Amaresh Mishra -a case of intellectual rottenness

(Update - audio of an interview with Amaresh Mishra by ABN.)

Till recently I did not know very much about Amaresh Mishra but that he had written a book that appeared to be of dubious merit and dodgy scholarship. I briefly touched on it in an earlier post- Amaresh Mishra opens my third eye and piques my sixth sense. I have not read the book(or his other books) -only about the book -so I reserved my more substantial judgment on Mr. Mishra's intellectual outpourings.

Now it seems that that dodginess runs deep indeed -deep into the dark recesses of conspiracy theories. He suffers from the same strain of kookiness that Union Minority Affairs Minister A R Antulay does. Here is Mr. Mishra's searchlight of an intellect throwing light on the Mumbai terrorist attacks-

Mumbai is under attack. People and forces who killed Mahatama Gandhi, who demolished the Babari Mosque have triumphed. More than 16 groups of terrorists have taken over Taj, Oberai and several hotels. Hundreds of people are dead. For the first time no one is blaming Muslim organizations. The Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare and other officers of the ATS have been killed. These were the same people who were investigating the Malegaon Blasts - in which Praggya Singh, an army officer and several other noted personalities of the BJP-RSS-Bajrang Dal-VHP were arrested. Karkare was the man to arrest them. Karkare was receiving threats from several quarters. LK Advani, the BJP chief and several other prominent leaders of the so-called Hindu terrorism squad were gunning for his head. And the first casualty in the terrorist attack was Karkare! He is dead - gone - the firing by terrorists began from Nariman House - which is the only building in Mumbai inhabited by Jews. Some Hindu Gujaratis of the Nariman area spoke live on several TV channels - they openly said that the firing by terrorists began from Nariman house. And that for two years suspicious activities were going on in this house. But no one took notice.

Our worst fears have come true. It is clear that Mossad is involved in the whole affair. An entire city has been attacked by Mossad and probably units of mercenaries.
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RSS type forces and Israel are all involved in not only destabilizing but finishing India. India should immediately snap all relations with Israel. We owe this much to Karkare and the brave ATS men who had shown the courage to arrest Praggya Singh, Raj Kumar Purohit, the army officer and several others.

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This is a moment of reckoning especially for Hindus of India. The killers of Gandhi have struck again. If we are true Sanatanis and true Hindus and true nationalists and true patriots we have to see this act as a clear attack by anti-national deshdrohi forces. Praggya Singh, Advani and the entire brand is anti-national. They ought to be shot. Any Hindu siding with them is hereafter warned of serious consequences.

This is a question of nationalism. If no one else, the Indian army will not take this lying down. Communal, anti-national forces have attacked the very foundation of the Indian constitution and the nation. We will fight a civil war if need be against the pro-Hindutva, communal forces and their Israeli backers.

He belongs to that overflowing breed of intellectual/media/pundit/academic class that sees Mossad and CIA (or America and Israel) as the fountainhead of most evil in the world.Kookiness is not an aberration in this circle but a feature.This class will loathe Bush for 'torture' and then go smooch a murderous leftist and/or anti-American dictator(Castro, Chavez, Saddam, Ahmedinajad).

It appears that Amaresh Misra is a gentleman too-

The Citizens for Justice and Peace had hosted a meeting at the St. Xaviers College Hall to condemn the horrific terror attacks and to outline an action plan for youth and citizens. All of us were gathered there, scattered in the quadrangle and the hall. Swami Agnivesh and Mufti Fuzail Ul Rahman Hilal Usmani, our special guests, were also present having been escorted by my husband and colleague, Javed Anand. Suddenly Mr Amaresh Mishra arrived on the scene and first started using abusive language against M Rajdeep Sardesai, editor in chief of CNN-IBN at which point his mother Smt Nandini Sardesai also intervened. He then started haranguing Swami Agnivesh our guest, "warning" him on how he should speak related to the recent terror attacks in Mumbai! He soon turned to abusing both Mr Javed Anand and journalist Sajjid Rashid in offensive and unprintable language. In fact our daughter hurried to me at this point thinking that her father, Javed Anand was about to be assaulted. One of the over dozen witnesses, Shahbaz Khan intervened at this point and escorted Mr Amaresh Mishra out of the college.

Sir, there were many witnesses present that day, December 4, 2008 when Mr. Mishra in fact did his best to disrupt our meeting and abuse Mr.Rajdeep Sardesai, Mr. Javed Anand and others. I believe he did this because he is threatened by the scope and reach of our activities and
especially the role of MSD in drawing the Muslim community into Civic, Secular Democratic issues breaking the manipulative stereotypes perpetrated by the Hindu right wing -- the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and the VHP among many other organizations -- against the entire community. Specifically, I believe that Mr Amaresh Mishra was out to discredit the courage and initiative shown by both Mr Javed Anand and myself in suggesting to Indian Muslims all over the country to demonstrate in one voice against the enemies of India and the forces of terror following the recent attacks on Mumbai on November 26, 2008.
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There are more falsehoods, Sir, in Mr Mishra's claims. He mentions three respected members of the Muslim clergy who he says also condemned M Javed Anand for "ostensibly attacking Mr Mishra (sic)". One of the three respected persons Maulana Mustaqeen Azmi specifically spoke to me, categorically refuting Mr Mishra's claim that he had issued any such statement of condemnation. Finally, Mr Mishra ends his diatribe stating that he spoke to some persons that include Mr Javed Akhtar, Ms Shabana Azmi and me, Ms Teesta Setalvad about the incident. This is an absolute lie. He did not speak to either of us and has not for some time.

The above was written by Teesta Setalvad as a response to an article in the Rashtriya Sahara Urdu, Mumbai edition, in which Mr.Mishra's scholarship on the Mumbai attacks scorches the newsprint. In fact Mr. Mishra is on a scorching spree-

A group of Muslim leaders on Wednesday decided to float a political party in Maharashtra, just in time to contest the Lok Sabha and
assembly elections.

Senior cleric Maulana Badruddin Ajmal will lead the front, which will be launched in 40 days. The name proposed for the new party is Maharashtra United Democratic Front.
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The cleric-led front has appointed journalist-historian Amresh Mishra, a known Sangh Parivar-baiter, as its spokesperson. Explaining the reasons why a Muslim-based party was the hour's need, Misra said that the Congress "lost the confidence'' of the community years ago.

Here is Mr. Mishra's new boss fighting for freedom of speech, dissent and freedom-

Maulana Ajmal demands extradition of Taslima Nasrin

President of Assam United Democratic Front, Maulana Badruddin Ajmal demanded extradition of Taslima Nasrin in a letter written to the Prime Minster Mr. Manmohan Singh.

Blaming both left and right wing of Indian political scene of using Nasrin as political gimmick, he requested the prime minster to extradite her from India. ---------------------------------------------------------------
“It will undoubtedly be a wise decision on behalf of seventeen crore Muslims in India,” said Maulana in the letter. He added that “no mainstream Muslim or Muslim organization favours her stay in our country” blaming her for her insults on Prophet of Islam and Islamic doctrines.

(Note -it seems that either the reporter who wrote the above or Maulana Badruddin Ajmal or both are confused about the meaning of 'extradition'. I suppose they mean 'expulsion'.)

But hey who are we plebeians to quibble?
Aren't we told that Amaresh Mishra is a renowned historian? I am glad we were enlightened or we might have come to the conclusion that he is a conspiracy mongering lout.

(emphasis mine)

Professors that hate

The Blogger at the Venerable Beads has an excellent post on the postmodern rot that runs through modern academics.It's well worth reading in whole but this is a gem-

The excesses of postmodern gibberish in academic writing have been well and truly exposed and surely need no further attention, you may say.
To which I would reply: as Zed Books proudly show us, the exposure has certainly not been sufficient to kill the excesses exposed. Those responsible continue to reap the rewards of their squalid assault on reason, in salaries, influence and tenure, and the rest of us continue to reap the harvest of their brainwashing each new generation. Year on year a new crop emerges from the universities, parroting the same jargon and attitudes, untouched by self-awareness, irony or any real sense of just how many people hate them.

As is this-

Take the ICA for instance. That's the Institute of Contemporary Arts, if you're lucky enough not to know, still another of those cultivatedly bland names that seems to promise nothing creepier than a forum for the mindless show-offs of the current art scene to show videos of themselves pissing to easily-impressed trendies so dim that they genuinely couldn't come up with such things themselves

Read the whole thing.

(Via Melanie Phillips)

Climate "Scientists"- The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

Climate "science" seems to have tipped over into the limbo of postmodern relativism. More the facts defy it's predictions, more hysterically alarming the warnings of coming of doom become. Reminds me of the 70's movie-"The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight"

Now Andrew Bolt has The 10 worst warming predictions.

They include "GIANT HAILSTONES WILL SMASH THROUGH YOUR ROOF ", "ISLANDS WILL DROWN" and "GOODBYE, NORTH POLE".

Bolt's post has such gems as-

(The British Met Office) has so far predicted 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2007 would be the world’s hottest or second-hottest year on record, but nine of the past 10 years it predicted temperatures too high.
In fact, the Met this month conceded 2008 would be the coldest year this century.

That makes 1998 still the hottest year on record since the Medieval Warm Period some 1000 years ago. Indeed, temperatures have slowly fallen since around 2002.

As Roger Pielke Sr, Professor Emeritus of Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science, declared this month: “Global warming has stopped for the last few years.”

Lesson: Something is wrong with warming models that predict warming in a cooling world, especially when we’re each year pumping out even more greenhouse gases. Be sceptical.

Read the whole thing.

(emphasis mine)

From the LNC Quote Shop

Climate resistance-

We’ve often wondered what the difference between the Government and the environmental protest movement is. Who are the establishment, and who are the revolutionaries? They often seem to be saying exactly the same thing. Neither can claim that their actions represent the will of the general public – most people still want to fly, use cars, and so on. But both are committed to preventing people from expressing this desire. Both use the prospect of catastrophe to justify their self-importance, even though there is virtually no scientific argument that catastrophe is a possibility.

Ice is melting, the world is ending -and Gore is making a lot of money

Hardly a day goes by when some report or 'expert' or the other doesn't try to scare the wits out of us plebeians.

The Arctic is melting!
The Maldives are sinking!
New York and Bombay will go into sea in a few years(or is it next month?)!

Remember Gore's 20 foot wall of water"inundating the world’s coastal cities in his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth?"

Remember the (il)liberal Hollywood doing it's bit on inflicting psychological damage on impressionable youngsters by putting out dumb and "breathtakingly paranoid" films like The day after tomorrow ?



Fortunately the disease of Global warming alarmism has a simple and free antidote -just facts.

Here are some-

Global Sea Ice Trend Since 1979 - surprising

Obviously people cannot make the claim that sea ice is being lost. It isn’t. The data shows that our trend is basically flat during this time of unprecedented temperatures. It’s clear that there has been no significant change in sea ice area.

This is almost enough to make me turn in my Skeptic union card, but increased CO2 warming the earth makes some sense to me, the magnitude is in question. The fact that polar sea ice not melting is not an insignificant point. It is also important to realize that the changes are too small to fit with IPCC statements about the trend. Unlike trees, ice does make a good thermometer. I can’t say this strongly enough— This is a strong indication of substantial errors in the computer models and temperature data which needs to be addressed before we throw what’s left of our global economy to the wind. How would Earth’s total sea ice ignore such substantial warming? It’s a good question which deserves an answer.

More facts now(this time from Learning is Fun school of thought).Tom Moriarty has an "easy quiz"-

Here are five false color images of the sea ice in the arctic. The images represent the ice on five year intervals on July 18th of 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008. Your task is to use your knowledge of changing conditions in the Arctic to put them in the proper chronological order.

He also spells out what the hacks running your morning newspaper or TV "news" channels don't-

The sea ice area in the Arctic has been monitored by satellite for almost 30 years, since 1979. The area of the ice rises and falls, as you would expect, as the year cycles through its seasons. It reaches its yearly minimum by late September or early October. On the average, this minimum has been declining for the last 30 years. After October the northern sea ice area increases until it reaches a maximum in late March or early April each year. The yearly cycle is huge. Typically, about 60% of the total sea ice area melts away as is goes from yearly maximum to the yearly minimum.

The 2007 melt season was very severe and the Arctic sea ice area anomaly reached its lowest level since satellite tracking began. But that low level was immediately followed by an unprecedented rise in sea ice area in the Arctic in the months following the 2007 summer melt season. The 2008 melt season was quite severe, but not as severe as the 2007 melt season. In order to go from the minimum ice extent of 2007 to zero ice in 2012, the Arctic sea ice extent minimum needs to drop an average of about 600,000 square kilometers per year. But the Arctic ended up with slightly more ice area (about 100,000 square kilometers more) after the 2008 melt season than after the 2007 melt season.

Don't you get the feeling that we are being had?
An old adage tells us to follow the money. While I don't believe that money is the chief cause of Global warming alarmism (they are philosophical and psychological), lets abide by the adage and see where it leads-

Al Gore's Inconvenient Loot

Former Vice President Al Gore has built a Green money-making machine capable of eventually generating billions of dollars for investors, including himself, but he set it up so that the average Joe can't afford to play on Gore's terms. And the US portion is headed up by a former Gore staffer and fund raiser who previously ran afoul of both the FEC and the DOJ, before Janet Reno jumped in and shut down an investigation during the Clinton years............can an individual who stands to make millions from Global Warming really be trusted as an honest broker on that topic?


The Media Ignore Al Gore's Planned Global Warming Profiteering

How is Gore trying to be a climate change profiteer? Essentially, he wants to make a fortune by creating a new market for a product that he is attempting to create by legislative fiat. If he succeeds and carbon emissions trading comes to the United States, Al Gore will be uniquely positioned to cash in. He's made sure of that.
Gore himself is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). He says the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are becoming environmentally-friendly, to use green parlance. GIM appears to have considerable influence over major carbon credit trading firms: the U.S.-based Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and the U.K.-based Carbon Neutral Company (CNC). CCX appears to be the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

As a politician, Gore speaks warmly of transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming. Little is known about his shadowy firm’s finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports.
As reported in the August 2007 issue of Foundation Watch ("Al Gore’s Carbon Crusade: The Money and Connections Behind It," by Deborah Corey Barnes), with help from friends at Goldman Sachs, including Hank Paulson, the investment bank’s former CEO who is now the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Gore has created a web of organizations to promote the so-called climate crisis.

Meanwhile, Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection is pushing for tougher environmental regulations on the private sector. It wants “cap-and-trade” legislation enacted so that companies will be forced to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and buy carbon credits. Untold billions of dollars could be generated in a brand new U.S. carbon market.

When Gore's potential for immense profits is factored in, the $300 million outlay for ads (some of which is likely to come from donations to the Alliance's "We Campaign") seems like a drop in the bucket.

If Gore can keep up the pressure for carbon emissions restrictions, he could end up a very wealthy man.

I suspect, in his own way, Pachauri is doing very well off the warming panic too.
(emphasis mine)