Sunday, April 26, 2009

"President Pantywaist"

At the Telegraph(of UK),Gerald Warner asks-
why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

Yes, one does wonder-
If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.
-----------------------
"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers.
----------------------------------------

President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?



Read the whole damn thing. It may make your day.
(emphasis mine)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Sickness in the Left

Pathologically minded uber-leftist and loathsome cartoonist Ted Rall is fired. Patterico has more.

A sample of a sick mind -Rall mocking widows of 9/11 terror :

Ted Rall mocks widows of 9/11 terror
Such nobility! No wonder he is a hero to the Left.

(First posted at What the Heck is Art?)

The fate of freedom when China and India shall dominate the world- part 1

It is believed that India and China will bestraddle the world in the 21st century. That may or may not be true. Here in this long post(that of necessity must be divided in parts) I hold out my views on the issue most fundamental to human well being and civilization -freedom.Or more specifically, what shall happen to human freedom when India and China are the two super-dominating hyperpowers. I believe we need to examine this closely as China has been and is a totalitarian power and India has never shown much enthusiasm for promoting freedom in the world (quite the contrary, in fact, post-independence India has aligned with most despicable regimes and ideologies)

(Note- this was written as an article for Pragati. However it seems it wasn't much to their liking.)

(Note 2 -by "Freedom" I mean the traditional and classical meaning of the word -freedom of an individual from coercion exercised by the state, the collective,the society, from neighbours; freedom to pursue one's interests and happiness without interference)

So here goes-

What will happen to freedom when China and India dominate the world?

Part 1-Alternate history-If the Soviet Russia had triumphed

Let us conduct a thought experiment (a favorite device of Einstein) –
let us imagine that the cold war had been won by the Soviet Union under the formidable command of an ideologically passionate leader (a Soviet Reagan).After long years of recession, depression and busts the economies of the Western bloc collapsed utterly -and once and for all the capitalistic and democratic system of government was thoroughly discredited. The triumph of communism was complete. To the fragile democracies of Western Europe, now hurling out of Washington's orbit pushed along by strong internal leftist parties and a strong anti-American sentiment, the inevitability of the Soviet system became obvious. This was the end of history, announced Francis Fukuyama. The history had made its decision- the future for all times now belonged to the totalitarian system of government with the state being the arbiter of almost all in a person's life. The individual belonged to the collective, to the state that embodied the common good. On his own a person was but a speck of dust- his only worth consisted of what he could do for the collective i.e. what the state commanded.




Of course there were reactionaries who refused to see reason, who still clung to the disgraced notions of individual freedom and liberty. In Western Europe the Soviet tanks had to roll into some capitals, strictly on the 'invitation' and 'call for help' from the concerned governments, now mostly made up of left-communist coalitions, to put down revolts by these modern day 'kulaks'. There were, of course, the usual massacres, deportations and large scale imprisonments that follow wherever the communists take over. The existing gulags filled up quickly and new ones had to be constructed post-haste. Needless to say -like the old ones, the new prisons were built by slave labor.

World wide the collapse of capitalism had profound consequences. There were countries who after decades of socialism and communism were beginning to flirt with free markets-India and China, for example. That now stopped forthwith. The semi-capitalistic economies of East Asia were quickly demoralized and their markets sank, just like everywhere else. The Latin America crumbled completely and threatened to revert either to the Peronist style of strongman lead nationalism or to the more totalitarian Allende/Sandinista variety.

The severe economic situation in Japan lead to a strong rise in the forces of ancient militarism. Its American drafted constitution was abrogated.

China wasted no time in occupying Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

As for Africa, its civil wars now raged even more violently with Soviet and Cuban supported and funded forces now fighting with a new vigor. The Dark Continent became darker. The billions it had received for decades in food, medicine and aid from the West disappeared with no hope of similarly vast humanitarian help from the Soviets.

Emboldened by the United States now not being able to help Israel in any way, a large collective Arab force attacked Israel from three sides.The Israelis were unable to use or credibly threaten the use of their nuclear weapons, backed as the Arabs were by the massive Soviet nuclear arsenal. After a few weeks of extremely brutal fighting, the Jews were butchered in droves and the survivors were driven, literally, into the sea- fulfilling a long held Arab dream.

The withdrawal of US navy, after the collapse of it's armed forces, from all over the world lead to regional struggles for supremacy and a huge rise in piracy. The Soviet navy had no interest, unlike the American one, in keeping shipping lanes open for the benefit of everyone. Now in full or near-full control of waters in most parts worldwide, it controlled the flow of oil and vital goods to its friends and enemies alike. With such power of life and death, the Soviet friendship became a bear hug nobody could get out of. As for the old enemies of the 'people’, the United States being the greatest, they were under extreme stress with Soviets embargoing their shores, the Arabs refusing to supply oil and most of the rest of the world now even more viciously anti-American. Surely, the great Satan would come in line soon enough and adopt a radical program of reforms -that program, of course, consisting of dismantling completely it's old structure of private enterprise and freedom of speech.


Coming soon -Part 2: Alternate history vs. Reality

Update- Part 2 is here.

Friday, April 24, 2009

"Nonsense is passed off as wisdom"

"We are in a weird age.", writes Victor Davis Hanson.

We sure do-
Nonsense is passed off as wisdom. Those who caused the financial meltdown walked away with millions in bonuses while taxpayers covered the debts they ran up. The big-spending government claims it may cut our annual $1.7 trillion deficit in half by 2012 - but only after piling up trillions more in national debt.

In our Orwellian world, borrowing to spend what we don't have has been renamed "stimulus." Those who pay no federal income taxes - almost half of Americans - can somehow be promised an income tax "cut." In the new borrowing of trillions of dollars here and trillions there, billions of dollars now sounds like pocket change.

When Americans turn to their political parties for answers, they are even more confused. Populist Democrats such as Sen. Chris Dodd and President Barack Obama took more AIG campaign cash than did pro-business Republicans.

------------------------------------

Abroad, we thought piracy ended with the age of sail - only to learn that the world's 21st century navies either will not or cannot sink a few brigands in speedboats. Meanwhile, a U.N. conference against racism showcased Iranian president -- and Holocaust-denier -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spouting anti-Semitic hatred.

--------------------------------------

When our president references the 19th and 20th centuries, he apologizes for American sins but stays silent about the United States defeating Nazis, fascists, Japanese militarists and Soviet communists. The world hears contrition about Americans dropping the bomb to end World War II but never remorse from those responsible for Darfur, Grozny or Tibet.

There have been a few crazy years like 2009 in American history - 1860, 1929, 1941 and 1968. And given what followed all of them, it might be wise to prepare for even crazier times for us ahead.


Be sure to read the whole thing.