Do we need to know of Shoaib Akhtar's internal affairs?

From Cricinfo-

The PCB has withdrawn Shoaib Akhtar from the 15-man squad for next month's World Twenty20, saying - in an unusually revealing statement - that he had been diagnosed with genital viral warts. Rao Iftikhar Anjum's name has been sent to the ICC's technical committee by the PCB as a replacement.

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The PCB's unusually graphic press release said that a three-member medical panel appointed by the PCB had found that Shoaib was suffering from "genital viral warts and electrofulgration [a surgical procedure] was done on May 12, 2009."

The panel added that "his wound though healing needs further care and treatment for another minimum ten days for the purpose of healing and to achieve skin cover. The Medical Board further recommended his re-assessment after 10 days.

Do we need to know all this? Whatever happened to discretion and good sense?

(emphasis mine)

(via Andrew Bolt)

The fate of freedom when China and India shall dominate the world- part 2

Note: Part 1- Alternate history-If the Soviet Russia had triumphed of this essay is here.

Part 2-Alternate history vs. Reality

All right, enough said! Trouble with alternate history is that one can get carried away and go on and on. One can also dispute our imagined version of events -this or that might or might not have happened. However what concerns us is the broad trend of history not that any particular event might have occurred in this way or that. The woods and not the trees, as they say.

This alternate version may now seem highly improbable and may appear that it could never have happened. But during the cold war there have been times when the West was demoralized, morally weak and militarily tired and the Soviet power appeared unvanquishable. Such a mood was encapsulated in films like 'Red Dawn'(1984)and in the darkly pessimistic tone of that fine book by the French philosopher Jean François Revel -How Democracies Perish (also 1984).

It is the contention of this essay that had the USSR won the cold war in the manner that the USA did (or in any manner at all), the world would have become much less democratic over time, with various curtailments of freedoms even in the traditionally democratic regimes. There would have come about no worldwide liberalization of the economy, no globalization except the immense strengthening of global communist movements. For the purpose of equivalence with what actually happened we had assumed that the economies of the West had collapsed. However given the record of the command and control system of economics, there would have followed no amelioration in the global economy after the global triumph of communism -on the contrary, as the evidence of almost whole of the 20th century shows, the economic situation would have become dire.

Compare this to the actual events that followed the triumph of America in the cold war- for the first time in a long, long time (and for the first time ever in many cases) the peoples and nations of Eastern Europe gained true freedom from Russian dominance. Most of them quickly turned to democracy, capitalism and a general atmosphere of freedom. Many central Asian nations also broke away from the bear's stifling grip but with less success in turning to democracy. But even these in general were better off than under the Soviet yoke- there now existed the possibility that they might reform some day under pressure from the West, a chance that was non-existent under the Soviet rule. Nations world over in scores turned to more liberal economies and opened up in various degrees. Globalization and planet wide swing towards free markets led to lifting up the standard of living on a vast scale. In India and China this led to the phenomenal lifting out of poverty of hundreds of millions. And despite its unchallenged and extremely vast military power, and despite what we had heard for forever from the media-intellectual-academic axis, the allegedly 'hegemonic' America refused to take over the world. In fact it began to dismantle a large part of its conventional and nuclear forces. Free markets and democracy now seemed to be so obviously the best and the only benevolent system of governance that Francis Fukuyama declared, well, the end of history.

Coming up- Part 3: The fundamental struggle is between freedom and slavery

Obama mangles metaphors

Do you know that foundation rests on pillars and not the other way round? Obama seems to think so-

From the president’s new speech, linked on RCP, entitled, “Two Pillars of a New Foundation.”

I have spoken repeatedly of the need to lay a new foundation for lasting prosperity; a foundation that will support good jobs and rising incomes; a foundation for economic growth where we no longer rely on excessive debt and reckless risk - but instead on skilled workers and sound investments to lead the world in the industries of the 21st century.

Two pillars of this new foundation are clean energy and health care.

Does Obama know that pillars rest on top of foundations, not the other way around? If George W. Bush said something like this, we’d never hear the end of it.

There you go, smartest president ever( so we are told).

(emphasis mine)

From the LNC Quote Shop

A.A.Gill-

The truth is, environmentalists are just not attractive. They’re not winning, engaging, amusing or empathetic. They are ranty, repetitive, patronising, demanding, deaf, weirdly bonkers and smelly… But that’s not their real impediment. The real killer thing is the schadenfreude: the naked, transparent, hand-rubbing glee with which they pass on every shame, sadness and terror. No disaster is too appalling or imminent that the green movement can’t caper and keen with a messianic glee.

(Via Andrew Bolt)

India: soft-tyranny

Well said!

Is there any doubt which is the case here in India?
We live in soft-tyranny that goes under the camouflage of democracy.

(via Instapundit)