An interesting post at the Retributions blog referencing an article by Salil Tripathi -

It might be reasonable and indeed necessary to emphasise human rights. It could also persuasively be argued that India needs more human rights activism. Yet the pursuit of a single goal disregarding all else, including concern for due process and fairness, is fraught with danger. For it relies too much on inherent moral standing of those who have attached themselves to the cause of human rights virtually assuming that they are guided by no other consideration save for a deep belief in their cause. It is particularly worrisome because their message is ostensibly guided by a sense of moral uprightness—a claim human rights activists are quick to make and underlies their basic advantage vis-à-vis the state. And because the message is so inextricably linked with the credibility of the messenger, even the slightest blemish damages the worthy cause of human rights. Ms Setalvad’s alleged improper behaviour falls squarely in this bracket as it strengthens of the hands of her detractors, who, suspicious of Ms Setalvad and her ilk, become dismissive of human rights itself

In a different but similar(no, it's not a paradox) context Melanie Philips says-

It is time now for all decent people of goodwill everywhere to boycott NGOs like Amnesty, War on Want and all the others who are pushing these obscene lies and libels about Israel. No decent person should have anything to do with these organisations. No-one should give money to these inciters of hatred and purveyors of lies. They have sided with the forces of genocide and Islamic fascism against the Jewish people, truth and conscience. They have become a force for evil in the world.

(emphasis mine)

Leftist first, gay later

Gay rights groups in the West have a double standard-

Gay rights advocates make a huge issue of Christian opposition to gay marriage, while remaining indifferent to the Islamic jihad -- or, if they care about the jihad, many are still willing to throw overboard allies who may not be in lockstep with their social agenda. The fact that the Islamic jihadists, once in power, will treat gays far more harshly than Christian conservatives ever dreamed of doing doesn't seem to enter into their calculations.

As with feminists who have abandoned their suffering sisters in the muslim world, they are leftist first, gay later

Indian students in Australia victims as well as participants in scams.
(via Andrew Bolt)

Times of India, your website is killing the planet!

Those publications and media organizations that tom-tom their greenness, like the Times of India and NDTV, could have a dilemma(if they are honest to their principles) on their hand -

Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article.

Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more.

This may not seem like a lot: "But in aggregate, if you consider all the people visiting a web site and then all the seconds that each of them spends on it, it turns out to be a large number," says Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University who studies the environmental impact of computing.

Wissner-Gross estimates every second someone spends browsing a simple web site generates roughly 20 milligrams of C02. Whether downloading a song, sending an email or streaming a video, almost every single activity that takes place in the virtual environment has an impact on the real one.

Will these preachy media entities now shut down their websites to save the planet? If not then can we consider them green hypocrites, like Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri?

Update- Times of India now claims that it "has emerged
as the world's No.1 English newspaper website in terms of page views"
TOI also regularly publishes apocalyptic editorials and articles about Global Warming. In view of the new research above, they are now among top climate criminals among the media.
I ask them to either stop preaching to us unwashed masses or start practicing what they preach. Times of  India, shut down your site at once -it is killing the planet! Or else shut the f*** up about climate change.

Obama is a person of infantile intellect -we know that almost every time he opens his mouth. Yuval Levin fisks his ideas on remaking the American healthcare.

Notice that a constant running through his ideas on most issues is this -Big Government is the solution.

Hope and change, isn't it?

"Is NYT Encouraging Old Folks to Give up and Die to Help Pay for Obamacare?"
Anything for Obama -that is media's motto.

Al Gore, like every other saint of the Global Warming religion, doesn't practice what he preaches-

Al Gore working on 3 giant monitors -perhaps a unique way of conserving energy unbeknownst to the rest of us

Update - notice that a large screen television is also on

When the UN gets seriously involved in something the results are usually depressing.In Sudan they are tragic as well-

So the UN set out to work. The Lou Nuer tribe was targeted for disarmament first, but the SPLA pillaged the tribe’s cattle in the process, while neglecting its need for security against its tribal rivals. The Lou Nuer tribe formed its own army and attacked the SPLA. It was eventually defeated, at the cost of over 2,000 lives.
  ...................................
...an incompetent, corrupt, or criminal administration, with an equally malign army, is being cheered on by the UN as it tries to carry out a process of civilian disarmament

More tragedy awaits-

the UN, pleased with how well its approach has worked in southern Sudan, is eager to take its act worldwide

Mark steyn says that  "Environmentalism seeks to return us to the age of kings"

I always enjoy it when the masks slip and the warm-mongers explicitly demand we adopt a massive Poverty Expansion Program to save the planet. “I don’t think a lot of electricity is a good thing,” said Gar Smith of San Francisco’s Earth Island Institute a few years back. “I have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity,” he continued, regretting that African peasants “who used to spend their days and evenings in the streets playing music on their own instruments and sewing clothing for their neighbors on foot-pedal powered sewing machines” are now slumped in front of Desperate Housewives reruns all day long.

(emphasis mine)

Obama has a whole repertoire of dishonest rhetorical tricks.A piece in WSJ flags one of them-

A rhetorical gong Mr. Obama has been banging a lot lately is the idea that the people pointing all this out are liars. "When you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care," he said in one speech, "know this: They're not telling the truth." He adds that opposition to a public option isn't "based on any evidence" and that it is "illegitimate" to argue that his program is "is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system."

So much for changing the political tone.

Nailing Paul Krugman

The best description(and not just physical) of Paul Krugman ever-

the bearded boob

Nailing Obama

I think Ed Lasky puts his finger on the nature of the scorpio very well. It is worth reproducing in full(sorry, Ed)-

Is there a pattern emerging, given the Cap and Trade bill recently passed at Obama's urging?

Indeed there is.

His apology tour for past American "sins" (all occurring before his reign, he explains) was not enough for Obama to cleanse our collective historical record. He wants to go beyond being the redeemer. He wants to be the rectifier. The military has been complicit in war crimes, so we should gut the military so as to minimize the risk of similar "crimes" in the future. Has America,as the great industrial power, used its might to pollute the earth? Gut American industry with taxes, regulations, and cap and trade (which will empower our competitors and reduce America to a second-rate, if we are lucky, industrial power).

All the better that our American-based multinationals will have less power to wreak havoc on the lesser developed world. Have we played a "bad role" on the international stage? Well, we are walking back from supporting our allies (Columbia, Great Britain, Georgia, Israel) since our power is always a temptation to use, and every time we use it (in Obama's fevered imagination) we harm the world. So we will weaken our allies by minimizing our support for them and rectify our past actions (see especially Iran and Israel). Since America played a role in a coup in Iran over 50 years ago, we must rectify our sin by stepping back from "meddling" in Iran.

We opposed Hugo Chavez in the past. We must rectify that by shifting to the opposite tack and implicitly support him and his allies in the region (think Honduras).

To Obama, the mere existence of American strength - be it diplomatic, economic, military - is a sin because it leads us to exercise such power. Every time we exercise such power we bring about harm. He must not only apologize (and be the redeemer) but turn back the clock by "undoing" the harm. He wants to make history right - by undoing history.

As Obama wants to level Americans by engineering a massive transfer of wealth (remember the "spread the wealth" gaffe during the campaign) so also he wants to level America to the status of any other nation in the world. This is reflected in his reliance on the standards of the ‘international community" and his increasing emphasis on abiding by the rulings and directions of the United Nations rather than focusing on supporting American interests abroad.

These are the lessons, the education, he learned at Columbia, at Harvard, and in the pews of his finishing school ‘Trinity United Church of Christ" from his American-hating mentor and moral compass, Jeremiah Wright, Junior- a man who based his sermons on the evil that America has always practiced in every sphere where it exercises any national power.

Obama, redeemer of America's sins. Our modern day Christ figure-but without the personal and redemptive suffering. That is what he has in store for the rest of us. And for America.

Who wants to share a latrine with a dozen half-witted goatherds?

Mark Steyn in top form -

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.

Read the whole bloody marvelous article.

Obama fails Obama

Obama's huge stimulus(or rather porkulus) is failing by his own judgment-

That's nearly a trillion dollars down the drain!
More here.

British Council -Milking taxpayers for the green lobby

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.

regards,
gurmeet
Liberty News Central

Never trust a media person, always verify

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.

(emphasis mine)

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.

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

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)