Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Delhi rape victim was moved to Singapore for political – not medical – reasons

January 8, 2013

Jyoti Singh Pandey, the victim of the horrendous rape and violence in Delhi on 16th December, has not been served very well by the Indian Government – in life or in her dying. Just to avoid having her die in the heart of Delhi she was thrown away by a cowardly government to die far away. It was Pilate all over again as the government tried to wash their hands of her death on their watch.

From Safdarganj Hospital in Delhi she was flown to Singapore on Boxing Day to the Mount Elizabeth Hospital which specialises in multi-organ transplant. The 4,000 km journey in an ambulance flight was made even though the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) is just one street-width away from Safdarganj Hospital and has itself a well deserved reputation for excellence. At the time I thought that it was a caring Government which had made the decision to take every possible action to try and save Jyoti’s life – but it appears that this was not so at all. It now begins to become clear that this was the action of a cowardly administration which just did not want her to be in the heart of Delhi when she died. Her life was already forfeit. It was an attempt at damage control. It was almost as callous an act of “throwing her away” to die far away in Singapore as that of the 6 rapists who threw her off that bus. It was entirely a political decision of an embattled and scared Government.

There was no real medical expectation that any intestinal transplant could even be contemplated to be done in Singapore. That was just a theoretical possibility and the cover story for political purposes. She had been written off before the move was made. The decision to move her was apparently made after a Cabinet meeting but I wonder which cowardly Minister(s) came up with this damage limitation plan?

Reuters reports:

… With a deadly infection seeping into her blood from damage done to her intestines during the assault, complicated by a cardiac arrest and damage to the brain, she was just clinging to life when she was flown 2,500 miles from New Delhi to Singapore late on December 26, doctors said.

“It was ethically and morally wrong to have taken her out, given that she was sinking and her chances of survival were next to zero at that stage,” said a doctor at New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which was advising the team treating the woman at a sister hospital across the street.

“Such a thing raises false hopes in the minds of the family, the community. No doctor in his right mind would do this, unless you want to get the patient off your back,” said the doctor, who declined to be identified, saying colleagues at the government-run hospital who had spoken out had been warned of consequences in what has become a politically explosive case. ….

….. Another doctor who was consulted during the woman’s care at New Delhi’s Safdarjang hospital, where she was taken following the assault, said she had been getting the best possible treatment in India and the question of why she was shifted should be answered by the government.

Many security officials have said they feared the protests would escalate if the woman had died in New Delhi, but the government has said the only consideration was her wellbeing. …..

…… At the time of the transfer, authorities at Safdarjang said her condition was critical which was why they decided to move her to Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital, which specialized in multi-organ transplant.

But a transplant for her damaged intestine, if at all possible, was months away, doctors said. At the time of her transfer, the woman, unconscious since a heart attack the previous night, was in no condition to go through such an operation.

“One cannot think about intestinal transplant at this moment,” Samiran Nundy, the head of surgical gastroenterology and organ transplantation at the Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi, was quoted as saying in newspapers.

“First, the infection spreading in her should be stopped, then one can think about transplant.”

Within 40 hours of her arrival in Singapore, doctors called her family and told them the end was near, even as millions prayed at home in the hope that she would pull through.

“Sepsis followed by cardiac arrest is a terminal event in 99 percent of cases,” said the doctor at AIIMS, referring to blood infection.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, India, Politics | Comments Off on Delhi rape victim was moved to Singapore for political – not medical – reasons

Pro-fracking health report suppressed by New York Governor

January 7, 2013

When a report produces a conclusion you don’t like, political correctness has a simple solution. Suppress the report and commission a new report to reach the “correct” conclusions because the original report “is out of date”.

WNYC News: A document from Governor Cuomo’s Administration assessing the health impacts of hydro fracking, written in early 2012, says the gas drilling process is likely safe if proper precautions are taken by the governor’s environmental agency. ….

While the report says there are potential health risks involved in hydro fracking, it concludes that in each instance, proper mitigation measures that will be required by the state Department of Environmental Conservation will minimize any potential harm and reduce risks. The report, written in February of 2012, says “significant adverse impacts on human health are not expected from routine HVHF (hydro fracking) operations.”

…… The report appears to have been intended for inclusion in the state’s ongoing environmental review of fracking. It also advises against trying to do a site specific quantitative risk assessment of fracking, saying there are too many variables and that too many assumptions would have to be made.

The Administration did not like the conclusion and now a spokeswoman for the DEC says the report is “outdated,” and that no conclusions should be drawn.

“The document is not a health assessment, is nearly a year old, and does not reflect final DEC policy,” said DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis in a statement. “The final SGEIS will reflect the review currently underway by DOH and its outside experts. No conclusions should be drawn from this partial, outdated summary.”

Goodness gracious! A year old!

I suppose the required conclusions have already been written and the review will continue until the desired conclusions are reached.

It’s only politics.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Business, Energy, Environment, Politics | Comments Off on Pro-fracking health report suppressed by New York Governor

Indian politicians expose themselves in the wake of the Delhi rape

January 6, 2013

The quality of the political leadership in India leaves much to be desired. What is clear is the medieval and feudal fantasy that many of them still live in. Women politicians included. Rape and murder and torture are all perfectly acceptable if inflicted on victims of the appropriate class or caste or sex or religion. In the 2009 parliamentary elections, 6 candidates had been charged with rape while 34 candidates were awaiting trial for crimes against women. In the state assemblies, 42 members had rape or associated charges against them at the time of their election. India has over 300 such politicians in power.

But even though they make utter idiots of themselves they continue to get the votes which keeps them where they are.

What price democracy!

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat: “There is a theory of social contract in the universe. A husband and a wife are bound by a contract which says – you (woman) look after the household chores and satisfy me, I (man) will take care of your needs and will protect you. Till she delivers her duties without fail, he keeps her on the contract and if she fails to honour the contract, he disowns her. And if it is the husband who is not honouring the contract, she can also abandon him. One can go for a new contract then.”

Congress MP from Jangipur, Abhijeet Mukherjee (son of the President of India): “This is almost like the Pink Revolution. These women who are protesting have no contact with ground reality. These pretty women, dented and painted, who come for protests are not students. I have seen them speak on television, usually women of this age are not students.”

Vibha Rao, Chairwoman of Chhattisgarh State Women Commission and BJP :  “Women, influenced by western culture, send wrong signals through their dress and behaviour and men often take the cue from those signals. Women display their bodies and indulge in various obscene activities. Women are unaware of the kind of message [their actions] generate”. 

Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee President Botsa Satyanarayana: “Just because the country attained independence at midnight, is it proper for women moving at midnight? That particular woman (the Delhi rape victim) should have applied her mind before boarding the private bus. Anyway, it was a small incident”.

BJP, Minister for Commerce and Industry Kailash Vijayvargiya: “Only when Sitaji crossed the Lakshman Rekha, she was kidnapped by Ravan… If Sitaji [woman] crosses the Lakshman Rekha, then Sitaharan [abduction] is bound to take place as Ravans are out there.”

BJP National Youth chief Anurag Thakur: “The difference between India and Bharat is that India is the place where The Dirty Picture gets a national award. India is the place where Mahesh Bhatt talks about sex with his daughter. India is the place where Sherlyn Chopra gets her picture clicked for the cover of Playboy and says had my father been alive, he would have been extremely proud of me. India is the place where the media celebrates the birthday of a foreign porn star. India is the place where a woman like Poonam Pandey openly speaks about stripping herself naked.”

Vishwa Hindu Parishad International President Ashok Singhal: Talking to reporters here at a congregation of saints and sadhus of Tamil Nadu, Singhal described the trend of youngsters in the country imbibing western culture from the US as “alarming”. “We have lost all the values we had in cities,” he said, demanding that India be renamed Bharat. “Let the real name of the country, Bharat, remain. When we call Bharat, it has the culture of thousands of years of this sacred land,” he said

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, India, Politics | 1 Comment »

It is Bharat versus India as Hindu fanatics try to justify the Delhi rapists

January 4, 2013

I have seen the Delhi rape being described as a manifestation of the conflict which arises at the interface between the rural and the urban life-styles. And there is probably some truth in that. There is little doubt that for the young who stream into the cities after leading highly repressed and frustrating lives in rural India it is difficult for them to make the transition from the middle-ages into the 21st century. The concept of women not being chattel is beyond some to grasp. The apparent “anonymity” of life in the city encourages a few to believe that they can prey on other “anonymous” and depersonalised victims with impunity. Most rapes and other crimes against people are rarely given high priority by city police forces struggling against an ever-increasing urban populace.  The speed with which the Delhi rapists have been apprehended and presented in court in this high profile case is the exception – not the rule. But this is not a problem which occurs only when rural meets urban or which only happens in cities. Rural India still abounds with horrendous cases of violence against others – against women,against children, against people of other religions and those of other castes. Most of this rural behaviour goes unremarked and unreported. The Khap Panchayats who use rape as a punishment and support “honour killing” and who are allowed to operate freely by supine politicians is a case in point.

So, I am not sure that this is just an “urbanisation” problem. It goes much deeper than that. The police act (or more correctly – fail to act) as they do in most cases because the political “leaders” give no priority to these. These “leaders” are rarely “leaders” but are mainly parasites. Many are themselves stuck in the attitudes of a few centuries ago and have not made the transition. Many themselves have no wish to make the transition. Many actually still believe that women are chattel. This view of women is not confined to any particular religion. It can be found among Hindus and Muslims alike. But among the Hindus, the parasitic politicians are usually those who continue not only  to believe in “caste” but are mainly responsible for the continued domination of caste politics. And they use the “privileges of caste” or the “perceived disadvantages of caste” to prop up their own out-dated and anachronistic positions. For some it is -paradoxically – the maintaining of the privileges of a “declared disadvantaged caste” which governs.

It is not a case of rural India versus urban India. The transition from rural to urban life and its difficulties could be anticipated by any competent politician or leader. It is surely the job of the leaders to manage and lead this transition. The root cause is a lack of  political leadership and a lack of political management. Fundamentally it is a lack of political competence. For “parasitic politicians” the continuation of a conflict at the interface provides more blood to be sucked out of the masses.

The issue is one of whether to live in a fantasy past or move to the real future. Whether to continue to exhibit the attitudes of  some glorified and completely false view of a Bharat – which never ever existed –  (or of the glorified view of a Moghul Hindusthan which exists only in the Muslim psyche) or to move forward to create the India of the 21st century.

In the particular case of the Delhi rape, the victim and all of the accused were Hindus. It has not taken long for the fanatics of the RSS (who may look utterly ridiculous in their khaki shorts and black caps but are a poisonous influence in the country) and some of the parasitic politicians of the BJP to try and justify the horrific behaviour of the Delhi six.

IBN Live:  Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Friday kicked up a controversy with his remark that rapes happened in cities and not in the rural areas. “Such crimes hardly take place in Bharat, but they frequently occur in India,” Bhagwat said seeming to indicate that “westernization” in Indian cities was the reason behind increasing cases of rapes. 

The remark follows a similar comment by a MP BJP leader who stated that women who did not stay within their limits, paid the price for it just like Sita was abducted by Ravana after she crossed the ‘Lakshman rekha’.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, India, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obama – sort-of – wins the “fiscal cliff” and goes the way of Europe

January 2, 2013

Well, Obama got some tax increases for the wealthy and a postponement of the fight for spending cuts. The fiscal cliff was little more than a fiscal bump. Republicans are more upset than Democrats – at least judging by the “squeal index” – and the Democrats actually prevailed over the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. So, the view from across the Atlantic based on the belief that the loser squeals the loudest, is that Obama must have won. (The splits in the Republican Party are particularly interesting since these may completely nullify their majority in the Congress!)

But whatever it was that was agreed to, the US debt will rise by some $4 trillion directly as a consequence of this “deal”. The US follows exactly the same way as Europe in putting off the day when the music must be faced. The fight about spending and debt will come in about two months. Years of profligacy and living beyond available means cannot just be wished away. Just wishing that the economy will rebound – faster than has ever happened before – and will increase revenues so that spending cuts can be avoided is not living in the “land of hope” but is living in a fantasy. It is the same fantasy being played out in Europe. Obama is merely following Francois Hollande’s super-tax on the very rich to postpone the cuts in spending that are desperately needed and must come. The fundamental rule of party politics is being upheld: “Tax the voters for the other party and spend on your own”. The pain to come is inevitable. Of course, those who have been profligate have taken their benefits and gone. The pain will have to be borne by others – in the US as in Greece and Spain and Italy. I can’t help suspecting that the goal – whether for Hollande or for Obama – is to just postpone the evil day of spending cuts long enough so that it happens on someone else’s watch. But both Obama and Hollande are at the start of new terms and neither will be able to avoid facing reality.

The high drama at the end of the year in the US bears a strong resemblance to a Christmas farce. It couldn’t possibly have been a pantomime since any kind of music was notably absent. Obama’s performance on the 31st of December was badly out-of-tune and a little embarrassing to watch. And the other bit-players on display – Biden and Reid and Boehner and Cantor and McConnell – with their self-adulation, self-congratulations and mutual admiration were even worse.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Economy, Europe, Politics, US | Comments Off on Obama – sort-of – wins the “fiscal cliff” and goes the way of Europe

Low energy prices with shale gas leading to shift of jobs from Europe to US

December 28, 2012

It is inevitable that investment and jobs – and especially in energy intensive industries – will migrate to regions of low energy costs. Over the next few years the lead that the US has developed over the rest of the world in the exploitation of shale gas will cause European companies to shun the high energy costs at home and shift to the US.

Reuters: Austria’s group Voestalpine is considering a plan to build a $1 billion plant in the United States that would convert iron ore into concentrate used in steelmaking, Trend magazine reported. ………. Trend said the plant was envisioned for a coastal city in the southern United States, given cheap and reliable supplies of natural gas, political stability and efficient port infrastructure.

And the problem has been the unnecessary and misguided European obsession with chasing a mirage.  A meaningless and unjustified pursuit of “low carbon” energy; profligate subsidies for ineffective renewable energy; wasteful – and eventually corrupt – attempts to bias the market with carbon credits and the shutting down of perfectly viable coal and nuclear power plants has given the highest energy costs in the world. Gas prices in Europe are 4 or 5 times as high as in the US. Europe has plenty of shale gas potential but development is lagging far behind the US largely because of the political opposition from the “Green” lobbies. As the New York Times reports:

High Energy Costs Plaguing Europe

.. Asked whether he had considered building the plant in Europe, Voestalpine’s chief executive, Wolfgang Eder, said that that “calculation does not make sense from the very beginning.” Gas in Europe is much more expensive, he said.

High energy costs are emerging as an issue in Europe that is prompting debate, including questioning of the Continent’s clean energy initiatives. Over the past few years, Europe has spent tens of billions of euros in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The bulk of the spending has gone into low-carbon energy sources like wind and solar power that have needed special tariffs or other subsidies to be commercially viable.

“We embarked on a big transition to a low-carbon economy without taking into account the cost and without factoring in the competitive impact,” says Fabien Roques, head of European power and carbon at the energy consulting firm IHS CERA in Paris. “I think there will be a critical review of some of these policies in the next few years.” 

Both consumers and the industry are upset about high energy costs. Energy-intensive industries like chemicals and steel are, if not closing European plants outright, looking toward places like the United States that have lower energy costs as they pursue new investments.

BASF, the German chemical giant, has been outspoken about the consequences of energy costs for competitiveness and is building a new plant in Louisiana.

“We Europeans are currently paying up to four or five times more for natural gas than the Americans,” Harald Schwager, a member of the executive board at BASF, said last month. “Energy efficiency alone will not allow us to compensate for this. Of course, that means increased competition for all the European manufacturing sites.”

And it beomes increasingly clear that the chase for politically correct “brownie points” by European  governments as they have demonised carbon dioxide quite needlessly while spending massively on renewable subsidies is not sustainable. Just as Japan must now waste political energy in “reviewing” their hasty decisions about the use of nuclear energy after Fukushima , Europe will have to spend the next decade in “reviewing and reversing” the spate of bad decisions made based on climate alarmism.

The expansion in renewables will probably ensure that Europe will meet its target of reducing greenhouse gases 20 percent from their 1990 levels by 2020. But it has been a disappointment on other levels. For one thing, emissions continue to rise globally. In a sense, Europe is likely to have exported its emissions to places like China, where polluting economic activity continues to increase while the European economy stagnates.

A striking indicator that the European effort has not achieved all that it intended to is the continued rise in the burning of coal, by far the biggest polluter among fossil fuels.

The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based group formed by consumer nations, recently said that coal was likely to catch up with oil as the world’s largest source of energy in a decade.

Much of the increase in coal use can be blamed on China and India, but not all of it. Europe has increased its coal use this year, and that has led to an increase of about 7 percent in carbon dioxide emissions from power generation, according to IHS. Coal use is increasing in all regions except the United States, the I.E.A. said.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Europe, Gas, Politics, Renewable Energy, US | Comments Off on Low energy prices with shale gas leading to shift of jobs from Europe to US

US going over the fiscal cliff is probably best for world economy

December 26, 2012

No doubt I have a simplistic view but the best thing in the long-term for the world economy would be for the US to start reducing its budget deficit and its burgeoning  public debt. Public debt has to be set to whatever level is sustainable. An economy in transition from one level to another can permit a changing level of public debt, but the current level of deficits (7 -9% of GDP) and ever-increasing debt is not sustainable. The problem is that even if the US did not avoid the fiscal cliff the US public debt would continue to grow – if a little more slowly than as at present. The cliff may in reality be more like a hill but it is still along the way to the wrong place.

US Public Debt

US Public Debt

Budget discipline and a stable level of public debt must – I think – come first. It is public profligacy – whether in Greece or Spain or the US – which is unsustainable and rampant profligacy will not end without some short-term pain. It is probably time for the US to bite the bullet.

I see that the US press is now beginning to expect that some kind of fall – whether over a cliff or a hill – is inevitable but that perhaps the fall can be cushioned by attaching a bungee rope or by aiming for a ledge part-way down!

NY Times: Until late last week, most observers had expected the president and Congressional Republicans to come up with at least a short-term compromise before the year-end deadline. But thefailure of Speaker John A. Boehner to win support for tax increases on the wealthiest Americans from fellow House Republicans has forced many economic observers to reconsider what might happen if political leaders remain deadlocked into 2013.

MSNBC: On the Sunday news shows, no one signaled a change of position that could form the basis for a short-term fix, despite a suggestion from Obama on Friday that he would favor one. The focus was shifting instead to the days following January 1 when the lowered tax rates dating back to the George W. Bush administration will have expired, presenting Congress with a redefined and more welcome task that involves only cutting taxes, not raising them.

“I believe we are,” going over the cliff, said Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming. “I think the president is eager to go over the cliff for political purposes. I think he sees a political victory at the bottom of the cliff,” Barrasso said on Fox News Sunday.

Some Republicans have said Obama would welcome the fiscal cliff’s tax increases and defense cuts, as well as the chance to blame Republicans for rejecting deal. Obama has rejected that assertion.

WSJ: Lawmakers returning to town this week will see whether they can agree on a plan to avoid the full brunt of the fiscal cliff, the combined $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to begin next week. Little if any progress was made in the talks before Congress and President Barack Obama left town last Friday for Christmas. The president plans to leave his vacation in Hawaii late Wednesday night, returning to Washington on Thursday, the White House said.

CNBC: Despite the $600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts due to come into force at the end of this month unless U.S. lawmakers reach a deal, the S&P 500 index is not displaying signs of stress, says independent chartist Daryl Guppy.

The stock index is in fact trading upwards as investors increasingly take in the possibility that the U.S. economy might fall over the “fiscal cliff,” he told CNBC Asia’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. “The fiscal cliff is a bungee jump. It used to be exciting. Now it’s just a tourist attraction. The market is absorbing that,” he said. 

While the S&P 500 index has dipped back towards the 1,380 to 1,400 range seen in August and mostly recently in November, stocks appear to be on their way up again, he added. The index closed at about 1,419 on Wednesday.

 

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Business, Economics, Economy, Politics, US | Comments Off on US going over the fiscal cliff is probably best for world economy

Narendra Modi could be the next Prime Minister of India

December 26, 2012
English: Image of Narendra Modi at the World E...

Narendra Modi – Wikipedia

If the Gujarat riots of 2002 had not happened, Narendra Modi would have an easy- and almost pre-ordained path – to becoming the nominated Prime Minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party. With his record in Gujarat he ought to be the “natural” choice of his party. As the only other political party having a national presence, the BJP has a very good chance of replacing the Indian Congress Party as the largest party and the party of government at the next general elections in 2014.  But the BJP lacks leaders of any stature – apart from Modi. The party President is himself badly tainted by corruption charges. The leaders of the past are approaching senility. Their Young Turks of 10 years ago come across as a whiny bunch who oppose for the sake of opposing and have no convictions of their own. Without a credible PM candidate having some national appeal the BJP may – at best –  only just get to be the largest party but would have the most horrendous task of creating a majority in Parliament. But there are still strong factions within the party who do not much like him. Not because of the “anti-Muslim” taint which hangs over Modi as the legacy of the Gujarat riots; but because he is just a little bit too efficient, too decisive and most of all, too “incorruptible”.

The BJP have few other leaders who have Modi’s undoubted competence and his ability to assemble competence. They have no other leaders with his charisma. He has been one of the very few regional leaders who has had the nerve to be a leader – with some kind of vision of where he wants to go – rather than a populist follower (like Mamata Banerjee). In India, populist politicians – no matter how criminal or venal or incompetent – have usually been able to ride the wave of their vote-banks into power. But that is changing as the Indian electorate becomes more discerning and more sophisticated though still dominated by caste. So it seems likely that the BJP establishment will reluctantly – and with some fears for their own futures – unite behind Modi. They have little choice with his unprecedented success in Gujarat:

Narendra Modi will take oath a fourth time as Gujarat Chief Minister at 11 am today. …. Mr Modi began his morning by tweeting a Vivekananda quote, as he is wont to do. “To make a great future India, the whole secret lies in organization…co-ordination of wills,” he said on Twitter.

It has been conventional wisdom that Modi has been fatally tainted by the Gujarat riots. But this is the conventional wisdom of the urban, semi-liberal middle-class. But I see this view changing mainly because even the urban middle-class see – especially in comparisons with China –  that a chaotic democracy holds back economic development. Political decisiveness a la Modi is seen as something which could unlock the Indian potential which is being held stagnant by corruption and the constant interplay of opposing factional interests. There is a mood abroad in the urban, middle-classes that “a Modi” is needed to bring an end to the institutionalised corruption in the country. There is a groundswell of support for the movement started by Anna Hazare but neither he nor Kejriwal are seen as being capable of implementing the ideals of the anti-corruption movement. These two forces – unlocking economic development and the fight against corruption – will convince the liberal-left middle-class to rationalise their views of Modi. He will not be completely forgiven for his role in the Gujarat riots but the taint will fade. Just as the Congress leaders implicated in the anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Indira Gandhi reinstated themselves with the help of supportive Sikhs, Modi is rebranding himself with the help of supportive Muslims. His former opponents are applying selective memory. Already other non-Congress regional leaders are positioning themselves to be able to support Modi  when – no longer “if” – he becomes the PM candidate for the BJP.

Internationally, Modi was condemned in many quarters. But international politics is ultimately about pragmatic self-interest. If he becomes Prime Minister, it will not take long for countries – especially in Europe to come around. After all, to be seen to be anti-Muslim is quite acceptable in Europe even if Modi would like to tone down that perception. He already has the sympathy of China and Russia who struggle with containing their own Muslim minorities. His visa to the US was revoked in 2005 and the UK avoided him like a pariah for 10 years before reinstating contact in October this year.

But it his acceptance across India which counts. If he can succeed in getting some support from the Muslims across India – and this is not implausible – and if he can gain the support of the urban middle-class – which is already happening – the regional party leaders will also back him and the rest of their sheep will fall in line. For the elections in 2014, to be seen as being incorruptible, a “fighter against corruption” and to be seen as being an efficient CEO could trump all other perceived sins.

And that could make Narendra Modi the first Prime Minister after Rajiv Gandhi having a national stature, an administrative competence and a vision of his own that could be fun to watch.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in India, Politics | Comments Off on Narendra Modi could be the next Prime Minister of India

NRA – “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” !

December 21, 2012

The NRA certainly does not lack nerve.

That it has been rather pleased by the boost in gun sales following the Sandy Hook massacre is no secret. But the NRA and the gun manufacturers are clearly concerned about any long-term reduction in gun sales that might result from the bipartisan backlash which seems to be forming. They will now be pulling out all the stops to prevent any restrictions on the sale of guns and the campaign has begun. And Rule No.1 is never to be on the defensive.

But the NRA does seem to be rather short on common sense. To put forward a solution for school killings – in the wake of the Sandy Hook killings – as being more guns (of course, in the hands of good guys) is bordering, I think, on the foolhardy.

Reuters: 

The powerful U.S. gun rights lobby went on the offensive on Friday, arguing that schools should have armed guards, on a day that Americans remembered the victims of the Connecticut school massacre with a moment of silence.

National Rifle Association Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre argued that attempts to keep guns out of schools were ineffective and made schools more vulnerable than airports, banks and other public buildings patrolled by armed guards.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre told a news briefing, calling on lawmakers to station armed police officers in all schools by the time children return from the Christmas break in January. ….

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg accused the NRA of “a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country.”

“They offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe,” he said. ……..

Another mass shooting occurred on Friday when a gunman killed three people and wounded three police officers before taking his own life in Frankstown Township, Pennsylvania, the Altoona Mirror reported, citing the county prosecutor.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, US | Comments Off on NRA – “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” !

Too “mentally ill” to sell hot-dogs but he can cope with being a Swedish MP!

December 20, 2012

The behaviour of some parliamentarians and all that they get away with never ceases to amaze (whether fiddling expenses in the UK or being convicted criminals in India or being benefit spongers in Sweden).

He was mentally incapable of working at a hot-dog stand (for which he drew sickness benefits) but perfectly able to cope with the strains of being a Member of the Swedish Parliament (which commands a generous salary with no demands).

The Sweden Democrats are riding very high in the polls even though their “junkies and hooligans” image is being further embellished by revelations that one of their leading lights has been living off benefits for most of his adult life. Apparently Johnny Skalin was too mentally disturbed to be able to stand the rigours of working at a hot-dog stand. A stint of 4 hours required 2 days to recover! But working for the party during this time was not too onerous (and he received fees from the party in addition to his “sickness” benefits”).  But after living off benefits for some 13 years he found he was quite able to cope with the tough life of being a Member of Parliament.  He explained in an interview with Aftonbladet that he didn’t want to talk about his illness but it that it took a very long time for him to recover! He has now given up his benefits and can manage on his salary as an MP (about $9000 per month).

The Local has the story:

Sweden Democrat MP Johnny Skalin, whose party describes unemployed immigrants as being “a burden on society”, has lived on state benefits most of his adult life. 

Swedish authorities said in 1997 that Johnny Skalin, who is now 34, was suffering from a mental disorder that prevented him from carrying out his duties in a hotdog stand where he was employed at the time. It was then that he began receiving disability benefits, local newspaper Sundsvalls Tidning wrote. Ten years later, he told the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan) that he suffered from extreme tiredness and needed up to two days of rest after working a four-hour shift.

However, that same year he became the head of the Sweden Democrat local chapter in the northeastern town of Sundsvall. “It was naturally a lot of work,” Skalin told the same newspaper.

Skalin also began to study sociology, and went on to co-author a party platform that helped the Sweden Democrats get into parliament in the 2010 election, when it got 5.7 percent of the vote and won 20 seats in the Swedish Riksdag.

Two months into the job as an MP, he told authorities that he no longer needed any benefits for his mental disability.

But the fundamental truism is that voters get the politicians they deserve. And convicted criminals or junkies or hooligans or benefit spongers are as entitled to be members of Parliament as anybody else who can get the votes of the discerning electorate.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics | Comments Off on Too “mentally ill” to sell hot-dogs but he can cope with being a Swedish MP!

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »