An Ally Lost

America lost a key Southeast Asian Ally today as the Philippines have officially allied with China.  Hopefully this will be a good move for the Philippine people, because it's certainly bad news for the Americans.

A good movie plot

Movies, if they're good, leave you in constant suspense throughout their course.  They mimic the true reality that each of us experiences, that which requires all of our attention. But when hardship comes, luxury and fantasies melt away, and one is left with the cold reality that A=A. We are a nation deep in debt facing two powerful and warlike nations in Russia and China.

We are at the same time being confronted by dozens of commercial challenges.  How do we survive and prosper?  On a long enough time scale, the math doesn't add up.  But, luckily, humans live short lives.  It is my hope that the current set of sparring Illuminati don't kill us all.  They probably won't, that's the whole point of the illuminati, er, Jackson Hole golf club, or whatever ... after all.  Justice is a luxury enabled by survival.

The nature of survival is peace, and I think for the moment, peace remains.  

cows

I'm probably going to hell because I assume cows are conscious and I eat them anyway ... they're delicious.

The death of American Freedom

photo by Torben Hansen  snipped from wikipedia

         I had an interesting conversation with an Afghanistan war veteran today.  He told me everyone should be drug tested for every job.  I disagreed, saying instead that jobs should be performance based, not based on some superficial moral judgement.  Eventually my friend and I agreed to disagree.  So, I lost one convert.  Let me try to win some more.  My thoughts are essentially this, nobody has the right to search me, (a drug test is essentially a search of my blood or urine.) unreasonably.

       It's fair to say that many Americans have been desensitized to the fact that their fourth amendment protection against unreasonable searches has been trampled upon to the point where they are no longer applicable. The vast majority of the population that cannot defend themselves from bullying by those in authority.  People without a solid education on the law, their rights, and a nice chunk of cash to back it up don't stand a chance against people armed with those very things.  In American law, might makes right.  Doesn't sound much like the American dream does it?

      Drug testing in the work place is one example.  In jobs where a person's impairment could cause harm to the interests of both the company, and the community in general, it is commonly accepted practice to screen employees and applicants for use of illegal drugs.  This, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia constitutes an unreasonable search.

    “The impairment of individual liberties cannot be the means of making a point" Scalia wrote. "Symbolism, even symbolism for so worthy a cause as the abolition of unlawful drugs, cannot validate an otherwise unreasonable search.” 

      Scalia wrote these words as part of a dissenting opinion at the conclusion of the Nationial Treasury Employees v. Von Raab case back in 1989.  He felt that drug testing was being used as a symbol of social and corporate responsibility among firms.  I use his quote because he agrees with my opinion that drug testing constitutes an unreasonable search, but it seems as though the idea of drug testing goes beyond symbolism though, it goes more to the point of control.  Employers want control of their employees personal lives, something they're not supposed to have.

     Now, this post stemmed from one conversation about drug testing in the work place.  But the freedom Americans are supposed to enjoy from unreasonable search and seizure isn't the only protection to be subjected to what I view as a sinister demand for "the public good."  Gun ownership and the right to self defense in general spring to mind.  I just wonder how many people really think they are free in this country.  I certainly don't feel that way. 

With that said, it also must be said that America, with all its warts, still offers one of the freest and fairest systems in the world to live under and I fully understand what a privileged it is to live there.

Links of the week!

Here is the part where I post things that I found interesting this week.

The Obama administration is hinting at giving Israel back one of its spies.  So, I haaad thought Israel was an American ally.  Why is it again that we've imprisoned this intelligence agent of theirs for almost 30 years?

Healthcare! Well, I didn't sign up for it ... Now if I could just get one of those Obamaphones, then I would be interested!

Huge graft scandal developing in the Chinese military?  Impossible, the fact that China's president has a fortune ranging in the hundreds of millions and its prime minister is a billionaire have nothing to do with abuse of power ... nope ... this is certainly an isolated incident. .  Now, nobody pay attention to the insider trading in the U.S. Congress though, because then Americans would be hypocrites.

Hey! It's Ebola!  Thanks for brightening my day as usual Drudge!  I didn't ever want to go to Africa anyway.

Now for the non-story link of the week!  Constitutional protections have never applied when it comes to governments spying on their citizens.  Also, breathing oxygen is good for your health, and picking fights with police officers is bad for it.

The dirty south has its own small time "bishop of bling."

Finally, here's some April Fool's pranks from The Mirror.

Hope you enjoyed the links.

I'll try to find something decent to write about for the next post.

The apocalypse cometh?

Before the beginning of the first great war early in the 20th century, it was thought that such a thing could never happen.  The system of alliances was too strong and the power of modern mechanized and chemical weaponry was too great.  A conflict between great powers would therefore be unthinkable and would thus not be possible.

One Serbian Assassination of a world leader and a vengeful German Kaiser later, it happened.  The result was tens of millions of  dead people, and world forever traumatized by a senseless and brutal conflict.  Since then there have been many more senseless and brutal conflicts, and it looks as though another one might be about ready to pop off in Eastern Europe.

Once again we have a world separating itself into different armed camps, and a disbelieving public that thinks the nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that Russia possesses are so terrifying that no one will dare to stop them if Russian aggression against Ukraine continues.

Vladimir Putin has seen fit to reclaim another chunk of the old Soviet Empire by sending Russian soldiers into the Crimean Peninsula.  Mr. Putin's justification, that Russia needed to annex the Crimea to protect the interests of the ethnic Russians living there, is major problem for other world powers though.  It allows Russia to intervene in any country where Russian speakers are present.  This in turn allows Russia to aggressively expand it's territory in old Soviet Block countries at will.

Naturally this will stoke tensions across the globe should Russia decide that oil producing states on its borders or states that posses other desirable economic or strategic resources are also abusing their native Russian speakers and that the country must intervene to protect them.

Russian forces are now massing on the Ukrainian border.  To this biased observer it looks very much like they are readying for another push, possibly to secure a land route to their new Crimean spoils.  Estimates range from 30,000 - 100,000, but by all accounts a huge and capable force is at the ready.

Economic and political sanctions have already been put into place against Russia, but they have been ineffective.  Russia's military has rebuilt itself with revenues from the country's vast oil reserves, now it's ready to flex its considerable muscles, can anyone stop them?  Clearly vladimir Putin's respect for the sovereignty of former Soviet states quickly disappears when a chance to add them back to the Russian Federation arises.  Should Western powers move to intervene?  Can they?  That is a question that only history can answer.

The arab world isn't the only place where democratic citizens are fighting for their rights.

Ukrainians are turning out in huge numbers in Kiev.  Check out these photos of the 200,000 strong protests in Kiev against a government shift east.  The realities of being dependent on Russian oil and gas are often over looked in generalized coverage, as is Kiev's historic place as the cradle of Russian civilization, but it seems clear that whether the Ukranian people want to trade more with the west than the east.  They do not want a Russian style autocratic state cloaked in the trappings of democracy.  They damn sure don't appreciate Russia's manipulation of their political process, economic bullying and criminality.  

The current heavy weight champion of the world in boxing has announced he will run.  If he can live long enough to finish out the election, maybe he can bring the rule of law and of the will of the people back to Ukrainian democracy