when a leftist picks your wallet it's for good(and not "for the good", as he likes to claim)- moi
As for the climate, you could take every dollar spent on "global warming" and blow it on internet porn, and the Earth's climate in 2050 will be pretty much what it would be anyway. Mark Steyn
It's sad though that we have to receive our entertainment from an industry(Hollywood) that has more in common and has more support for Fidel Castro's Cuba (see Sicko and many others) than America. Greg, a commentator at this debate.
Arguing with them(Chomsky defenders) seems to be a lot like trying to teach Plato's Republic to a pig: it wastes your time, and it annoys the pig. Brad DeLong
If Yemen cuts its fertility rate, Yemen will empty out. If Britain cuts its fertility rate, Yemen will move in. (Mark Steyn)
My articles at DESICRITICS
I also write at DESICRITICS under the pseudonym "Libertarian Dog"
How free are you?
Write up all the things you are not allowed to do or can do only at the pleasure of others under severe restrictions, things that hurt no one, violate nobody's rights, concern no one, but still you cannot do them, and you could still be writing after a long, long time.
You are tied- in the name of the greater good, the national interest, communal harmony, the environment, the customs, the traditions, religious sentiments,the welfare of the poor, orphans , the kittens and a million other reasons and causes.
Whatever the cause, one thing is constant- you are tied. You are expected, joyously, to sacrifice yourself for the good of the others. Maybe someday this human sacrifice and slavery will end.
The savvier Muslim potentates have no desire to be sitting in a smelly cave in the Hindu Kush, sharing a latrine with a dozen half-witted goatherds while plotting how to blow up the Empire State Building. Nevertheless, they share key goals with the cave dwellers – including the wish to expand the boundaries of "the Muslim world" and (as in the anti-blasphemy push at the U.N.) to place Islam, globally, beyond criticism. The nonterrorist advance of Islam is a significant challenge to Western notions of liberty and pluralism.
1)The seepage first noticed.It must have been leaking for a day or two at least. But we noticed it today - so this is day 1
2) Mrs LNC called up the responsible neighbors and spoke to Mrs.Jawa. She( Mrs LNC) asked her not use the bathroom and close the water connections there.
Pictures of day 1- Telltale cracks appearing due to seepage of toilet waters
3)Plumber from the housing society goes up and has a look. His report - water is seeping through the tiles of the bathroom floor.
4)We hand him a pack of white cement and send him upstairs to fix the leak.C.P.Jawa's son( who I must say seems a decent bloke) sends him away asking him to come when his father is here. Unfortunately that is not possible as the plumber has to leave before Mr.Jawa returns.
5) So at the end of 1st day - nothing but that the neighbors might have stopped using the bathroom(we don't know, however).
6)The fan is already getting damaged -not spinning properly.
Water seeping in and out from the fan-
Video of shower of drops when the fan is turned on day 1-
(Note- This post is unusual for this blog -it's a personal story. However there is ,as a background canvas, some of the issues that concern this site- in this case, the state of Indian justice and society.)
When I was first told of this - I said to myself "Oh no, not again!". By "This" I mean this-
tell-tale cracks appearing in the ceiling due to seepage
This is water seeping in from the ceiling, that too exactly where the fan is hanging. It is seeping in from the apartment above.The drip is falling into the children's bedroom and right onto the bed( and there isn't enough space to shift the bed elsewhere).The best part - what is right above is our upstairs neighbors' toilet/bathroom.
This is the third time we have received this blessing from our angelic neighbors above(who are, distance wise, closer to heaven than us, though not as close as Guptaji on the top floor), and second time from this same dangerous spot.
The first time this happened, it completely spoiled the ceiling, irredeemably damaged the fan but what was worse was the experience of trying to get it fixed. Herein lies a tale of our country -and not just myself.
The story of how we tried to stop the holy waters the first time around
Let me say at the outset -we are law abiding, peace loving, honest people. Otherwise there wouldn't be a tale to tell.
When the bedroom leakage happened the first time around a few years ago we were naive to assume that all that was required was to inform our upstairs neighbor and he would get it fixed immediately, considering the horrendous nature of the problem.
WRONG!! The real world is not like that. It seems the gentleman, a certain Mr. C.P.Jawa was not too keen on taking action promptly. There ensued much hemming and hawing as the gentleman put up an appearance of being concerned, all the while not doing anything. Days turned to weeks even as drip turned to showers and it was a pain to even hold them to the basic courtesy of not using the leaking potty (they have 3 bathrooms).
One can only imagine the mental and physical harassment we went through -an unusable, leaking bedroom, a family huddled into a single bedroom instead of two - even as the gentlemen and his family went merrily out of town to attend a marriage ceremony.
In this situation what were the options for, as I mentioned, law abiding, peace loving, honest people?
1)File a case with the police ? Can such a case be filed? Under what law? Would the neighbor be arrested and the state take the responsibility of getting justice done? If so, what about the seepage while all that would be going on?
We had grave doubts that in India police would intervene to get justice done in this case even if a criminal case can be made out? Besides the bribe-quotient of our cops is very high as is our anti-bribe one -things simply wouldn't work out.
2)File a civil suit?
That could take 20 years and still come to nothing - while his potty leaked away on a Rip Van Winkle time scale.
3) Sock him?Harass him in return?Get even? But didn't I already say -we are law abiding, peace loving, honest people
So one can generalize from the specific - India lacks avenues of obtaining easy justice. Injustice is not just murder or terrorism or embezzlement. There are millions of tiny(though not tiny for those who suffer) injustices taking place at any given moment - and for the victims there is no way to get recompense. To ask the state for help is to get sucked in a vortex of a Kafkaesque machine.But let's keep pretending that we live under the benign protection of a welfare state - as opposed to being mercilessly exploited under the dog-eat-dog capitalism.
So what happened next? The gentleman finally, after a delay of some weeks(picture our agony all this while) agreed to fix his toilet -after the intervention of other (influential) persons in the housing society but on certain terms: we were to pay for it. So we did - and his Indian seat turned to English, the cement floor to a spanking, tiled one. His bathroom was renovated -and we paid for it.
I imagine that in America we would be suitable candidates for filing a multi-million dollar compensation case and would be very likely to win. In India, filing a case and going through the process is a fate worse than death -or at least, far worse than the original harassment.
So apart from all the agony, we were poorer by several thousand rupees (about 10,000 including a new fan and repainting the ceiling) with nary a cost to the person responsible. We suffered needlessly and why? Not just the neighbors but BECAUSE IN INDIA THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL THINGS LIKE GETTING JUSTICE DO NOT WORK.(Yes, I am shouting!)
So here we go again. The same ceiling is leaking from the same spot and we are still (and I am coming to believe, regrettably) law abiding, peace loving, honest people.And getting justice is still as excoriating as before( even though the most honest and humble gentleman, so we are told, in blue turban has been in power for all those years).
However this time I shall keep information on our efforts to stop the blessed holy waters updated on this blog with pictures and videos.
I used to enjoy visiting the local British Council library.Now it is much less so as I explained in a letter to a British Council representative( as a reply to an email promoting green propaganda)-
Dear Ms. ******,
I am little saddened to see the British Council seems to have been taken over by a fashionable environmentalistas - there has been a rash of events tomtomming the green message(propaganda, rather) -climate change, carbon footprint, go green yada yada yada. I used to enjoy visiting the library but now I dread facing another in-your-face green something or the other promotion.
It is also ironical that the people who shout the loudest about climate change have a carbon footprint substantially larger than the average person -Al Gore and his huge mansion,Rajender Pachauri and his endless jetting about the world and closer to us, British Council and it's fully air-conditioned multi-storied building. I don't suppose all that cooling runs on solar or wind power.And to think of all the carbon released in organizing so many green events.
I presume that the British taxpayer funds at least partly the activities of the British Council - and there are many among the British public who have not drunk the green kool-aid and do not believe in the green world view of capitalism bad and environmentalism good. Your organization is doing a disservice to such taxpayers whose money is taken but their viewpoints ignored.
There is an excellent book in your library -"Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth". I suggest that at every green event at the British Council premises this book be prominently displayed and, even better, free copies given away. I am sure that will cost much, much less than the the expense of organizing the event itself.
I also apologize for writing you all this - you are but an employee doing her job but I believe that as a taxpayer funded concern the British Council is wrong to promote only a certain viewpoint and ideology and ignore others.
Is there a label for people who are constantly policing for signs of racism and when they think they have found it(even if it is not there), they righteously go "Gotcha!" A white umpire blunders and gives a few wrong decisions against a brown team -it's Racism!(the last India-Australia cricket series in Australia).
A white man complains about customer service -it's Racism!
The moment I saw this in this morning's Times of India, I knew this was a reporter who had already a ready-made narrative in his head, whatever the facts.
Here is the text-
Flintoff speaks out against immigrants
London: No stranger to controversies, Andrew Flintoff has made some stunning antiimmigration statements which may land the England all-rounder in fresh trouble with cricket authorities and his potential sponsors. In an interview to GQ magazine, Flintoff blamed rap music for rising violence and said countries should be careful while promoting multi-cultural societies. “I have no problems with a multicultural society, I think that is to the benefit of the country. But you have to be careful what levels you take it to,” Flintoff said. “It annoys me when I phone a hotel receptionist in my own country and they don’t understand what I am saying because they don’t speak English,” he added. The 31-year-old father of three also blamed rap music for the rising violence in the society. “I see Manchester on a Friday night and I would be horrified seeing my daughter going to the bars,” Flintoff said. “There are places I wouldn’t go to now. You see these reports of stabbings, bottlings, shootings, and you think: ‘What is happening to this country?’ “I think rap music has a lot to do with it. It makes it sound cool not to conform, and to be violent. That’s why I think that sport plays such an important role,” he added. PTI
Andrew Bolt pounced on this first(he is, unlike me, paid to write)-
Cricket hero Andrew Flintoff suggests that when the English no longer speak English, immigration policies may have failed:
The all-rounder told GQ magazine that Britain’s immigration policies had failed. He added: ‘I have no problems with a multicultural society, I think that is to the benefit of the country. But you have to be careful what levels you take it to.
‘It annoys me when I phone a hotel receptionist in my own country and they don’t understand what I am saying because they don’t speak English
‘I think that’s wrong, it’s nothing to do with being politically correct or incorrect, it’s just not right.’
And how is this perfectly modest observation get sold by the Daily Mail?
‘Why can’t hotel staff speak English?’: Andrew Flintoff in bizarre anti-immigration outburst
So in the media la-la land expecting someone, a hotel receptionist in England for Chrissake!, to speak English is an "anti-immigration outburst".
That is why I live by this rule - Never trust a media person, always verify.
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BAN SHEILA DIXIT, NOT PLASTIC BAGS
This is an appeal to save one the most helpful entities on this planet- the plastic bag which has become a endangered species thanks to the predatory practices of environmentalists and politicians. Mother earth and the humanity are now belaboring under the reckless overpopulation of these two hegemonic groups who will not let the rest of us live in peace without their overbearing meddling.
So let's - BAN SHEILA DIXIT, NOT PLASTIC BAGS BAN SUNITA NARAIN, NOT PLASTIC BAGS
If you agree with me then please leave a comment here
Monckton vs. Littlemore Debate audio
The audio of much anticipated debate between Lord Monckton, a prominent global warming skeptic and Richard Littlemore, a well-knownglobal warming alarmist
Rajendra Pachauri gets the 1st LNC Green Hypocrite prize
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