Environmentalism -wrecking young brains

What the environmentalists are doing to the children(with dollops of help from the media and the state) is nothing short of child abuse.Frank Furedi-

Turning children into Orwellian eco-spies

Frank Furedi recalls being educated through fear in Stalinist Hungary, and is disturbed that the same tactics are now used by environmentalists.
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If you want to know how it works, watch the official opening video of the Copenhagen summit on climate change (see below). Titled ‘Please Help The World’, the four-minute film opens with happy children laughing and playing on swings. A sudden outburst of rain forces them all to rush for cover. The message is clear: the climate threatens our way of life. It then cuts to a young girl who is anxiously watching one TV news broadcaster after another reporting on impending environmental catastrophes. Then we see the young girl tucked into bed, sweetly asleep as she embraces her toy polar bear… but suddenly we’re drawn into her nightmare. She’s on a parched and eerie landscape; she looks frightened and desolate; suddenly the dry earth cracks and she runs in terror towards the shelter of a distant solitary tree. She drops her toy polar bear in a newly formed chasm and yells and screams as she holds on to the tree for dear life. The video ends with groups of children pleading with us: ‘Please help the world.’ You get the picture.

Although this video is a product of the gathering at Copenhagen, it is typical of the kind of propaganda that is constantly directed at children these days. In a world where moral education seems to be exhausted, where teachers are reluctant to judge or to explain the difference between right and wrong, environmentalism has become one of the few values that educators feel comfortable with. Which is why environmentalism and its values now saturate the school curriculum in Britain and some other countries, too.

In medieval times, religion was central to the teaching of virtually every subject. Students were left in no doubt where the church stood on the smallest details of every topic they were learning about. Today, environmental concerns have been integrated into the curriculum, to the point where they often dominate subjects like geography, science and Personal Health and Social Education and intrude into history and literature, too. The growing significance of environmental issues in the school curriculum is directly proportionate to society’s broader moral illiteracy and loss of purpose. Today, even religious studies often appears as a sub-branch of the dogma of environmental alarmism.
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By transmitting their values to children, the scaremongers hope to channel children’s indignation into hostility towards older generations that are apparently destroying the planet. In the Copenhagen video we hear a child talking about her ‘anger’. When she says ‘I am only a child’, the implication is clear: adults have let children down.

Others go a step further and blame older generations for destroying the environment to such an extent that the survival of future generations is put in jeopardy. The message is that adults are greedy or stupid, or both. This downbeat assessment of adults’ behaviour has mutated into outright hostility towards the moral status of the older generations and their so-called ‘wisdom’. ‘Adults have ruined our world’, says the headline to an article in an online magazine targeting children.

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In previous times, it was only totalitarian societies that mobilised children to police their parents’ behaviour. It was Orwellian, Big Brother-style states that tried to harness youngsters’ simplistic views of good and evil to reshape the outlook of adults. But who needs Big Brother when the former prime minister of Britain, Tony Blair, can openly assert that ‘on climate change, it is parents who should listen to their children’? It appears that preying on children’s fears and exploiting their anxiety is now considered to be a form of enlightened education. Yet the future of our children demands that we provide them with existential and moral security. Instead of feeding them on a steady diet of scaremongering, we need to inspire them about our potential to improve the future of our world.

Read the whole thing.

As I have pointed out, the media (see my  case-study of the Hindustan Times) are shamefully fully involved in giving children nightmares and turning them against adults.

A very disturbing judgement from the Supreme Court

An odd and prima facie, a very disturbing judgment from the Supreme Court-

Not satisfied with explanation given by Zee TV and its reporter Vijay Shekhar for carrying out a sting operation allegedly showing corruption in lower judiciary, the the Supreme Court on Thursday asked them to tender an “unconditional apology” to avoid any criminal action.

The channel had carried a sting operation “Cash for warrant scam” in 2004. It showed three advocates of Ahmedabad securing bailable warrants—on fictitious complaint and for monetary considerations—against former President A P J Abdul Kalam, former Chief Justice of India V N Khare, apex court judge Justice B P Singh and senior counsel the late R K Jain.


“He has committed a serious offence,” the CJI said and refused to acknowledge that corruption existed in subordinate judiciary. “The perception of judiciary to this gentleman is absolutely wrong,” he said, refusing to accept the “intention” of the journalist was not to bring disrepute to the system.
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The court noted that all material facts, including addresses of persons against whom warrants were issued, were suppressed. “You have misled the magistrate, you have misled the lawyers,” the court said.
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However senior advocate Arun Jaitley, who appeared for the reporter, argued it should be the intention behind the act of the media that should be considered rather than the act. “If the reporter who tried to expose whatever little vulnerability exist in the system is taken to task, it would be a case of extreme positioning, which in today’s times is uncalled for,” Jaitely said.

Some bigwigs of the media, the defenders of freedoms(especially their own) seem to be skirting the issue.

Vir Sanghvi-

On Thursday, the Supreme Court finally took a stand on the contentious and controversial issue of television sting operations. The judges asked for an unconditional apology from a Zee News reporter who had conducted a sting operation seeking to reveal corruption in the lower judiciary. Asked the Chief Justice of India, “What public good has the reporter done? Prime facie, he has committed a serious crime.”

I do not want to go into the rights and wrongs of that particular case. And certainly, despite the tenor of the judgment, there is some merit in the argument offered by Arun Jaitley, counsel for Zee News, that the channel had first submitted the tapes of the sting operation to the judiciary and only then broadcast them. Jaitley argued that Zee News had behaved with responsibility and that the intention had not been to denigrate the judicial system.

No matter who you agree with — Jaitley or the Chief Justice — there is little doubt that the case will once again focus attention on the ethics of news television. Moreover, the judgment comes at a time when the Information and Broadcasting Ministry is circulating a draft Broadcasting Bill that many media professionals regard as going against the spirit of a free press.

Barkha Dutt-

The recent judgment against Zee News for attempting such an exposé is already a matter of concern.

'Concern'?- isn't that rather an understatement? What will the Supreme Court do if the reporter from the Zee News does not apologize? Send him to jail? For exposing corruption in the judiciary? Like I have said before- sometimes it feels it's Orwell's 1984 all the time.

It is left to 'Kiran', one of those faceless anonymous posters on the net so despised by some in the MSM(mainstream media) to say it out loud and clear-

"The only way to rid the country of corruption is to hang a few of you on the lamp post. The law does not permit us to do it but otherwise we would prefer to hang people like you to the lamp post," a Bench of Justices S B Sinha and Markandeya Katju was quoted by PTI as saying. The Bench made the statement while hearing the bail application of Braj Bhushan Prasad, a dismissed employee of Bihar government for his alleged involvement in the Rs 1,000 crore fodder scam.This sounds very good but what about the corruption in Judiciary? The same supreme court instead of punishing the corrupt judge of the Gujrat Judiciary in the Zee TV case is shielding the judge and is bent upon punishing the Zee TV for exposing corruption in judciary. It seems the judges of SC do not know the saying " Practice before you preach to others"

Note -Barkha Dutt's article is otherwise actually quite good.


(all emphasis mine)

What lies beneath -beneath that bright blue turban? Why, another electric idea!

Note -an important update below the fold:
When conservative columnist Joshua Livestro was confronted with censorship at the Dutch public broadcasting corporation, he didn’t get mad – he got even.





Another bolt from
under that blue.
Caricature from
Cox & Forkum.

What exactly goes on beneath that turban? What sparks fly in that head that belongs to Manmohan Singh? How many powerful thought-bombs keep going ka-boom! in that hyperactive brain -since he and his government keep coming out with one electric idea after the other?

If it's not Arjun Singh who thought of the super-original idea of ever more quotas then it is Priya Praneshwari Das Munshi "who has said he sometimes stays up late to monitor television content", so that he could find 'objectionable' content and, presumably, ban channels. (via Great Bong)

Now, out of the blue (pun intended!), this - You may now need licence to own TV !

You may now need licence to own TV

You do not watch Doordarshan but may soon have to pay a one-time licence fee for the TV you own and an additional tax on any new TV you buy in the future. Why? To support Prasar Bharati Corporation and its employees.

On Wednesday, the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Prasar Bharati (PB) is likely to decide on a new tax on each television set sold in the country. The GoM has two options: a 5 per cent tax or a 10 per cent one. A 10 per cent levy will fetch Prasar Bharati Corporation Rs 890 crore every year.

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The GoM will also decide on a proposal to levy a licence fee on broadcast receivers — television and radio set owners.

Television channels will have to pay a ‘public service broadcast fee’ to PB. This will be 5 per cent of their gross revenue generated. Officials said the measures would help end PB’s financial woes. The corporation requires Rs 3,000(crore) every year for operations but its annual revenue has been about Rs 1,600 crore over the past few years. An official said the measures would make PB financially independent of the government.

Sometimes it seems that it is always (Orwell's) 1984. When a government propaganda tool is called a public service broadcaster. When Rs 3,000 crore(30,000 million) are wasted on ---- on what exactly? What good does Prasar Bharati do, really?


Sevanti Ninan asked in 2004 -

What do mature democracies with a burgeoning private sector media need an information and broadcasting ministry for? You could argue that a largely rural, poor society could have media needs which the private sector will not find profitable to meet. But how well is Prasar Bharati, which costs Rs. 5 crore a day, meeting these needs? We have a satellite kisan channel, a terrestrial kisan channel, and Krishi Darshan. Have they revolutionised Indian agriculture?

How many hospitals would that 3000 crores every year (and growing) build and thus save more lives? How many schools? How many buses for better public transport? How many extremely poor could survive if that money was spent just on their basic meals?

I am a libertarian. I don't believe that the state should be doing any of these things. But there are many, many who do, including almost everyone in the government itself. So shouldn't that 3000 crores(and counting) be put to better, much better use ? Why are the employees of Prasar Bharati, the I&B bureaucrats , the ministry officials and toadies and hanger-ons and middlemen, the politicians and their chamchas* - why are they more important than the hundreds of thousands of people in extreme poverty who could survive with some decency if that 3000 crores could be used to help them.

Back of the envelope calculation -at Rs100 to feed one person for one day, Rs 3000 crores would feed about 821,917 persons for one year!

But I suppose Doordarshan must be doing something reaaaally important -just can't figure it out now. And in the meanwhile, we live in dread of another bolt(and jolt) from under that blue.

(all emphasis mine)

*The colorful Indian language translator-
Chamcha - literally, a spoon. A derisive word for toadies, hanger-ons and boot-lickers, with whom every Indian politician is surrounded. Indian politics is replete with such cutlery.In fact, there is a hierarchy in chamchadom, as the politician surrounded by chamchas is himself the chamcha of a bigger politician.It's a whole and complex ecosystem. Someday the scientists who specialize in parasites will pay more attention to it.


Update -is it true that the so-called public service broadcasters are almost always toadies of the government(Doordarshan in India, Channel 1 and Channel Rossiya in Russia and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) in Iran for example) or, if they are truly autonomous, they come under the sway (control, rather) of a politically correct, left leaning orthodoxy (BBC in UK, National Public Radio (NPR) in USA andNetherlands Programme Service(NPS) in Holland, for example)?

Here is an interesting tale of what happened when a 'right-wing' journalist unexpectedly became part of the cozy leftists club at the NPS, Holland -

Some excerpts-

When conservative columnist Joshua Livestro was confronted with censorship at the Dutch public broadcasting corporation, he didn’t get mad – he got even.
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Late on Saturday evening, I received a phone call from Van Friesland. He said he thought it was a good column, but he warned me to tread carefully: “With a program like ours, with its left-wing audience, you’ve got to remember: leftist columnists will be praised even for third-rate efforts. Right-leaning columnists have to be much more conspicuous in the way they operate.” Right now, he suggested, reading out this column just wouldn’t be a good idea. Better switch to a safer option. I gladly jotted all of this down in my notebook.

Based on the flood of complaints the program routinely received in the hours after the show, by the way, I wonder whether the editors really know what makes their own audience tick. The e-mails all complain of similar issues: biased, leftwing presenters, and a biased, leftwing editorial policy, with a clear preference for guests and issues on the left.

Looking at the statistics for the four months I was involved with the program, I can only say the e-mails understate the extent of the problems. I looked at the period between the beginning of March (when I was first hired) and the end of June (when my contract was terminated). In that period, the editors invited nearly twice as many liberal guests as conservative ones – 23 versus 14. Among government ministers, the bias was even more obvious. Five different ministers from the governing left-of-center Social Democrat party appeared on the show. And from their coalition partners, the right-of-center Christian Democrats? Not a single one.

(all emphasis mine)

Go read the whole thing -it's worth it.