In an agony of stupidity, the government shuts down.

Only some of it shuts down, of course. The part that stays open is the part that’s at war. “Those of you in uniform will remain on your normal duty status,” the president said. “The threats to our national security have not changed, and we need you to be ready for any contingency. Ongoing military operations, like our efforts in Afghanistan, will continue.”

As I once observed, there’s no such thing as a relaxed nation. It can shut down what it does right, if clumsily, like feeding people, educating them and helping them through difficulty, but it will only shut down its predatory sense of identity in a state of total defeat by a bigger predator. Not letting that happen is its endless obsession.

This is the sly, primitive, irrational part of government: its reptile-brain function. That’s still in full operation. We’re continuing to raid, bomb and terrorize Fourth World countries and pointlessly harvest global metadata. We’re still “completing our mission” in Afghanistan. We’re just phasing out the government functions that have value. Perhaps what we should talk about is a

BANGKOK, Thailand -- India's Hindu temples possess donated gold which may equal half of America's Fort Knox bullion, but some are rejecting demands by the government to reveal the value of their sacred stockpiles.

"India's Hindu temples are resisting divulging their gold holdings," Reuters reported on Sept. 30.

For example one of the holiest Hindu temples in India, Kerala state's Guruvayur temple, said it would not describe how much its gold was worth after receiving an official request.

The London-based World Gold Council estimates India's temples possess 2,240 tons worth $84 billion at current prices.

The website of the U.S. Bullion Depository Fort Knox, Kentucky, says its "present gold holdings" total "147.3 million ounces," or about 4,603 tons.

Fun Facts

Concern about huge caches of temples' gold began two years ago when the ancient Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Trivandrum, Kerala, announced it discovered $20 billion worth of bullion in secret subterranean vaults.

To the people in control of the Executive Branch, violating our civil liberties is an essential government service. So -- to ensure total fulfillment of Big Brother’s vast responsibilities -- the National Security Agency is insulated from any fiscal disruption.

The NSA’s surveillance programs are exempt from a government shutdown. With typical understatement, an unnamed official told [1] _The Hill_ that “a shutdown would be unlikely to affect core NSA operations.”

At the top of the federal government, even a brief shutdown of “core NSA operations” is unthinkable. But at the grassroots, a permanent shutdown of the NSA should be more than thinkable; we should strive to make it achievable.

NSA documents, revealed by intrepid whistleblower Edward Snowden, make clear what’s at stake. In a word: _democracy_.

Wielded under the authority of the president, the NSA is the main surveillance tool of the U.S. government. For a dozen years, it has functioned to wreck our civil liberties. It’s a tool that should not exist.

In this century, the institutional momentum of the NSA -- now fueled by

Journalist, author, activist and historian Harvey Wasserman has been reporting on, and participating in, the nuclear free movement for decades. In that time, by his judgment, only one other event matches the danger to the world posed by the Cuban Missile Crisis. That event is the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima.