"Now I'll never know how it ends!" exclaimed the irate husband, driving through the tangle of traffic.
His wife remained silent as long as she could, but he went on and on. "I'm sorry I turned off the PC, ok?" she finally burst out.
"Sorry? But how does it end? I'll never know!"
She sat silent as he went on complaining about the unknown ending. At last, she could take it no longer, and screamed out: "It was just porn! Don't you know how porn ends?"
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
A Market for Western Exports
The American ambassador has been caught with his pants down by Wikileaks. He coerced the government of Bangladesh to give deals to Conoco Philips and Chevron; he also leaned on the government to buy Boeing.
As the credit crunch deepens in the first world, it will increasingly push deals in the third world: the economy has to move away from living off credit and importing goods, to saving and exporting. We can cheerfully expect ambassadors to be acting as Robert Clives.
The emerging economies, of course, have learned their lessons since 1998: never trust western capital. So who's going to borrow from the west, when its own consumers and firms would refuse to? You guessed it: flunkeys like us.
As the credit crunch deepens in the first world, it will increasingly push deals in the third world: the economy has to move away from living off credit and importing goods, to saving and exporting. We can cheerfully expect ambassadors to be acting as Robert Clives.
The emerging economies, of course, have learned their lessons since 1998: never trust western capital. So who's going to borrow from the west, when its own consumers and firms would refuse to? You guessed it: flunkeys like us.
Noble as a Savage
The tale of the Comanches: The battle for Texas | The Economist: "the Indians waged a campaign of terror against white settlers streaming into the brand-new Republic of Texas. Rapes and scalps were common.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
'...the merciless Indian savages...'
This is the description to be found in the American Declaration of Independence, one of the most absurd pieces of propaganda ever penned. The line quoted sits oddly with how the Declaration begins: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...." But some are more equal.
The description of the 'merciless Indian savages' goes on thus: '...whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.'
Can we blame the Indian? He was merely defending his home, his territory, his way of life.
Today, replace the word 'Indian' with 'Taliban' or 'Afghan' and you have the old struggle all over again. But there has been an intermediate struggle, where the word has been replaced by 'Palestinian'. Mike Huckabee said that America and Israel are alike in that both were founded by people “escaping the galloping terror of tyranny”. Let me correct that: they were "running towards the galloping terror of tyranny".
"As against the Bedouins, our pioneers are in a position not unlike the American settlers against the Indians." These were the words of Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to sit on the Supreme Court (1916 - 1939). Jews were not escaping from any tyranny when people like the learned judge vigorously championed Zionism: they were heading towards tyranny.
The Indian, the Bedouin, the Afghan...the list is continuous. These people are the 'savages'. I do not see how these people can commit any crimes in defending their lands and their way of life.
May we be noble as the savage!
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
'...the merciless Indian savages...'
This is the description to be found in the American Declaration of Independence, one of the most absurd pieces of propaganda ever penned. The line quoted sits oddly with how the Declaration begins: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...." But some are more equal.
The description of the 'merciless Indian savages' goes on thus: '...whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.'
Can we blame the Indian? He was merely defending his home, his territory, his way of life.
Today, replace the word 'Indian' with 'Taliban' or 'Afghan' and you have the old struggle all over again. But there has been an intermediate struggle, where the word has been replaced by 'Palestinian'. Mike Huckabee said that America and Israel are alike in that both were founded by people “escaping the galloping terror of tyranny”. Let me correct that: they were "running towards the galloping terror of tyranny".
"As against the Bedouins, our pioneers are in a position not unlike the American settlers against the Indians." These were the words of Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to sit on the Supreme Court (1916 - 1939). Jews were not escaping from any tyranny when people like the learned judge vigorously championed Zionism: they were heading towards tyranny.
The Indian, the Bedouin, the Afghan...the list is continuous. These people are the 'savages'. I do not see how these people can commit any crimes in defending their lands and their way of life.
May we be noble as the savage!
Friday, January 7, 2011
(Self-)Censorship in the USA
"Mr Pope had a plum job and respects the [Wall Street] Journal for being an honest newspaper. But all the same he had deep trouble with its editing criteria, especially regarding anything destined for its coveted front page. By means of omissions and headlines, editors, in his view, would turn out finished stories that were politically correct in the context of America’s pro-Israeli and anti-Islamist beliefs. The demand, particularly concerning Arab-Israeli affairs, was for upbeat stories reporting good news about what the author calls the “virtual world” of the peace process."
This extract is from a review of Hugh Pope's book "Dining with al-Qaeda" (Thomas Dunne) which appeared in the Economist (March 6, 2010).
This is how civil society, in the guise of the AIPAC and Christian fundamentalists, has turned newspapers into political mouthpieces. This was inevitable: "In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used, or more unsparingly applied to a multitude of different objects, than in America," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville.
What is freedom to the Americans, is literally death to non-Americans. But for Wikileaks we would never have known that Israel deliberately maintained the economy of the Gaza strip "on the brink of collapse" without "pushing it over the edge," a leaked US diplomatic cable from 2008 showed.
This shows that the US government has been captured by civil society of a nasty type, and that US newspapers are unwilling to tell their readers the truth about the world.
In Bangladesh our biddable intellectuals are constantly touting the benefits of democracy and civil society to please their American masters, and so shut our eyes to the twin evils.
This extract is from a review of Hugh Pope's book "Dining with al-Qaeda" (Thomas Dunne) which appeared in the Economist (March 6, 2010).
This is how civil society, in the guise of the AIPAC and Christian fundamentalists, has turned newspapers into political mouthpieces. This was inevitable: "In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used, or more unsparingly applied to a multitude of different objects, than in America," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville.
What is freedom to the Americans, is literally death to non-Americans. But for Wikileaks we would never have known that Israel deliberately maintained the economy of the Gaza strip "on the brink of collapse" without "pushing it over the edge," a leaked US diplomatic cable from 2008 showed.
This shows that the US government has been captured by civil society of a nasty type, and that US newspapers are unwilling to tell their readers the truth about the world.
In Bangladesh our biddable intellectuals are constantly touting the benefits of democracy and civil society to please their American masters, and so shut our eyes to the twin evils.
Monday, January 3, 2011
The Joke That's 'Transparency International'
THOSE WHO BETRAYED GOT RICH: "Who were the winners? The rating agencies, the senior officers who walked away rich, the least moral appraisers, the least moral of the outside auditors at the big accounting firms. They were all the winners. They got rich by betraying their responsibilities.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Every time Transparency International (Bangladesh) produces a report, I guffaw. TI chases gnats in the Third World while ignoring the elephants in the First.
TIB makes us the most corrupt nation on earth - a veritable Sodom (by the way, Sodom was not destroyed for sodomy). And then if we aren't the most corrupt, then we are at least as corrupt as we were last year, while some other Gomorrah has moved up the ladder. It's just a relation among countries, and tells us nothing about the countries themselves. Mount Everest is the highest mountain; buy that says nothing about Everest but something about it and other mountains. 'Bangladesh is the most corrupt country' says nothing about Bangladesh, but about a particular relationship with other countries.
And who finds these reports of interest? They are not even accurate.
In the United States, trillions of dollars have been lost through fraud and regulatory capture, and the world economy has been brought to its knees - and still the Third World is the most corrupt? Who writes these reports? You can't take TI seriously.
'And, of course, bottom line, all of these things are what the FBI aptly term the "epidemic" in mortgage fraud and warned in September 2004, in open congressional testimony, would cause a financial crisis if it were not dealt with.' Thus says William K. Black, an expert on fraud.
Thus, in 2004, the FBI knew something criminal on a gargantuan scale was afoot - and the regulators did nothing. That's a classic case of regulatory capture.
Mr. Black explains, in case we don't know how to count (and some of us, for instance at TI, don't): "...a crisis measured in trillions of dollars of losses—and a trillion dollars is a thousand billion...."
And that's dollars, not takas.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Every time Transparency International (Bangladesh) produces a report, I guffaw. TI chases gnats in the Third World while ignoring the elephants in the First.
TIB makes us the most corrupt nation on earth - a veritable Sodom (by the way, Sodom was not destroyed for sodomy). And then if we aren't the most corrupt, then we are at least as corrupt as we were last year, while some other Gomorrah has moved up the ladder. It's just a relation among countries, and tells us nothing about the countries themselves. Mount Everest is the highest mountain; buy that says nothing about Everest but something about it and other mountains. 'Bangladesh is the most corrupt country' says nothing about Bangladesh, but about a particular relationship with other countries.
And who finds these reports of interest? They are not even accurate.
In the United States, trillions of dollars have been lost through fraud and regulatory capture, and the world economy has been brought to its knees - and still the Third World is the most corrupt? Who writes these reports? You can't take TI seriously.
'And, of course, bottom line, all of these things are what the FBI aptly term the "epidemic" in mortgage fraud and warned in September 2004, in open congressional testimony, would cause a financial crisis if it were not dealt with.' Thus says William K. Black, an expert on fraud.
Thus, in 2004, the FBI knew something criminal on a gargantuan scale was afoot - and the regulators did nothing. That's a classic case of regulatory capture.
Mr. Black explains, in case we don't know how to count (and some of us, for instance at TI, don't): "...a crisis measured in trillions of dollars of losses—and a trillion dollars is a thousand billion...."
And that's dollars, not takas.
Friday, December 31, 2010
The Meaning Lies in How You Use the Word
“We are scared to the point where we are no longer free.”
This observation was made by Max Price, vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, to The Economist ('The Great Scourges', A Special Report on South Africa, '5th June 2010) after the murder of yet another member of the staff last March.
The murder rate in South Africa is 33 per 100,000, compared to 5.1 in the United States. The rape rate is the highest in the world. 50 murders, 100 rapes, 330 armed robberies and 550 violent assaults are recorded every day. And the violence is often mindless.
Yet - and this is even more mindless - Freedom House gives South Africa a ranking of 2 in its 'freedom of the world index'(7 being completely unfree).
If you are not free not to be raped or murdered, then what kind of freedom is that? Clearly Freedom House's definition of freedom is very different from what most of us mean by that word.
This observation was made by Max Price, vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, to The Economist ('The Great Scourges', A Special Report on South Africa, '5th June 2010) after the murder of yet another member of the staff last March.
The murder rate in South Africa is 33 per 100,000, compared to 5.1 in the United States. The rape rate is the highest in the world. 50 murders, 100 rapes, 330 armed robberies and 550 violent assaults are recorded every day. And the violence is often mindless.
Yet - and this is even more mindless - Freedom House gives South Africa a ranking of 2 in its 'freedom of the world index'(7 being completely unfree).
If you are not free not to be raped or murdered, then what kind of freedom is that? Clearly Freedom House's definition of freedom is very different from what most of us mean by that word.
The Mule
“A class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect.”
Thomas Macaulay thus proposed to train a new class of English speakers: neither Indian nor English, but an illegitimate offspring of the two cultures - in short, a mule.
This mule has proved remarkably sturdy.
It has carried the twin loads of equalitarian democracy and inegalitarian caste; of election by the people and a Lok Shova of criminals, of popular rule and a durable dynasty, of an English-speaking elite and regional linguistic nationalism...and so on.
A mule is sterile, as we all know - we can expect nothing further from it. And here the analogy ends. When the mule dies, what happens? Do we once again get a horse and a donkey? Or perhaps Pegasus - or pig-asses?
Thomas Macaulay thus proposed to train a new class of English speakers: neither Indian nor English, but an illegitimate offspring of the two cultures - in short, a mule.
This mule has proved remarkably sturdy.
It has carried the twin loads of equalitarian democracy and inegalitarian caste; of election by the people and a Lok Shova of criminals, of popular rule and a durable dynasty, of an English-speaking elite and regional linguistic nationalism...and so on.
A mule is sterile, as we all know - we can expect nothing further from it. And here the analogy ends. When the mule dies, what happens? Do we once again get a horse and a donkey? Or perhaps Pegasus - or pig-asses?
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