Arrest of Binayak Sen as naxal accomplice

My comment posted on yossarin's blog, reproduced here:

There’s a recurring theme in the defense of Dr Sen. Few raise more questions than they actually answer.

I also insist, especially to Dr Sen’s aggrieved relatives that I’ve nothing personal for or against Dr Sen and these are my general observations, a different pov from theirs for sure. Just as you believe that we don’t see or understand your side, so do others who are on the other side of this argument. It’s reciprocal.

It may appear that the other side is faceless state, but the state is ultimately representative of the people, something that seems to have been overlooked so far. Since we're a democracy you can still take actions of state as carrying of legitimacy of people's opinion unlike the Marxist quakery where the label "people's" is appropriated to legitimize totalitarian diktats.

First, that he’s innocent and he has had a clean record. Quite possibly he’s innocent, but then why not let the courts judge for us all? They’ve the constitutional authority and obligation to do that. Let law take its own due course.

Someone’s track record does not necessarily transfer into guilt or innocence. More often than not people commit legal offense despite having a clean record. If someone says that people don’t change over years, then they’ll also have to concede that criminals released after completing a sentence cannot be certified as reformed, and it would be irresponsible to set them free. Further, all rehabilitation programs will have to be shut down if the belief is that people don’t change.

Second accusation is that the state is unfairly incarcerating an honest man and his integrity is beyond reproach. This observation, too, is fraught with danger. It unfairly indicts the honesty and probity of those who serve the people by working for legal agencies, or represent people, or sit in courts in judges’ chair. There’s a whole string of hard working, decent, honest people who are part of the legal procedure, and who work for the system. They are just doing their duty based on available evidence. What personal grudge can so many have against one individual to connive so broadly? Perhaps we can find a street vendor, a teacher, a chaiwalla, a panwalla or two who will vouch for their integrity too.

One might be cynical of the system, but let’s not forget that the system too is made of people like us, who can be, and indeed are, well-meaning more often than not.

They’ve made a case, and taken it to court, not taken recourse to gun as some seem to suggest to be the only option. Dr Sen has access to lawyers and the same court that the legal agencies, who are responsible for public security, have.

Obama is going down

There are two remarkable pieces today in NYT and WaPost. The first is by David Brooks, and the second by Charles Krauthammer, both addressing the coming Obama meltdown.

Now, it behoves to make it clear at the outset that these two columnists are conservative, meaning Republican leaning, and can always be justifiably accused of partisanship when addressing topical Democratic issues, but still they make some penetrating arguments that cannot be dismissed with such ready ease.

Both accurately diagnose the central weakness of the Obama campaign's astonishingly successful USP: that he's a uniter, who can uniquely transcend partisanship in a post-partisan America where people are tired of internecine bickering, and yearning to rise above and beyond their this-worldly differences.

After suggesting that Obama is eventually succumbing to the advice from his strategists that he needs to "throw punches" and take the "gloves off," Brooks concludes:

Besides, the real softness of the campaign is not that Obama is a wimp. It’s that he has never explained how this new politics would actually produce bread-and-butter benefits to people in places like Youngstown and Altoona [where people have lost jobs].

If he can’t explain that, he’s going to lose at some point anyway.

Dr. Krauthammer is more diligent in his diagnosis-- an accurate one at that, I hasten to add. He observes that Obama has succeeded in presenting himself in "grandiose terms" as "a conciliator" by clinching a broken argument, a "non sequitur" if you will:

It goes like this. Because Obama transcends race, it is therefore assumed that he will transcend everything else -- divisions of region, class, party, generation and ideology.
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The effect of such sweeping invocations of unity is electric, particularly because race is the deepest and most tragic of all American divisions, and this invocation is being delivered by a man who takes us powerfully beyond it. The implication is that he is therefore uniquely qualified to transcend all our other divisions.

With passage of time, and through some aggressive, though underhanded, tactics by Hillary, this carefully stitched winsome argument is crumbling. Barack Obama's Achilles' heal is that no one questioned him how exactly he was going to bridge the ideological gap. His argument seemingly was that as long as we talk about it good intentionally, we'll find a way. Cute argument, but still, where's the substance?

It is another matter that despite Hillary's "dirty tactics" Indian leftists are cheering Hillary comeback. After all, foreigners--Saudis, Chinese, leftists everywhere included--are heavily invested in Clinton restoration.

It is no surprise to surmise why this is so. In fact, it is eerily close to what we witness back home, in India, almost on a daily basis. There's that irritating but fanciful suggestion that in the subcontinent, and even within the country, we're all "same same," "they're like us," and that we can iron out our differences through talk.

The trick is that in such "talks" we are inexorably urged not talk at all about those very differences lest we become obstacle in way of resolving dispute . "Talks become their own objective" as Kissinger said.

By mentioning our differences, or acknowledging them as much, we might just disturb the communally harmonious, "secular" utopia that we're otherwise standing only a step away from.

Essentially we're supposed to transcend our differences by glossing them over. That's a curious way to resolve disputes, except that it is no way but cute cajoling. Further, it is always appealed to be "large hearted," "forward looking," "be different," "we're not like that," "courageous," "giving," and thus concede our interests. There. Differences ironed out. It is no coincidence that the weaker side is usually encumbered with being "courageous" and "trusting" during negotiations, at least to give a facade of honorable stand if nothing else.

Things never work that way, and we're often reminded of this bitter truth through the umpteen revisits that reality offers us on a regular basis.

So, Obama is going down, for the simple reason that his candidacy is being made to confront harsh reality, which it was never prepared to face off. There's nothing to lament about it though, unless you were taken over by Obamamania. As they say, reality bites.

"Socialism: an obituary for an idea"

Following passages appear in an essay by Irving Kristol, titled- Socialism: an obituary for an idea.

True, there is a dwindling band of socialist fideists who keep insisting that we must not judge socialism by any of its works. The Soviet Union, they tell us, is not "socialist" at all; nor is China, or Cuba, or Yugoslavia, or Hungary, or all those other "people's democracies." Neither, of course, are such regimes as exist in Peru or Syria or Zaire, whose claims to socialist legitimacy are not to be taken seriously. As for western countries with social-democratic government, such as Britain or Sweden -- well, they get a passing grade for "effort" but it seems that they are insufficiently resolute or intelligent to bring "true" socialism about.

This is all quite ridiculous, of course. Socialism is what socialism does. The plaintive lament of the purist that socialism ( or capitalism, or Christianity) has "never really been tried" is simply the expression of petulance and obstinacy on the part of ideologues who, convinced that they have a more profound understanding than anyone else of the world and its history, now find that they have been living a huge self-deception. People who persist in calling themselves socialist, while decrying the three quarters of the world that has proclaimed itself socialist, and who can find a socialist country nowhere but in there imaginings -- such people are anachronisms. As such they do serve a purpose: They help the historian and scholar understand what socialists used to think socialism was all about. One could discover that from reading books, to be sure, but it is sometimes enlightening to interview an actual survivor.

I couldn't find the original article online, but if you're interested you might want to read this book, chap. 24 p 301. It was originally published in The American Spectator, Oct 1976.

"Controversial" passages from Taslima's novel Dwikhandito

These appeared in EPWeekly. To my knowledge, there's nothing controversial about these passages. They can be easily verified by the three authoritative Koranic translations on USC website. [I am trying to make a compilation of these controversies, your co-operation is appreciated.]

"If somebody, being inspired by Islam, follows the commandments of Allah and wants to be a true Muslim, then he easily may take oath from the Quran wherein it has been advised not to make friendship with the Jews and the Christians, i e, non-Muslims. If somebody does not follow this, Allah will throw him into the fire of Hell. Not only this, (Quran says) wherever you get non-Muslims destroy them, kill them. Whenever you find a non-believer (who does not believe in Islam) cut his left arm and right leg with one strike and his right arm and left leg with another (Dwikhandita, p 48)."

and a second from page 50:

"...he [Prophet Mohammed] killed people without any hesitation, bathed in the blood of people of other communities, ruthlessly killed the people of other religions, ordered his soldiers to loot the wealth of the Jews and he raped their women, thus he could hoist his victory-flag...What could I say! This is the character of our Scoundrel Prophet. And there is the great fraud named Allah in his (meaning Holy Prophet) jobba (loose garments). The billions of fools all over the world are keeping this Islam still alive. This is nothing but tricks of politics (Dwikhandita, p 50)."

PS- For the sake of bloggers' honor code(is there one?), I want to note that I found the above paras on some blog while googling.

With due respects Mr Pratap Bhanu Mehta, but you're a hypocrite

Yesterday IE had an editorial belaboring about freedom of speech, and today this completely biased article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the same topic.

Mr Mehta is liberally selective in recalling cases, what he believes to be, concerned with freedom of speech.

Cases that rankle him most: Shivaji by James Laine; Dharmakaarana by P V Narayana; ABVP's objection to essay by Ramanujan(not the mathematician); objection to Jodha Akbar; and (nude) paintings (of Hindu Godesses) by M F Hussain.

While conveniently ignoring his own hypocrisy, which is apparent from looking at his case list, he accuses ABVP of obtuseness regarding their behavior in Ramanujan case, and sees duplicity in BJP's defense of Taslima Nasrin.

The cases that he conveniently, and deliberately so, forgets:

• Islamic prophet Mohammed's cartoons published by Danish paper Jyllands Posten;
• withdrawal of film Meenaxi by M F Hussain;
• hounding of Taslima Nasrin by Islamofascists in Hyderabad, and in Kolkata by Bengal's Marxist rulers;
• ban and death call on Salman Rushdie;
• million dollar bounty on Danish cartoonists by a Haj-going muslim minister Yakoob Qureshi of UP;
• threats of acid throwing on women refusing to wear burkas in Kashmir by Asiya Andarbi of Dukhtaran e millat(daughters of Islamic nation);
• ban on Da vinci code film by secular parties in Tamilnadu, Andhra, Kerala because Christians are 'offended' ;
• ban on Dwikhandito in Bengal by CPI(M);
• objections and calls of ban(?) on the novel Aavarana by S L Bhyrappa;

We can go on and on citing examples that Mr Mehta clearly is uncomfortable with, and finds unsuitable to mention.

None, not one of these registered on Mr Mehta's mind, nor does it figure anywhere in his tortuous jeremiad.

We have to wonder if Mr Mehta wants to be taken seriously at all, what with the gushing intellectual dishonesty that's all too apparent in his article.

Or, does he think that his opponents are going to ignore the cavil acquiescence of his intellectual tribe to Muslim and Christian acts of intolerance of freedom of speech and expression. Not only is he guilty of ignoring the root cause of what he sees as 'intolerance,' but also can he be reasonably accused to have been complicit in condoning the bigotry of minority groups. His cop out on the Danish cartoon controversy was telling. It was also then that most of his fellow travelers lost their moral right to speak with authority on freedom of expression.

Perhaps his intention is only to imprint selective cases on public conscienc, for he's too smart to understand that informed people won't be taken in by such partisan outrage. If so, that's quite unbecoming of an academic.

IE, Shekhar Gupta wants freedom of expression

Indian Express(IE) editorial of today/yesterday laments that freedom of expression is increasingly becoming "mere fiction" in our country. After taking the obligatory potshots at Sambhaji brigade(with the appearance of right wing group but a casteist faction really) on the James Laine controversy, the editorial bemoans that "one by one every institution has flopped down without a fight."

Now, that last bit of righteous breast-beating is quite comical. IE itself is one such institution and if it feels so deeply about freedom of expression it could choose to be the exception to what it mourns to have become a norm.

IE can still publish Danish cartoons of Islam's prophet Mohammed, readily available on the web--or, they can choose to publish excerpts from Taslima Nasrin's book that she "voluntarily withdrew" after threats to her life. But IE does none of that, and simply chooses to badger Sambhaji brigade, it being a safe bet without inviting repercussions.

Walk-the-Talk Gupta, this is your chance to walk the talk, to put your money where your mouth is. Are you up for the challenge?

If not, please don't lecture others.


PS- Is anyone aware if the "journalism of courage" Tehelka published those cartoons? It is my guess that they chickened out as usual. Tehelka is good for selective courage and a good bit of plagiarism.

Freeloaders' budget- a fraud of Enronesque proportions

Chidambaram has delivered the worst budget that India can ill-afford, or afford at its own peril. Let's see what he's done:

1. Debt relief for farmers-

It means massive deficit, slow growth and inflation. Plus you are rewarding bad behavior. Take loans and forget repaying them; the govt. will take care of it is the message. Besides, the money is not coming from Sonia or Chidambaram's pocket. They are borrowing from average Indian's future to pay for today's bills. Perfection of salesmanship is said to be when you make people buy nothing- hope for example, if audacity of truth permits. Sonia is doing charity with our money. It costs her nothing and she hopes to benefit from such largesse.

2. Oh, but they raised the taxable income bracket, didn't they?

Yes, but he has raised taxes elsewhere. The capital gains tax for example, which means penalizing productive people. India just became less investment friendly, rather investment punitive. Such hidden taxes are inevitably going to come back and bite the common citizen, however much we refuse to acknowledge.

First they made aam aadmi into a nakaam/nikamma aadmi (failure, invalid, useless fellow), and now that nikamma is more dependent on the govt. than ever for managing his daily affairs. We are fast approaching socialist utopia at this rate, where resources are scarce and do-gooders are the sole arbiters.

The govt. has kissed goodbye to fiscal discipline. Spend and make merry seems to be the guiding principle of the day. As before, the next generation's interests are being sacrificed at the altar of political opportunism.

And as before, the govt. has indulged in some 'creative' accounting (read fraudulent), is fudging up numbers in what amounts to cooking books by hiding behind arcane terminology to make the deficit appear less, within the scope of set target. The food and fuel subsidy are put under different name, separate from the normal deficit figures which are supposed to be under 3%. Those subsidies are a massive 1% of GDP, taking the overall deficit well beyond 4%. Deficits are nothing but loans and we're being forced to mortgage our future to cover up Sonia-led govt's incompetence. Four years of non-performance, sloth and sheer inertia is being slid under the carpet through short-term public borrowing.

All these losses are going to show up as inflationary tendencies a year or so later. Prices will be out of the control, but the UPA will have bought power(or not!) for itself, with our money. There will be nothing to show for the massive spending- no roads, no infrastructure, no industry. Prince Rahul might have his crown though.

The loser, of course, will be ordinary Indian.