Monday, June 30, 2008

Google -is it good for freedom?

It seems that Google's relationship with freedom is not a happy one.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't have the balls to stand up to China (China is still a greater power than Google). But shutting down some hapless bloggers -why that comes perfectly to the lefties at this monster corporation(yes,the mega-billion Google is a leftist entity by the inclination of it's owners and employes).

This is shocking-
Anti-Obama blogs being treated as spam by Google


What no balls? -Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
What no balls?
-Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin


It an irony that one of the Google founders(Sergey Mikhailovich Brin) has come from the totalitarian nightmare state of Soviet Union. Now his creation is behaving a bit like his former motherland. It seems that while in America he has made his riches but has failed to comprehend the import of freedom of expression- but then shutting down opinions that one doesn't like is a universal characteristic of the left.

Google image search for 'tiananmen' as it appears in rest of the world and in China
Google image search for 'tiananmen' as it appears in
rest of the world(left) and in China(right)

(source)

Friday, June 13, 2008

Safer without our police?

policeman lies drunk on road in Delhi, India
A policeman lies dead drunk on the road in Delhi
(photo courtesy the ever lovely Radha)

Wouldn't we be safer if these people just lay on the road like this?
At least then they would not be raping women, bashing the skulls of hapless persons picked off the street, fattening themselves on the blood of the public and otherwise carrying off hatchet jobs (sometimes literally)for one of the most venal class of persons on earth- the Indian politicians.


The government has taken upon itself to provide us safe drinking water. It doesn't. We install water filters.

The government has taken upon itself to provide us a regular, clean supply of electricity. It doesn't. We install inverters and voltage regulators.

The government has taken upon itself to provide health care to all for free or almost free. It doesn't. We (if we can afford it) avoid government hospitals like a plague and take refuge in private nursing homes.

I think if the whole of Indian police just vanished one day, the people would find a better workable solution themselves.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Mahatma Gandhi once sounded like Sharon Stone

Mahatma Gandhi once sounded just like Sharon Stone. On 15 January 1934, at 2:21 pm IST, there was a massive earthquake of magnitude 8.3 on the Richter scale on the Bihar-Nepal border.
Gandhi in a public statement declared provocatively that the earthquake is divine retribution for India's sin in upholding untouchability.

Rajendra Pachauri -say sorry!

RK Pachauri, Sunita Narain, Al Gore and many,many others who have been blaming the devastation of cyclone Nargis on Global Warming -now it is time to admit mistakes and humbly apologize.

This latest research gem appears in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters, and the work was conducted by a team of climatologists employed in Melbourne at the National Climate Centre of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Kuleshov et al. note that “Concern about the enhanced greenhouse effect affecting TC frequency and intensity has grown over recent decades. Recently, trends in global TC activity for the period 1970 to 2004 have been examined by Webster et al. [2005]. They concluded that no global trend has yet emerged in the total number of tropical storms and hurricanes.”

We at World Climate Report could not agree more, and the scientific evidence is overwhelming on the subject of global warming and hurricane frequency! Imagine the reaction we would get if we claimed “the science is settled” and the “debate is over” – hurricanes are not becoming more frequent! Yet, you can visit thousands of websites claiming that hurricanes are becoming more frequent thanks to the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases. Climate change alarmists make this claim over and over, the claim is almost never challenged, and the claim is simply not consistent with reality. Give the global warmers credit – from school kids to grandmas, they have the world believing that hurricanes are definitely increasing in frequency, when nothing could be further from the truth.
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Had these scientists found an increase in the total number of tropical cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere, they would need to hire press agents to handle the global coverage. Their work would be front page news all over the world, Time and Newsweek would be all over the story, and thousands of web pages would trumpet the results. However, they found no trends, or even downward trends, in total tropical cyclone frequency over a huge area of the planet – coverage at World Climate Report is about all they can expect.

Source
(via the excellent Andrew Bolt)

(Abstract of the paper here)

(emphasis mine)


Sunday, June 1, 2008

The presidency of George W. Bush-two views

First the conventional, typical, BDS laced view held by 99.97648% of the MSM the world over. This sample is from an editorial in the Times of India-

Many of McClellan's revelations confirm what critics of the Bush administration have been saying all along, namely that it wilfully misled the US and the rest of the world to justify the decision to invade Iraq.

This is a damning indictment of a presidency that has been viewed by many as either bumbling or deceitful. If McClellan is to be believed, Bush and his team of advisers were the latter.

They deliberately spun a web of deception around the Iraq invasion and a host of other issues.
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But now that Bush's term is nearing its end, there is a likelihood of others queuing up to distance themselves from a disastrous presidency.


The second view held by a part of that tiny rebellious and hated minority- the conservatives, neo or otherwise -
George W. Bush - Walking Away a Winner?

We went through similar times in the early 1990’s. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union crumbled and we won the Cold War. Yet it was beyond the typical liberal’s ability to acknowledge that Ronald Reagan had anything to do with these accomplishments. So you had the ludicrous spectacle of bespectacled college professors arguing that Jimmy Carter could have won the Cold War or the Soviet Union would have fallen apart regardless of what we did. In 1992 after Reagan addressed the Republican convention, Tom Brokaw speculated from his national TV perch that the government debt run up under Reagan’s watch would be the Gipper’s principal legacy.

We’re seeing something similar happen now. In the past couple of weeks, two extremely promising news stories have sprung from the War on Terror. The situation in Iraq is looking promising, and there is a real possibility and perhaps even a likelihood that the Iraq war will leave as its legacy a remarkably civilized and progressive country by the standards of the region. More importantly, the war may leave behind a stable and humane nation that will not be hostile to American interests, one that may serve as a beacon for it neighbors.

Perhaps more noteworthy is the CIA’s assessment that “portrays Al Qaeda as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.” While I always take CIA pronouncements of this sort with a grain of salt given the agency’s limitations and recent history of sloppy analysis, this conclusion does square with Al Qaeda’s declining and practically disappearing activities.

Since these have been George W. Bush’s wars, one would think he would receive at least a modicum of credit for any progress. Alas, if Bush is to receive credit, he’ll have to be patient just like Reagan was.
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What bin Laden said about the strong horse and the weak horse was right. And he and his minions don’t look like the strong horse running for their pathetic lives in Waziristan for years on end. The Islamic world has watched as al Qaeda has become the weak horse. President Bush deserves credit for fighting the war with the steadfastness he has. Remember, it was less than four years ago when John Kerry implored us to fight a more sensitive war on terror. Somehow I doubt sensitivity would have had the same impact on the Jihadists as the predator drones that now fill their skies.

I’ve never been reticent about pointing out the Bush administration’s shortcomings. Its spendthrift ways, its elevation of unqualified lackeys to positions of importance, its longtime adherence to ineffective tactics in Iraq, its inability to communicate…I better stop – I could go on all day. My point is that the Bush administration has been a flawed vehicle, and I’ve never shied away from saying as much.

But President Bush is on the verge of winning the big ones. It will be no small thing if he has shown and mostly secured the path to victory in Iraq and in the War on Terror before leaving office. It will drive the left crazy and as was the case with Reagan, it will take liberals decades to admit it, but Bush will strut back to Crawford a big winner.

Few remember that Abraham Lincoln spent years running a dreadful war effort presided over by the ineffective likes of George McClellan and Joe Hooker. And those who do remember such things view them charitably, as Lincoln got things right by the end. If President Bush does wind up also having gotten the big things right, something that seems increasingly likely, the enormous successes of his administration will dwarf the failures in history’s eyes.
Read the whole thing.

You are unlikely ever to hear this second view in that 99.97648% of the MSM. So much for giving all opinions a chance.