Indian artists in support of a murderer, part 3 -alternative Che images

Continued from part 1 and part 2 below.

Here are some alternative Che images one would like to see more of-


Communism killed 100 million but-



source


World's greatest T-shirt salesman-


source

More images below the fold

Victims of Che Guevara-


source


Somewhere in hell, the revolution goes on-

source


Fight leftist indoctrination at campus-


source



Useful idiots supporting Che(Yes, I am thinking of the artists who took part in Suneet Chopra's Che lovefest)-

source



Evolution of the Che myth-

source



I wonder how many lefties have become rich selling the Che t-shirt-


source



Don't get us wrong, we love revolution too-


source


source




No Ch(e)moking-

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Finally, Che one can love-


source



Note- Kindly limit hate-mail to 100 words each.

Part 1 here
Part 2- Che myths here.

Indian artists in support of a murderer, part 2 -Che myths

Continued from part 1 below-

What is it about the Che iconography that is so resistant to facts? Alvaro Vargas Llosa takes apart the Che myths-

1. HE WAS AGAINST CAPITALISM. In fact, Guevara was for state capitalism. He opposed the wage labor system of 'appropriating surplus value' (in Marxist jargon) only when it came to private corporations. But he turned the appropriation of the workers 'surplus value' into a state system. One example of this is the forced labor camps he supported, starting with Guanahacabibes in 1961.

2. HE MADE CUBA INDEPENDENT. In fact, he engineered the colonization
of Cuba by a foreign power. He was instrumental in turning Cuba into a temporary beachhead of Soviet nuclear power (he sealed the deal in Yalta). As the person responsible for the 'industrialization' of Cuba he failed to end the country's dependency on sugar.

3. HE STOOD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. In fact, he helped ruin the economy by diverting resources to industries that ended up in failure and reduced the sugar harvest, Cuba's mainstay, by half in two years. Rationing started under his stewardship of the island's economy.

4. HE STOOD UP TO MOSCOW. In fact, he obeyed Moscow until Moscow
decided to ask for something in return for its massive transfers of money to Havana. In 1965 he criticized the Kremlin because it had adopted what he termed the 'law of value'. He then turned to China on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, one of the horror stories of the twentieth century. He simply switched allegiances within the totalitarian camp.

5. HE CONNECTED WITH THE PEASANTS. In fact, he died precisely because he never connected with them. "The peasant masses don't help us at all," he wrote in his Bolivian diary before he was captured, an apt way to describe his journey through the Bolivian countryside trying to stir up a revolution that could not even enlist the help of Bolivian Communists (who were realistic enough to note that
peasants did not want revolution in 1967; they had already had one in 1952).

6. HE WAS A GUERRILLA GENIUS. With the exception of Cuba, every guerrilla effort he helped set up failed pitifully. After the triumph of the Cuban revolution, Guevara set up revolutionary armies in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Haiti, all of which were crushed. He later persuaded Jorge Ricardo Masetti to lead a fatal incursion into that country from Bolivia. Guevara's role in the Congo in 1965 was both tragic and comical. He allied himself with Pierre Mulele and Laurent Kabila, two butchers, but got entangled in so many disagreements with the latter and relations between Cuban and Congolese fighters were so strained that he had to flee. Finally, his incursion in Bolivia ended up in his death, which his followers are commemorating this Sunday.

7. HE RESPECTED HUMAN DIGNITY. In fact, he had a habit of taking other people's property. He told his followers to rob banks ('the struggling masses agree to rob banks because none of them has a penny in them') and as soon as the Batista regime collapsed he occupied a mansion and made it his own, a case of expeditious revolutionary eminent domain.

8. HIS ADVENTURES WERE A CELEBRATION OF LIFE. Instead, they were an
orgy of death. He executed many innocent people in Santa Clara, in central Cuba, where his column was based in the last stage of the armed struggle. After the triumph of the revolution, he was in charge of 'La Cabaña' prison for half a year. He ordered the execution of hundreds of prisoners, former Batista men, journalists,businessmen, and others. A few witnesses, including Javier Arzuaga, who was the chaplain of 'La Cabaña', and José Vilasuso, who was a
member of the body in charge of the summary judicial process, recently gave me their painful testimonies.

9. HE WAS A VISIONARY. His vision of Latin America was actually quite blurred. Take, for instance, his view that the guerrillas had to take to the countryside because that is where the struggling masses lived. In fact, since the 1960s, most peasants have peacefully deserted the countryside in part because of the failure of land reform, which has hindered the development of a property-based agriculture and economies of scale with absurd regulations forbidding all sorts of private arrangements.

10. HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE UNITED STATES. He predicted Cuba would
surpass the GDP per capita of the U.S. by 1980. Today, Cuba's economy can barely survive thanks to Venezuela's oil subsidy (about 100,000 barrels a day), a form of international alms that does not speak too well of the regime's dignity.

Humberto Fontova (linked in part 1) has an excellent article on how the myth of Che is maintained and propagated in popular media. Excerpts-

The History Channel Shills For Che Guevara

[Humberto Fontova is the author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the
Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.]

The regime Che Guevara co-founded stole the savings and property of 6.4 million citizens, made refugees of 20 per cent of the population from a nation formerly deluged with immigrants and whose citizens had achieved a higher standard of living than those residing in half of Europe. Che Guevara's regime also shattered through executions, jailings, mass larceny and exile virtually every family on the island of Cuba. Many opponents of the Cuban regime qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period THREE TIMES as long in Che Guevara's Gulag as Alexander Solzhenytzin suffered in Stalin's Gulag.

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

One signed his name "Stalin II," professed that "the solutions to the world's problems lie behind the Iron curtain," and boasted that "if the nuclear missiles had remained we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City." He also professed that the victory of socialism was well worth "millions of atomic victims."

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

Immediately upon entering Havana Che Guevara stole and moved into what
was probably the most luxurious mansion in Cuba. The rightful owner fled
the country barely ahead of a firing squad and a reporter who wrote of Che's new house in a Cuban newspaper was himself threatened with the firing squad. A year later thousands of Cubans were sent to forced-labor camps on Che's orders, based on his whim to fashion "a new man,"

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

During a 1961 speech in Cuba, Che Guevara denounced the very "spirit of
rebellion" as "reprehensible." Earlier he had cheered the Soviet
invasion of Hungary and the concurrent slaughter of thousands of
Hungarians who resisted Russian Imperialism. According to Guevara, these
freedom-fighters were all "fascists and CIA agents."

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

On his second to last day alive Che Guevara ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to the last breath and to the last bullet. With his men doing just that, a slightly wounded Che snuck away from the firefight and surrendered with a full clip in his pistol, while whimpering to his captors: "Don't Shoot! I'm Che! I'm worth more to you alive than dead!" He then groveled shamelessly, desperate to ingratiate himself. "What's your name, young man?" Che asked one of his captors.
"Why what a lovely name for a Bolivian soldier!"

"So what will they do with me?" Che asked Bolivian Captain Gary Prado. "I don't suppose you will kill me. I'm surely more valuable alive....And you Captain Prado," Che commended his captor. "You are a very special person ...I have been talking to some of your men. They think very highly of you, captain! And don't worry, this whole thing is over. We have failed." Then to further ingratiate himself, "your army has pursued us very tenaciously....now, could you please find out what they plan to
do with me?"
----------------------------------------

So far, subjective matters. Now on to more objective ones.

Despite numerous attempts, nobody has managed to locate any record of
Ernesto Guevara's medical degree. Shortly after his capture Che admitted to his captor's commander, Captain Gary Prado, that he (Che) was not a doctor but "had some knowledge of medicine."

Nonetheless The History Channel refers to Ernesto Guevara as a "newly
qualified Doctor."
------------------------

"The Black Book of Communism," written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press (neither an outpost of the vast right-wing conspiracy, much less of "Miami maniacs!") estimates 14,000 firing squad executions in Cuba by the end of the 1960's. "The facts and figures are irrefutable," wrote the New York Times (no less!) about "The Black Book of Communism." A Cuban prosecutor of the time who quickly defected in horror and disgust named Jose Vilasuso estimates that Che signed 400 death warrants the first few months of his command in La Cabana. A Basque priest named Iaki de Aspiazu, who was often on hand to perform confessions and last rites, says Che personally ordered 700 executions by firing squad during the period. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book "Yo Soy El
Che!" that Guevara sent 1,892 men to the firing squad.

Read the whole thing.

Is the terrible state of modern/post-modern art, the utter irrationalism and lunatic-asylum quality about it -I wonder if that because it is people like Suneet Chopra who are it's thekedars *. Historically, the descent of art into irrationalism has followed the descent of intellectuals into the embrace of utopian totalitarianism.

(emphasis mine)

*The colorful Indian language translator-
thekedar - One who decides and sits over judgment(literally- someone who has been given a contract to do something)

Next- in part 3: tired of that 'iconic' image of mass-murderer staring from trendy t-shirts.Here are some Che images we would like to see more of.

See part 1 here

Indian artists in support of a murderer, part 1

• Well known Indian artists and other arty-sharties pay homage to Che Guevara.

Now why am I not surprised.


“The Victims of Che Guevera” poster, produced by the Young America’s Foundation, a collage that uses tiny photos of those killed by Cuba’s communist regime to compose the face of the Marxist icon, Che Guevara.
Larger image here.



First some facts which for some reason are not well publicized or are completely unknown to most(media bias?)-

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was second in command, chief executioner, and chief KGB liaison for a regime that outlawed elections and private property. This regime's KGB-supervised police, employing the midnight knock and the dawn raid among other devices, rounded up and jailed more political prisoners as a percentage of population than Stalin's and executed more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler's executed (out of a population of 70 million) in it's first six.
--------------------------------------
One week into power the regime Che Guevara co-founded abolished Habeas Corpus. Guevara commanded his regime's prosecutorial goons to "always
interrogate our prisoners at night. A man's resistance is always lower
at night." He boasted that, "we execute from revolutionary conviction!"
and that "judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail." Edwin
Tetlow, Havana correspondent for London's Daily Telegraph, reported on a
mass "trial" orchestrated by Che Guevara where Tetlow noticed the death
sentences posted on a board before the trial had started.

So who loves this creep?

Famous(why?) communist art-critic, Suneet Chopra, well known artists-Arpana Caur, Krishen Khanna, Vijendra Sharma, Dharmendra Rathore, Anoop Kamath, Mohan Singh, Saba Hasan, Vijayata Bhamri, art critics Vinod Bharadwaj and Nuzhat Kazmi, writer Uma Vasudev film persons Arun Vasudev and M K Raina and a large number of intellectuals, artists, writers and leading gallery owners of the capital.


The occasion for all this roses and love was an exhibition dedicated to this lover of freedom in Delhi opened by the ambassador of that paradise of freedom, human rights, free press, free elections and prosperity known by it's shorter name -Cuba.

Suneet Chopra seemed to be in a grumbling mood-

Today imperialism has invented far worse weapons(than atom bombs) that they have tested on the civilian populations Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon. In the name of regime change, the elected president of the Chilean people, Salvador Allende, was murdered in an army coup that proceeded to murder thousands after that, including the Nobel Prize winning poet, Pablo Neruda. In 1991 the USSR was dismantled, and dismembered, Grenada was invaded, Nicaragua was destabilised and Yugoslavia with its proud anti-fascist record and one of the founders of the non-aligned movement was torn to bits as was Czechoslovakia, and states that Hitler had created have once more emerged in the Balkans, not as a natural process, but with the armed might of NATO behind them. “Democracy” was being imposed on the barrel of a gun with the help of generals like Pinochet, Sucharto and the like. And it was Che who told us that such a global oppression could only be stopped with a global resistance to it, by creating “twenty Vietnams” all over the world.

Warmonger! Calling for more Vietnams. Does he love war or what. Read the whole thing. Chopra is almost cartoonish in his rage against 'imperialism', a fine caricature of a fuming communist, now fuming more than ever since the collapse of the USSR (result of an evil plot, no doubt, though the liberated countries of the eastern Europe love their freedom from the Stalinist nightmare). Communism and socialism have never produced a free and prosperous society anywhere despite a century of experimentation.Misery, poverty, oppression, totalitarianism, midnight knocks, entrenched rule by a vicious elite, slave labor, 'reeducation' camps, gulags, death of tens and tens of millions-yes; happiness and freedom-no. And this is the 'vision' that Suneet Chopra and countless other intellectuals have supported and defended. One of the consistent themes of the last hundred or so years has been the love affair of the intellectuals with totalitarianism- be it that of the Nazis, of Stalin, Mao, Khmer Rouge, Castro or any other power-seeker who mouths the right cliches against 'imperialism'.

But what about the artists who participated in the Che lovefest?
Artistic freedom is one of the first casualties of the kind of regime that Che wanted to establish all over Latin America and elsewhere and helped to bring about in Cuba(Quick-How free are the artists to criticize Fidel in his land of milk and honey?).
So what explains their participation? True conviction? Or pulling the right social levers and supporting the 'right' causes to further their careers?
Or what?

I think it is legitimate to call them 'Artists against freedom'.

To prevent this post from becoming too long, I am breaking it into parts. See the rest of the article here-
Part 2- Che Myths
Part 3- Alternative Che images one would like to see more of

(emphasis mine)

Crossposted at What the Heck is Art?

Iraq is a quagmire, Bush is a moron, tra la la la

General Petraeus-Person of the Year

Belly dancers, revelers and young people in snakeskin boots. Baghdad celebrates the new year-

"I haven't seen a happy place like this in so long. I wanted to see if I could maybe meet a few girls!" he said. "I only hope the Iraqi people can enjoy more happy times like this."

Salah al-Lami, 27, the singer who performed at the Palestine ballroom and then for another New Year's Eve crowd at the Sheraton Hotel across the street, said it was the first time he had sung before a live audience in four years.

"This will be the year that we take our freedom!" he told Reuters after singing through a boisterous set in front of a packed dancefloor.

"When I went up on the stage and started singing I felt like I was performing for my family."

Belly dancers also took the stage, and revelers showered a female singer with dinar notes, the Iraqi audience's ultimate sign of approval.

But hush, don't tell it to the editors of the Hindustan Times. They are quagmired too deep down in their narrative-

No glad tidings in Iraq
If there were prizes for the most die-hard optimist of 2007, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki would probably have won it, edging out US President George W. Bush. The Iraqi premier was quoted as saying last week that al-Qaeda and terrorism in Iraq will be defeated in the New Year, followed by reconstruction and development of the country.

Although-

there has been an improvement in the security situation in many troubled areas in Iraq, including Baghdad.

But those lying Americans must not be allowed to take credit-

US generals claim that the American ‘troop surge’, which increased the number of troops and “embedded” more American advisers in Iraqi units, was responsible for bringing down the violence.

The editor's vote goes to Moqtada Sadr-

But then so would the Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose order last August to his Mehdi Army militia to halt hostilities for six months made a bigger difference on the ground.

Now the real meat- whether Iraq is a disaster or on the road to recovery, let's all feel good by blaming Bush for the billionth time-

Whichever way it happened, the people of Iraq would welcome this “lull”, which curiously also gives Mr Bush an opportunity to publicly admit that Washington has failed to achieve its original mission in Iraq.

So the editors admit grudgingly to an improvement in Iraq, while not being able to psychologically admit to it's cause -the so far successful strategy of General Petraeus, recently named Person of the Year by the Sunday Telegraph.They would rather be confined to a looney bin than give credit to Bush who against all the wailing of the pundits went ahead with the surge. Incidentally, the editors of the Hindustan Times were vehemently against the surge.

According to the Sunday Telegraph-

To appreciate the scale of the task Gen Petraeus took on, it is necessary to go back to February 22, 2006. Or, as Iraqis now refer to it, their own September 11. That was when Sunni-led terrorists from al-Qaeda blew up the Shia shrine in the city of Samarra, an act of provocation that finally achieved their goal of igniting sectarian civil war.

A year on, an estimated 34,000 people had been killed on either side - some of them members of the warring Sunni and Shia militias, but most innocents tortured and killed at random. US casualties continued to rise, too, but increasingly American troops became the bystanders in a religious conflict that many believed they could no longer tame.
----------------------------
Nine months on, things do seem to have improved, thanks largely to Petraeus's extraordinary coup of turning Sunni insurgents against their extremist allies in al-Qaeda.

With the chief accelerant in the civil war gone, Shia militias such as the Mehdi Army have also been deprived of their main raison d'être, and with extra US troops on the streets, Iraqis who had previously felt vulnerable to the gunmen now feel safe enough to return home.
[Notice how the editors of the Hindustan Times make Moqtada Sadr's decision appear as if it just happened, without any doing from the Americans -ed]

Also notice that the Sunday Telegraph is not without it's doubts, which is quite a reasonable thing to have on the the subject of Iraq -but they do not flinch from giving credit where due-

Iraq's Shia-dominated government is not alone in worrying that the most controversial of Gen Petraeus's policies - the co-opting of former Sunni insurgents into "concerned local citizens" schemes to fend off Shia militias - may create new, better-organised forces for a renewed civil war once the US finally departs.

Many coalition officials fear such a scenario. Were it to occur, it would confirm the charges of Petraeus's critics that at best he has secured only a hiatus in the collapse of Iraq.
advertisement

Ultimately, that may prove to be the case.

But it should not overshadow his achievement this year: he has given another last chance to a country that had long since ceased to expect one. And for that, Gen Petraeus is Person of the Year.

And to rub it in, Bill Kristol writes-

One additional point: Petraeus's counterinsurgency stands out not just for its conceptual ambition and the skill of its execution but for its humanity. There were those who argued that the U.S. military could not succeed in counterinsurgency because Americans were not tough and bloodthirsty enough. They said that brutality was essential in subduing insurgents and our humanity would be our downfall.

They were wrong. The counterinsurgency campaign of 2007 was probably the most precise, discriminate, and humane military operation ever undertaken on such a scale. Our soldiers and Marines worked hard--and took risks and even casualties--to ensure, as much as possible, that they hurt only enemies. Compared with any previous military operations of this size, they were astonishingly successful. The measure of their success lies in the fact that so many Iraqis now see American troops as friends and protectors. Petraeus and his generals have shown that Americans can fight insurgencies and win--and still be Americans. For that and so much else, he is the man of the year.

Now that is something the groupthink prevalent at most of our media offices will never let the Indian public hear.They are stuck too deep down in their own mental muck to admit that they, with all their fancy journalism degrees and other qualifications from elite institutions were wrong. They are behaving like a monkey who has learnt an amusing action -like putting on and taking off a cap-and keeps repeating it ad nauseam:

Iraq is a quagmire, Bush is a moron, tra la la la!

(emphasis mine)


On the other hand, General Petraeus is not so good for the blogosphere.

A mole changes name

Offered without any comment except the cartoon above-

Mohammed the mole digs author into a risky hole

A BRITISH children’s author who named a mole Mohammed to promote multiculturalism has renamed it Morgan for fear of offending Muslims.

Kes Gray, a former advertising executive, first decided on his gesture of cross-cultural solidarity after meeting Muslims in Egypt.

The character, Mohammed the Mole, appeared in Who’s Poorly Too, an illustrated children’s book, which also included Dipak Dalmatian and Pedro Penguin, in an effort to be “inclusive”.

This weekend Gray said he had decided to postpone a reprint and rename the character Morgan the Mole even though there had been no complaints.



“I had no idea at all of the sensitivities of the name Mohammed until seeing this case in Sudan,” said Gray. “As soon as I saw the news I thought, oh gosh, I’ve got a mole called Mohammed this is not good.

“I feel incredibly sorry for that teacher,” added Gray. “Luckily for me, I’m in a position where I can avoid this.” The book has sold 40,000 copies in Britain and abroad since 1999.

Gray said he tried “hard to embrace other cultures and I had no idea it would backfire like this. I was in Egypt this year and everyone was called Mohammed. I just thought it was a popular name”.

(emphasis mine)
read the whole thing.
Quick, buy the book before it's original print runs out and Morgan steps in for Muhammad.

Okay, okay, can't help it, just one comment-
Where are the all the Dipaks of the world?How come they are not offended on having a dog named Dipak?Has the flame of Dipakism died out?

Normal programming to resume shortly

Blogging interrupted due to various and never ending trials and tribulations.I wish it was all roses and applause.




But what the heck!
Normal programming to resume shortly.


Note- I am unable, due to lack of information, to credit the image above but thank the unknown(to me!) creator for the wonderful image.

A holy immersion in black waters.

On the banks of the Yamuna, the river that flows through the city of Delhi.
Occassion- immersion of something called 'khetri', or "or the earthen pot in which grass is grown during the holy Navratri for praying to Goddess Vaishno".

The water is very dark, almost black.



Here the river catches the fading evening light. The children who live in settlements near the bank are eager to make some money. They usually ask 15 or 20 rupees to take the plant some way into the river and dive into the dirty water and let the plant go.


River children. Interestingly, while this is a Hindu tradition, the children doing the immersion seemed to be mostly muslims.


Note-The above link takes you to someone not pleased with this custom or the state of the river.

All the art in the world will not reduce poverty one bit

It seems that there is going to be an arty-sharty event under the holy blessings of a famous guru, with rock concerts, art shows and a parade of page 3 bimbettes like Nafisa Ali and Nandita Das. The cause- we live in a time where the elites have a deep seated psychological need of a 'cause' to salve their consciences- is to "participate and raise our voices against poverty and a peaceful world" in the support of 'United Nations Millennium Development Goals'.
(Are they really going to raise their voices against a peaceful world?-ed)

As if 'Make Poverty History' was a great success.
Of course, this is just another excuse for the rich and the guilty to feel good as they drive to the event in their Mercedes and Skodas, or fly in first class from another city. As for the artists and artistes, an occassion to ingratiate themselves with the 'happening' crowd and another step on the ladder of their careers.In short, everyone happy.

As for the actual poor, none are likely to attend the event( and if they tried they would run the risk of being chased away from the gates of the IHC, an uber-elite complex of the rich and the famous)


Those who are crazy to be part of something associated with the United Nations are often unaware (or don't care) that the programs of the UN are run by a bureaucracy that like all bureaucracies all over the world is inefficient, self-serving, unaccountable,venal and corrupt. In the case of the United Nations, the unaccountability has plumbed to great depths.It's corruption and venality takes on a global scale by the very nature of the institution. Who gave us the far reaching corruption of oil-for-food? The utter unaccountability of UNDP in North Korea? The raping, looting and child prostitution conducted by it's soldiers (the sex-for-food scandal)?

The 'United Nations Millennium Development Goals' is the planet scale version of Indira Gandhi's garibi-hatao(remove poverty) and is as likely to fail. Indian economy began to take off only when the deathgrip of state socialism was loosened beginning 1991. We all know what works, although several are reluctant to admit it. There is a very, very hysterically vocal section of society everywhere which opposes that which will (and has proved to) reduce poverty anywhere it has been tried. Ironically, that section, made up of powerful coalitions of left-leaning NGO's , 'civil society' groups and various members of the media-arts elites are highly influential at the UN. An ambitious planet-wide project under their aegis means only one thing-

"...a sort of utopian central planning by global bureaucrats, a crash program like a Great Leap Forward for poor countries," ........ "This will not work any better than central planning by bureaucrats has worked anywhere else, which is to say not at all."

and-

For example, the long section on aid shoves right past the realities to rattle the cup for more money flowing through the gullies of UN plans and bureaucracy, where so much has already vanished, or been diverted into support of bad governments that create precisely the conditions that inflict poverty. Someone needs to remind Mr. Annan that every dollar taxed away from the citizens of the rich nations of the world is a dollar less that's available for these same private citizens to buy goods for which there is genuine market-driven demand--that being the real engine of development.

Mr. Annan wants every poor country to produce--get ready for the mouthful--a "Millennium Development Goals-based" national strategy (meaning, in line with U.N. plans). By September he wants donor countries to produce "timetables and monitorable targets" to align aid delivery with all these strategies. Then, the U.N. will baste this all together into a plan even bigger than Oil for Food, which sounds like an unfortunate idea. Mr. Annan gets it partly right about the need for free trade, but he urges such openness only for the richest nations, not for the poorest--a vision that will make the rich richer, but do far less for the poor. Meanwhile, he deplores a growing income gap between rich and poor nations.

Some sections are almost comic, such as Mr. Annan's chiding the Security Council and General Assembly that when they assign tasks to the Secretariat, they must take care "that they also provide resources adequate for the task." Yes, but as Oil for Food illustrated, even $1.4 billion in administrative funding was not enough to provide honesty and competence. The glitch was the abysmal, secretive and conflict-of-interest-ridden management of Mr. Annan's Secretariat, not lack of money. Mr. Annan notes that he wants more transparency and accountability, but he suggests this come from more reshuffling inside the U.N. itself, not from outside oversight. We have been here before.

(emphasis mine)

I left a comment for one of the participants-

Ashok Nayak, you must be joking. All the art shows and rock concerts in the world, even if under the blessing of some holy man, will not do one whit to reduce poverty.

When it comes to reducing poverty, only one thing has shown to work- free markets(a.k.a capitalism). Strangely, the art world elites are mostly hostile to this solution.

Originally posted at -What the heck is art?

"There's something sick about, about our culture when we don't acknowledge genuine heroes"

As if to confirm what I said in the last post, Bill Kristol-

I think there's something about this wonderfully moving narrative about Al Gore that Juan(Williams) likes to compare to Mother Teresa. I haven't noticed Al Gore taking a vow of poverty recently. You know, there's something sick really about taking the whole thing seriously. The day before the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, President Bush signed off on the third Medal, Congressional Medal of Honor in the current global war on terror. The first for anyone who served in Afghanistan, for Navy seal Lt. Michael Murphy.

This got about one-one thousandth the coverage of the Nobel Peace Prize which as Charles says is an entirely political gesture. There are fewer Congressional Medals of Honor awarded than Nobel Peace Prizes. The New York Times, this is, Mike Murphy, the 29-year-old who died in 2005, from Long Island. The New York Times, the local newspaper for this genuine American hero, hasn't mentioned it. Huge stories, Al Gore, what a narrative, what sacrifices he's made to produce this movie and to become a multi-zillionaire as he makes himself so famous touting the cause of global warming.

Michael Murphy gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, and the New York Times, our leading newspaper and the local newspaper in this case, can't notice it. There's something sick about, about our culture when we don't acknowledge genuine heroes, and, as I say, give a prize, make such a big deal about some guy who's made a movie.

(emphasis mine)

Read the whole thing.

Oh, by the did I mention that Bill Kristol is considered a neocon. You won't be hearing much from him in our MSM.

Diversity of opinion, my foot!

There is a solid, immovable fog of group-think pervasive in the hallowed portals of the society elites all over the world-on Iraq,on globalisation,on America,on UN,on environment,on AIDS, on foreign aid...you get the picture.The vast swathes of 'liberal', 'bien-pensant' media is deeply committed almost unselfconsciously to this.

The New York Times is a paragon of such media. As is the BBC-

It's the fact that its output, including its journalism, is politically as bent as a corkscrew.

As its own impartiality review concluded earlier this year, the BBC operates in a "Leftleaning comfort zone" and has an "innate liberal bias", dictating what issues it chooses to cover and how it does so.

It is institutionally and viscerally hostile to America, Israel, conservatism, big business, religion, the countryside and family values; it supports multiculturalism, environmentalism, European federalism, human rights law and 'alternative' lifestyles.

Worse still, it sees everything through the distorting prism of this "progressive" agenda.

As a result, it views its own Left-wing position as the centre ground, and anyone who disagrees is viewed as a Rightwing extremist.

Indeed, because by definition it cannot acknowledge its own innate bias, the BBC embodies a totally closed thought system.

At the core of all these problems lies one single cause.

The BBC has simply lost sight of the very reason why it exists in the first place. And that is due to a toxic combination of ideology and flawed analysis.

(source) (emphasis mine)

The group-think on some issues is so deeply entrenched that any dissent is considered heresy, the heretic to be excoriated viciously and his/her views not to be published or broadcast if one can help it or to be be heavily downplayed by presenting opposing viewpoints as more credible and mainstream.There are some opinions, viewpoints and facts that the public must be kept away from.

One can immediately think of the neoconservatives- the word 'neocon' has in the MSM become a vile word, standing for war-mongers, war-profiteers, baby-killers and whatnot. How many articles, op-eds, editorials and straight news reports one has read in which the neocons are sneered at and derided? One can find several such items in the media daily.Yet, what does one know of the views of the neocons? What do they believe or say actually? Where are their views in the media? Why don't we hear their point of view in the MSM?
Why not?
WHY NOT?
Any good reason why the public should be kept from hearing their(the neocon's) opinions?

If neocons are really bad, Bush is the arch-villain, the Sauron for the MSM. The newspaper I get, the Hindustan Times, cannot stand Bush. Bush-bashing is a favorite sport among the media elite, where the Vir Sanghvis and the Barkha Dutts of this world can garner automatic approbation by sneering at Bush and calling him stupid.

We only know them(Bush and the neocons) through the various filters and layers of the media, that same media that hates them passionately.

But in an unbiased and objective media, shouldn't those who agree with Bush(on some or most of the issues) should get to air their views too?
So where are they?

Paraphrasing Judah BenHur who demanded menancingly of the Roman Messala in the movie Benhur-
MR.SANGHVI, WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE ARE THEY?

Diversity of opinion, my foot!
As you write another Bush bashing editorial, aren't you ashamed of shutting out points of view that you loathe? If not, why not?


Note -No, I am not a neocon or a Bush supporter. I agree with some of their views and disagree with the others. But unlike our 'unbiased' jounalists, I do believe that they hold legitimate opinions which need to be aired more widely in the public rather than shielding the masses from their 'extreme' views.

Fisking an Indian fan of Fisk

Funny that a day after I mention 'fisking', Tim Blair brings to notice an Indian columnist in awe of the great Fisk. That lost soul is Mukul Kesevan. Mr. Kesevan also goes for the jugular of the bloggers-

But, on the whole, blogging produces derivative and self-indulgent writing.

But when it comes to Fisk, he goes weak-kneed and is all coochie-coo -

It’s ironic that ‘fisking’, the blogger’s verb for aggressive or hostile fact-checking, is named after Robert Fisk, Britain’s most distinguished foreign correspondent, who has lived in and reported from the Middle East for the past quarter of a century. His trenchant critique of Anglo-American foreign policy has made him a byword for bias amongst right-wing bloggers. That a great journalist who has survived danger and risked death to live in the region he reports from, whose reportage has made him the doyen of Middle-Eastern reporting, should become the blogosphere’s measure of unreliability, tells us something about the frictionless sterility of the blogger’s online world.

Aggressive or hostile fact-checking? Perhaps or perhaps not, depends on the concerned blogger. A more universal definition is-

The term Fisking, or to Fisk, is a blogosphere term describing ruthlessly detailed point-by-point criticism that highlights errors, disputes the analysis of presented facts, or highlights other problems in a statement, article, or essay.

So, aggression is not a defining characteristic of 'Fisking' unless Mukul Kesevan thinks that any fact-checking of his favorites is inherently 'hostile and aggressive'. But I do understand. Some people don't take it well when their opinions and biases are questioned. Could it be that the fact-checking bloggers who keep MSM lazybones on toes can get on the nerves of the old-media journalists? Mr. Kesevan himself seems to think so-

Any error of fact, however small, made by me on my cricket blog is snouted up in a matter of hours, if not sooner. Bloggers learn to get their facts right because their peers and their readers are so unforgiving. Newspaper columnists used to get away with much more than they do now because there’s an army of unpaid fact-checkers cruising online who see it as their life’s work to ‘fisk’ sloppy opinion or reportage.

(Surprise! Mr.Kesevan is himself a blogger! If he needs regular fact-checking, as his comment seems to suggest, then I believe his old-media, sloppy Mr.Hyde dominates his blogging Mr. Jekyll)

One admires those one seeks to emulate. If true, then Mr.Kesevan is yet to reach the heights of his hero, the great Fisk who is on a different plane altogether.

Efraim Karsh points out the dubious quality of wisdom and facts emanating from the brain of the holy man -

It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation (Fisk's book) without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921, and both he and his younger brother, King Faisal I of Iraq, hailed not from a “Gulf tribe” but rather from the Hashemites on the other side of the Arabian peninsula. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein’s rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was minister of defense, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth.

(via Tim)

Fisk is now scaling even greater heights. Now he joins the extreme lunatic fringe in believing that Bush bombed the twin towers on 9/11.

Captain Ed takes down that over-inflated balloon with ease-

This puzzles me, because Robert Fisk claims to be a journalist, and one would expect a journalist to understand how to conduct research. Let's see if we can help Mr. Fisk with his questions, which unfortunately get spread throughout a paranoid harangue.

Then he goes on to demolish Fisk with incisive logic that is perhaps lost on those who wallow in the muck of hackery and mediocrity that is the mainstream media(MSM). Read the whole thing to savor and to realize just what Mukul Kesevan's hero is made up of.
Captain's conclusion-

Really, given the international stature of Mr. Fisk, it's hard to believe that he really could be this lazy. Perhaps he's just terribly unintelligent. Fortunately, the journalists and engineers at Popular Mechanics are neither, and their work speaks for itself, with real engineers and eyewitness testimony to answer everyone but the ravers and the conspiracy nuts ... and Mr. Fisk.

But Mr. Kesevan is a mere cricket writer, even if in the privileged and highly-paid world of the MSM. It is perhaps too much to expect him to comprehend that Fisk is an apologist for radical Islamists, terrorists, genocidal dictators, and a conspiracy nut!

But on the other hand, who am I but a mere right-wing blogger(if you consider libertarian as right wing)? Oh wait, I forgot- an aggressive and hostile right-wing blogger. So here goes-
Grrr, bow bow, grrr, snarl, bite, grrrrrrr!!!!!



More fisking of Fisk here.

(all emphasis mine)

Bump -Mukul Kesevan is actually spelt Mukul Kesavan.

Socialism -will it work on the moon?

The socialist utopia could never be achieved on Earth -not even with the bloodletting of millions in Soviet Russia, the communist China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea(and let's not even mention Pol Pot).
Even the peace loving collectivists(a rare breed indeed) of kibbutz have given up.

But will socialism work on the moon. Some people seem to think so-

For space scientists congregating at Hyderabad, it looks like we will have a colony up there soon. Space experts are mulling road maps on infrastructure comprising a communication network, including internet, a greenhouse, fuel production plants, and aspects of ethics and governance for human settlements on Moon, Mars and beyond.
-----------------------------------------------
Earlier, at a meet on Strategies to establish Lunar and Mars colonies, William Marshall of NASA spoke of lunar governance. He is for a ban on military bases and deployment of weapons in space and advocated against property rights over lunar land.

Can human settlements without property rights work out on the moon? It hasn't worked anywhere on this planet but when an expert from NASA says so, who am I to argue? CPM could then stand for the 'Communist Party of Moon', and of course they would be opposed to globalisation, er, I mean, planetisation. And no free trade between the earth and the moon -except with China

(emphasis mine)

Coining a new expression -"to Ahmenijad homos."

"Steve", a commentator at this debate is perhaps the first to coin this verb and expression-

.....trying to Ahmenijad homos out of existence.

Could this make it big like 'fisking'? It sure deserves to, especially after Ahmadinejad declared that there are no homosexuals in Iran-

In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that like in your country. … In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.

Where have they all gone? Could this be the answer-

When Ahmadinejad told Columbia today that Iran doesn’t have homosexuals, he meant that the theocracy has done its level best to cleanse Iran of gays and lesbians. He also means that they’ll get rid of any more they find.

Or this-

Two gay Iranian teenagers -- one 18, the other believed
to be 16 or 17, were executed the "crime" of homosexuality

Or this-

The Iranian government is executing gay and bisexual men under the cover of rape and kidnapping charges, according to a major new investigation by Simon Forbes of the UK-based gay and lesbian human rights group OutRage!

Mr Forbes’s nine-month investigation, published today by OutRage!, is based on information gathered from sources inside Iran. His research reveals:

- Lynchings by Iran’s security forces, and ‘honour killings’ by families in the south western province of Khuzestan

-Secret hangings in prison

- The method of hanging is designed to cause slow, agonising strangulation

- Internet entrapment of gay Iranians using foreign-based online gay dating agencies

- A pattern of framing gay people on charges of kidnap, rape and paedophilia, as the following five sample cases suggest:
- The Gorgan case where two men were publicly hanged for Lavaat (sodomy) in November 2005

- Details of the Kermanshah case where three men were hanged in prison in November 2005 for sodomy that was alleged to have taken the form of the kidnap and rape of a younger male

- The Arak case of two men sentenced to death for sodomy in August 2005, which also involved the alleged kidnap and rape of a younger male, the son of an officer

- Two cases of public execution for sodomy in Mashhad in December 2004 and July 2005 that involved suspiciously similar charges

- Claims of rape are sometimes made to save the family’s honour or to save the passive partner from execution, and are part of an Iranian government propaganda offensive to scapegoat and demonise gay people

- Comparisons with Saudi Arabia, where it is also suggested that bogus rape charges are levelled against gay men

- Hypocrisy of the mullah’s attitudes towards the abuse of young girls, the rape of both males and females in custody, and widespread sodomy in religious colleges

Now, a few good questions-
1) If Uncle Ahmenida--dina--ja--dad--whatever can lie about this, then can we trust him about his nuclear intentions?
2) He is a religious fundamentalist, a theocrat, head of a regime that imprisons and hang gays, oppresses women -so why do the leftists support him?

Let a non-leftist gay answer-

I must say it is still shocking to me that the American Gay Left views President Bush of more of an enemy to gays than Islamic fundamentalists who want to destroy Western Civilization with gays as the first in their crosshairs. Maybe American gay activists are so upset that Christianity is the foundation of America that they are willing to take their chances with Islamic rule? How tolerant, no? What it really makes me think is this: Choosing Islam over America in the War on Terror is the ultimate in being a gay who is self-loathing.

hat tip-Stop the ACLU

Note -that debate I referred is an extremely interesting one. The first salvo is here.

(emphasis mine)

Update -a very disturbing picture and account here.

LNC Wedneday round up

Al Gore, keep away from Ugandan police!

The evil has landed.


Tim Blair-

The SMH’s Adele Horin, 2001:

More than a year after France legislated a 35-hour week, the economy is flourishing, unemployment is falling, consumer confidence has hit a historic high and most French say their lifestyle has improved.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, 2007:

I am at the head of a state that is in a position of bankruptcy.
I am at the head of a state that for 15 years has been in chronic deficit. I am at the head of a state that has not once passed a balanced budget in 25 years. This can’t go on.

Wishing for a mushroom cloud over Israel.


A view on inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Colombia University-

Yet the real issue is not about words but actions - actions with consequences in an ongoing conflict in which American soldiers are being killed and Iranian dissidents are being beaten and tortured every day. And what Bollinger's actions (as opposed to his words) reveal is that Columbia somehow considers itself neutral ground in the War on Terror.

Tavleen Singh-

Is there really hope if, despite having the worst infrastructure in the world, we can argue over mythical bridges and mythical gods? Is there hope if the Union law minister needs to say, “The government admits its mistakes and wants to remove any doubt whatever that it does not believe in the existence of Ram. The existence of Ram cannot be doubted. As Himalaya is Himalaya, Ganga is Ganga, Ram is Ram. Ram is an integral part of our ethos and cannot be alienated from our hearts.”

The honchos of the Hindustan Times fail to take their own paper seriously.

Scary stuff in the Hindustan Times from Ban The Moon-

Just a few days ago, scientists in the United States reported that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than ever thought possible. By their calculations, 40 per cent of the summer ice covering the Arctic sea will be gone by 2050. Earlier studies had predicted that this wouldn’t happen for another century.

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

What we do not have is time. Travelling in Chad recently, I saw first hand the humanitarian toll of climate change. An estimated 20 million people depend on a lake and river system that has shrunk to a tenth of its original size over the past 30 years. In Africa right now, the worst rains in memory are washing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. These are signs of what is to come. The problems our generation faces will be worse for our children, particularly if we do not act.

Yet the newspaper fails to take the threat seriously. It is giving away a car everyday, adding more greenhouse gases to our overloaded atmosphere.




So when the food begins to run out (don't they read their own paper?)-

Climate change is likely to trigger a "risk of hunger" in India by affecting cereal production by as much as 18 per cent because of floods and droughts, a UN agency has warned.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said India could lose as much as 125 million tonnes of its rainfed cereal production.

then can we whack the top honchos at HT for contributing to the starvation?

Can't they give away bicycles?

Sunday round up

Girls in bikinis will save the world.
In your dreams!-ed

Is the mainstream media uninterested in radical Islamists in America?
Is this even worth asking?-ed

Belgian police brutalises peaceful demonstrators from a group called Stop the Islamization of Europe, including a member of the European parliament.(video here)

Indian government appeasing religious obscurantists once again.
So what is new? It's a habit -ed

Environmentalists and scientists misleading Americans about air pollution and climate change

My manhood is bigger than yours.

What has Putin been running on -high octane testosterone?

No sooner is Putin back in the Kremlin than he sends Russian bombers over European air space, and British pilots scramble to see them off. Better that, I suppose, than murdering exiles like Alexander Litvinenko in London, and then covering up for the suspect wanted by Scotland Yard – that whole case has gone into abeyance. And the next step was to test out the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever manufactured, one that wipes out all life in an area of several square miles. That should impress the unfortunate Chechens, Georgians, Moldavians, Estonians, Ukrainians, and others for whom Putin is duly flexing those biceps and pectorals. At the same time, they have just launched a super-submarine, nuclear-powered and capable of staying submerged for twenty days. More impressive still, he’s just sold the latest anti-aircraft defence system to Iran.

About that Russian bomb-

RUSSIA has tested the world's most powerful "vacuum bomb", which unleashes a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast, the military said, dubbing it the "father of all bombs".

The bomb is the latest in a series of new Russian weapons as president Vladimir Putin tries to reassert Moscow's role on the international stage.

"Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon," Alexander Rukshin, Russia's deputy armed forces chief of staff, told Russia's state ORT First Channel television.

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

The report said the new bomb was much stronger than the US-built Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb - MOAB, also known as "mother of all bombs". "So, Russian designers called the new weapon 'father of all bombs'."

But there is a bigger d*** in town-

The U.S. has a 14-ton super bomb more destructive than the vacuum bomb just tested by Russia, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

The statement was made by retired Lt. General McInerney, chairman of the Iran Policy Committee, and former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

McInerney said the U.S. has "a new massive ordnance penetrator that's 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates ... Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can't penetrate."

He also said the new Russian bomb was not a "penetrator."

(via Ed Morissey. See below)


Ed Morissey points out-

I think this is a slap at Russian manhood, actually. It's the military equivalent of accusing someone of premature ejaculation. You explode on the surface, Ivan? Real superpowers go deep before explosion. Georgia laughs at you, comrade. Maybe Vladimir Putin should pay more attention to e-mail spam.

But then again, the Russian excitement over developing a fuel-air bomb seemed a little overblown, anyway. They only have one bomber that could actually deploy it, and unless one wants to flatten entire villages, it has few real applications. That kind of strategy ended in Vietnam, and even the Soviets didn't use those kinds of tactics in Afghanistan. The "daisy cutter" that the US uses has more flexibility and better tactical application. Unless the point is to penetrate into bunkers below the surface or to do some instant ethnic cleansing, it's literally overkill.

The Russians have relearned a lesson they forgot since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its better to wait on bragging until one is sure that the opponent has not already beaten one to the finish line. It saves on humiliation later.

(emphasis mine)

The Dark Ages are making a comeback

At some future date, when India is a Hindu nation, and a large part of the world beyond may have come under the domination of that long pined for caliphate,

when the freedoms won over the struggle of centuries have been lost,

when the inconvenient parts of the history have been rewritten and whitewashed

by those believing in a primeval ideology,

when even groveling appeasement of Europe has failed

and despite it's professed hatred of America, Europe is taught a severe lesson

and the it's chattering classes and gutless intellectuals have been silenced(their America bashing will not save them) (not even the pope will be safe)

and apostates have been dealt with with.....

.....with some violence

in fact more than some,

lots more likely,

really lots,

then I fear the worst might happen -all over again.

Prepare for the religious wars of the 21st century. The Dark Ages are making a comeback.


Image sources (numbered according to the sequence they appear) -1, 2, 5 , 9 and 12, 3 and 8, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13
Cannot find the source for 6.

Bad luck, I am still alive!

The trouble with blogging is that reality intrudes. One has to go off and do something to make a living. Gotta eat, you know. God made us like that. Maybe that is why I don't believe in Him!

But, hey, it took me a while but I'm baaaack! Thanks to the couple of people who emailed to ask me if I was well.Bad luck guys, I am still alive.

This is one among other things I have been doing -sketching nudes:



Lucky me!

Crossposted at What the heck is art?