.

At the very end of Rachel's book, just before her smarmy epilogue, Rachel tries to buttress her ridiculously weak (in truth, non-existent) case by misrepresenting the content of a 2003 newspaper article in The Weekend Australian of February 8-9. Of course, a newspaper article is hardly evidence; and a misrepresented newspaper article is just a lie. But this final and false assertion made by Rachel epitomizes her book: shallow and biased research distorted by perverted imagination.

Who Bombed the Hilton? is a deceitful hate crime. This travesty of history was released by NewSouth Publishing, the publishing arm of the University of New South Wales Press. That in itself raises a disturbing question as to the standard maintained by the University of New South Wales and ultimately the Government of New South Wales, which commissioned Rachel's shabby work. Shame, shame, shame!

Australia's defamation laws

Last week I had cause to look into Australia's defamation laws. A book was just published in Australia that was undoubtedly defamatory of me (and numerous others).  By the way, my advice to everyone would be not to waste your money on this tripe. There is already a PDF of the complete book circulating on the Internet.

In various interviews subsequent to the publication of the book, the author (Rachel Landers) amplified her attacks on me and eventually, like a Muslim cleric, effectively issued a fatwa against me (when, for the few pieces of silver she would get from selling her piece of fiction as a movie, she advocates my eradication). But I will say more about that book in my next posting. Our topic here is Australia's defamation laws, probably little different from what exists in most or all developed, capitalist countries.

I began my research on the subject at a forum called LawAnswers.com.au, which bills itself as "Australia's #1 Legal Community". I posted my question there and was pleased to get a very helpful response soon thereafter. But then things quickly started to go downhill. A fellow by the name of Tim W followed up with a rather useless and non-constructive response, saying little more than that I could hire a lawyer. He later admitted that his advice to me was worth exactly what I paid for it, and I promptly agreed. That is when I found that my postings to the forum were being censored (deleted and ultimately blocked in advance). I said nothing rude or untoward, but - apparently - it is unacceptable on that forum to not appreciate Tim W's shallow words. But I digress. What did I discover about the defamation laws in Australia? Quite simply, they are only congenial to greedy bottom-feeders and wealthy victims who can demonstrate substantial financial loss.

In a case like mine, the author and the publisher might well have dismissed any concern about a defamation lawsuit simply because the cost of losing would be minimal compared to the profits they expected to amass from the defamation. So, if indeed the author or the publisher consulted a lawyer before publishing, their main concern might well have been only how much they would have to pay out if a defamation suit be brought. Once they knew that paltry sum, they probably had all of the information that mattered to them. After all, if they had had any concern for human rights, human dignity, human decency, privacy, justice, or even mere accuracy or factuality, then surely they would have at least contacted me soon after publishing, if not - and much more sensibly - before publishing.

Pope Francis on something

He describes unbridled capitalism as the devil's dung and encourages the poor to rise up against neocolonialism.

(CNN) Pope Francis delivered yet another biting critique of contemporary capitalism on Saturday, saying the poor are often sacrificed on the "altar of money" and accusing the wealthy of worshipping a new "golden calf."

So what's new? Certainly not the message... not even for the Catholic Church. It seems the Vatican is carrying on with a strategy initiated under John Paul II of remodeling Catholicism as the global emissary of socialism... but not calling it that.

The main difference I find with this pope is that his conduct and language are more confrontational than that of his predecessors. But is Francis really shaking up the Church, as some seem to think? I don't think so. Has Francis done anything remarkable yet? Well, maybe just one thing... According to The Guardian: "A Bolivian minister said 10 days ago that Francis had told government officials that he would like to chew coca leaves when he visits."

Rainbows and religion

There is a huge gap between morality and law. Morality concerns right and wrong as a basis for personal and social development. Law concerns the prevailing social notions about property rights. With that in mind, no religious or spiritual teacher is or is ever likely to be obliged to officiate at a wedding that goes against her/his religious tenets, but civil authorities may well be so obliged. And, regardless of anyone's personal beliefs, couples in duly recognized LGBT marriages (whether sanctioned by religious authorities or civil authorities) must be accorded the same or similar social and economic rights and privileges as couples in the traditional form of marriage.

Some people complain that the U.S. Supreme Court has endorsed sin. The simple fact is that laws invariably tolerate a lot of sins. The moment that legislatures enact laws or that courts interpret laws on the basis of religious notions of virtue and vice, the separation between Church and State is lost; and all of the drawbacks of a religious state (including first- and second-class citizens) result.

Some people argue that allowing LGBT marriages is a slippery slope. What will be next? Well, hypothetically, let's say that a person chooses to change her/his/its species. Instead of transgender, we would have someone who chooses to be transspecies. He says: "All my life, I've felt like a dog in a human body. All I want to do is to hump females of every species. Now that I am a dog, I feel liberated." And let's say that some other person, a woman, likes being humped at any hour of the day under any and all conditions... and let's further say that she wants to marry that once-human-now-dog. If tomorrow a civil rights movement garners support for such type of marriage, then eventually it will be permitted, because law is about society's notions of property rights. And once again, politicians will hail the new civil right as a victory for freedom and love, when all that has transpired is just a reflection of society's degradation.

In the final analysis, law never was and never will be a bastion against social degradation. To use it as such is like trying to stop a tidal wave with a lego. Religion, with all its loopholes and convenient interpretations, also cannot halt social degradation. If it could have done so, it would have happened already. The only way to resist social degradation is to popularize a healthy philosophy like neohumanism.