In 1995, three US Marines kidnapped, beat, and raped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. The men were convicted in a Japanese court, served their time, and went home. One of them went on to murder his girlfriend and then kill himself. The other two live somewhere in obscurity. As for the child, I have no information on what happened to her. I assume she was shielded from public view, and I hope that she has been able to get on with her life. For the people of Okinawa, this horrible crime is still very much alive. For the last 20 years, the people have been trying to get the US military to leave.

This last weekend, Al Jazeera reported, Thousands Protest Against US Airbase in Japan’s Okinawa. There are a total of 47,000 US military personnel in Japan, and over half of them are located on the Okinawa prefecture (kind of like a Japanese state). And the people are not happy. Think about it. There are roughly a million and a half people on the islands. And after two decades, they are still showing up in large numbers to protest. An estimated 35,000 protesters showed up in Naha — by far Okinawa’s largest city with a population of less than 350,000 people. It’s impressive, and maybe we should listen to them. (Obviously, it is a question for the Japanese government, but if we led, they would follow.)

After the outrage of the rape, the US military decided to move their Futenma base, where roughly 3,000 Marines are stationed. But all they wanted to do was to move it from one place on the Okinawa prefecture to another. Not too good. A 2007 poll found that 85% of the people in Okinawa were against the US military presence. But it seems only about half of them want the bases to go away completely; the other half would like to see them greatly reduced in size. And it isn’t surprising. According to The Guardian back in 2011, between 1972 and 2009, there were 5,634 criminal offense committed by the servicemen. “Among them are 25 murders, 385 burglaries, 25 arsons, 127 rapes, 306 assaults and 2,827 thefts.”

So why aren’t the military bases being moved? Well, according to the Japanese government, it is all Okinawa’s fault. At this point, Tokyo says that if they don’t want the base moved to another place on Okinawa, they have to come up with an alternative. This reminds me very much of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. As an occupation force, Israel is in charge of security, but Israel constantly complains about the Palestinian Authority not controlling its people. It’s the usual thing: those with power use it however they want, and when they don’t, they dump the responsibility onto the weak.

But look at the map at the top of this article. The red areas represent US military bases. We have these all over the world. This is what American empire looks like. I know that conservatives like to respond that we aren’t controlling the governments of other countries. But we don’t allow non-compliant governments to exist in areas that are important to us. And that was the same way it was under the British empire and the Roman empire. They always had their local stooges. I don’t think it is necessary for us to have an empire. In the long run, I think it is bad for us. But the least we could do is cooperate with the wishes of the people of Okinawa.

Paul Krugman highlighted a bit of disingenuousness about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from the White House, Tariffs Versus Currencies. I thought it would be helpful to go into this a little bit because it is probably the most important single economic issue that we have to deal with. Basically: the dollar is too damned high. This is the reason that so many people are out of work. And this is the reason that we only manage to get to full employment when we have things like the late 1990s stock bubble and the late 2000s housing bubble.

In this new report (pdf), the authors said, “US businesses must overcome an average tariff hurdle of 6.8 percent, in addition to numerous non-tariff barriers (NTBs), to serve the roughly 95 percent of the world’s customers outside our borders.” Krugman noted that the 6.8% is supposed to sound like a very big number. But it isn’t. He provided the following graph that shows that value of the dollar (weighted by where we export) went up over 20% from last summer and the beginning of this year:

Clearly, the value of the dollar is a far bigger deal. But I understand: 6.8% is still extra forcing against our exports. The problem is that the tariff forcing works both ways: we tax their goods and they tax our goods. So this discussion is disingenuous in the same way that these discussions always are on the issue of increased trade.

Dean Baker provided a good way to think of this. Imagine that there is a car being built in Ohio. After the trade deal, the company decides to send all the parts to Mexico to have the car assembled, and then shipped back here for sale. All of those car assembly workers are out of a job, yet “trade” has gone way up!

The question remains, “Why don’t we do something about the over valued dollar?” And the reason is because having a high valued dollar is great if you already have a lot of them. The high valued dollar is only a problem if you are like 99% of working age Americans who need a job. In addition to this, companies like Walmart depend upon buying cheap products from other countries. If paper towels out of China suddenly go up in price by 20%, it is a big problem for them because their supply lines are already set up. If paper towels can be purchased more cheaply in the US, then another retailer could beat Walmart’s prices.

All of this is entirely typical of the way the we deal with all problems in this country: we don’t go straight at the problem; we nibble around the edges. The TPP apologists will claim that we don’t deal with currency manipulation because it is a hard problem. But the value of the dollar is not just an issue of currency manipulation. During the Clinton years we explicitly had a “strong dollar” policy — and nothing has really changed. And that shows you that the real reason we don’t deal with the issue of the value of the dollar — and by extension, the issue of our trade deficit — is because the power elite in this country don’t want to. And that should tell you all you need to know about the TPP: it is being crammed down our throats because the power elite want it — not because it is good for the country.

Have you read the privacy policy here at Frankly Curious? I’m assuming not, because there isn’t one. But if there were one, I can promise you this: I would have really meant it when I wrote it. I’m like Google: I do my best not to be evil — as long as it doesn’t inconvenience me much. But if I had a bunch of your private information, and I could sell it and retire in Paris (or even Canada), I would have a policy change. You would probably think that I was a jerk, but I would be justified in thinking that you were an idiot for believing me. For one thing: you didn’t even know that I didn’t have a privacy policy! If I did, I would doubtless have put something in it to allow me to weasel out of it.

Okay, maybe not. I pride myself on standing for something. Just the same, I have my price. I wouldn’t murder someone just to spend my evenings in cafes drinking Burgundy, but giving your contact information so that some company could sell you things is not the same. If someone offered me a more reasonable (but still unrealistically large) amount of money, like $1,000, I wouldn’t do it. I already have a hard enough time living with myself; I don’t need that on my conscience. So you are safe. More or less.

But given that privacy policies are apparently not legally binding, one might wonder why companies have them. The reason, I think, is because they are evil. They don’t know what they are going to do with all the personal information they have, but they know that it might be helpful to have it. At some point, it might be worth a lot of money. And then it is Burgundy Time, my friends! (How ever they may define that.) And then they just change that policy and sell out. Go team!

The reason I bring this up is because Radio Shack just announced that because of its bankruptcy, it is selling all of our personal information for $26 million. If you are as old as I am, you may remember that you simply could not go into a Radio Shack and purchase a half foot of wire without providing them with your full name and address. Really, the next time an employer wants to know where I’ve lived the last ten years (and increasingly, they all do), I should just refer them to Radio Shack. Or rather, Standard General, the company that is buying Radio Shack’s rotten corpse.

As Michael Hiltzik noted, Radio Shack made a very big deal out of their commitment to the personal data that the company collected on upwards of 120 million of us:

They did pride themselves on that! And now that they did exist, they don’t need no stinking pride. They need money to pay their creditors. And these creditors aren’t little people like are in their data files; they are rich people; you know, people who matter. Hiltzik joked that Radio Shack is like Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore, for whom “never” means “hardly ever.” But I’m afraid that is too generous a description of the company. Radio Shack valued customer privacy exactly up to the point where it didn’t.

The government doesn’t care. “Privacy Ombudsman” Elise Frejka decided that it was okay for Radio Shack to sell the data because it “is not of a sensitive nature.” One has to wonder, however, if that’s the case, why did Radio Shack make such a big deal out of collecting it? Also, it seems to me that it provides enormous amounts of personal data about shopping patterns. Regardless, if it is such banal data, why is it worth $26 million?

My only advice is to not trust anyone. And that is impossible in this modern world. We are supposed to have a government to protect us from such things. But in America, the government just facilitates whatever the rich want. The only solution if for us to take control of the government. I’m not hopeful about that.

Many years ago, I had the unfortunate experience to see the television documentary, 14 Children and Pregnant Again! about the Duggar family. And then there was 17 and 18 and finally 19 Kids and Counting.

I thought it was very creepy. The family had child rearing systematized, so that after the first year or so, the older children raised the younger children. It seemed to me that Michelle Duggar might be addicted to babies — neither she nor Jim Bob seemed to care that much about the children.

But what really bothered me was the complete lack of individuality of the children — and the complete lack of anything that I recognized as true joy. Of course, there was also the fact that the family clearly fetishized baby making, while taking an “abstinence only” approach to sex for the the kids and all the others who were not married according to God’s plan.

The Story of Josh

So now that we know that Josh, the eldest of the Duggar children, molested four of his younger sisters, we should not be surprised. Nor should we be surprised that Duggar Inc seemed to have already spent years with lawyers and PR advisers in preparation for this moment.

Both the statements by Jim Bob and Michelle, as well as that by Josh himself, refer to him being a “young teenager.” Not so much. I’ve gone over the 33 page police report from 2006, and Josh was molesting his sisters at least from June 2003 to March 2004 — that’s when Josh was between the ages of 15 and 16.

The statements are also full of euphemisms so juicy that I got dragged into this whole thing. Josh said he “acted inexcusably” and took steps to address the “situation.” His parents said that Josh made “some very bad mistakes” and they were “shocked.” And, of course: “Even though we would never choose to go through something so terrible, each one of our family members drew closer to God.”

I’m really tempted to make a sarcastic comment here, but it seems inappropriate. Christians always claim that no matter what happens to them, it brings them closer to Jesus; that’s fine, but maybe we should let the young women speak for themselves.

Denial Even in Rehab

Apparently, after Josh’s behavior was first alerted to his parents, he was sent to a “rehab” for three months. But according to the person who alerted the police to the situation, it was “not a rehab for sex offenders.” Given the timing of the first occurrences — roughly June 2003 — I assume it was some kind of Christian summer camp where postpubescent boys are taught that they must stifle all sexual urges until they get married. In other words, exactly the kind of thing that doubtless brought out this behavior in Josh in the first place.

I doubt very seriously that Josh Duggar is some kind of sexual deviant. Or at least if he is, that he was born that way. I simply do not think you can have a family whose raison d’être it pumping out babies and not make a 15 year old (or 14 or 13 — we don’t really know) mighty curious about what’s down there. And given the philosophy of the family about sex, it isn’t surprising. Stifling biological urges tends to create neuroses. So I’m inclined to be sympathetic to young Josh. (Grown Josh seems to be a total jerk.)

The Victims

I’m also, of course, sympathetic to the Duggar girls, who would have been ages 9-10, 10-11, 12-13, and 13-14. (I’m assuming he did not molest Joy-Anna, who would have been 5-6.) In the police report, they seem to have forgiven their brother and gotten on with their lives. But that gets back to what originally creeped me out about their kids: their acceptance of how ever life was — like dogs suffering from learned helplessness. I don’t know, but I wish them well.

But my sympathy does not extend to the the Duggar parents. To me, they’ve treated their children as a kind of commodity — something they sell for their very station in life. We didn’t need a sex scandal to know this. They’re clearly scarred their children in their clear neglect. And I wonder what other wounds are lurking in that family — both obvious and not. It’s very sad. Please Lord, don’t let these people adopt. And please just make them go away.

Update (22 May 2015 8:29 pm)

Looking at more of the police report, the Duggars said that the events took place a year earlier than stated in the initial complaint. That makes all of the ages one year older than I reported above. Of course, that timeline also just so happens to put the behavior outside the statue of limitations. But I assume that it is correct.

I’ve also heard a lot of people talking about Josh molesting girls who were not his sisters. This does not seem to be the case, although it is hard to say for sure. Also, it looks like he may also have molested 6-year-old Joy-Anna. Other miscellaneous information: the Duggars spank their children with a rod and the children were home schooled.

Update (30 April 2021 12:04 pm)

It just gets worse. Josh Duggar was already facing a civil case for real estate fraud (you know, like Jesus). And now he’s been indicted on child pornography charges.

Josh Duggar by Tengrain under CC BY-NC 2.0.