Bailing Thin Air (India)

The Government of India has announced that it might help Air India with Rs. 2,500 crores in “soft” loans.  The argument given by the Government is that as the owner it has the right to transfer the money.  This argument is false for a number of reasons:

Government as owner is a very different proposition than a private owner.  Private owners have three major sources of funding – borrowing from banks and other private individuals, selling equity on the market and selling assets.  The government has a fourth source – taxation.

This is where the problem arises because governments collect taxes on the basis of providing the rule of law and protection of individual rights to their citizens.  It is patently immoral for a government to use money raised on this basis to help companies that is owns.

It is also unfair to other private companies that they should have to make the money which the government then taxes and distributes to the state owned companies.

Next, the claimed ownership of Air India must itself be question.  Air India was started as a private organization which was later appropriated by the government.  As such, the government acted like a thief and any claimed ownership is only that of the de facto possession that a thief has.  It is an immoral and corrupt ownership with the aviation minister as the current receiver of stolen property.

The bottonline is that India is run by mendacious thieves who steal the money the people of India work hard to create and spend it on incompetent, loss making companies owned by the government.

The Mark of Mediocrity

Joe Biden says:

“”We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people,” Biden said. Of those who would pay more, he said: “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”

A person who wants something from other people, not by trading values but by appropriation, is a mediocrity.  This is true even if that person invokes the Holy Cow of Patriotism.

The Man From S.A.F.E.

The Head of the All India Tennis Association says that India is safe:

“This is absolutely not on, it is ridiculous,” Khanna told Reuters on Tuesday. “I don’t think any sensible Indian would say the country was not safe.”

• This for a country where serial bomb blasts are common:
  • Bangalore
  • Hyderabad
  • Surat
  • Ahmedabad
  • Jaipur
• A country where medieval pogroms still happen: Orissa pogrom
• A country where all and sundry take to street violence whenever they feel unhappy.
• A country where you have to go through metal detectors to enter movie halls, malls and markets.
• A country where women are raped in the building of the very organization meant to investigate crime.
• A country where policemen rape children.
• A country where it take the Supreme Court to point out that nobody has the right to rape a woman.

This is an incomplete record for less than the two years past but it makes clear that India is a violent and terribly unsafe country.

The deeper question is what degree of mental evasion lets people shut their eyes to the truth?

A Note On Religion

Amit Varma over at India Uncut quotes an essay on religion.  It seems appropriate to say that it’s equally true if you replace Jesus with any other god, godling or prophet.

China Supresses Lawyers

In most countries, it is acceptable for lawyers to defend the unpopular, even those held to be traitors.  Some lawyers even make a career out of it.

Evidently, it is not so in China.  Over there, defending an unpopular cause gets you in trouble.

Women Are People Too

The Womens Reservation Bill may be in the news again but Indian lawmakers and the society they represent still don’t understand that women are people too.  Consider the following taken from the Indian Penal Code:

Section 497:
Adultery.—Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery, and shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine, or with both. In such case the wife shall not be punishable as an abettor.”

The wife is thus viewed as:

• the property of the husband
• incapable of taking a decision by herself.

Women need to be viewed as individual people and as equal before the law as men, not as the property of men.  The Womens Reservation Bill will surely do well for a handful of women but removing such archaic laws and treating women as equals will do well for all of them.

There is however, no hope of the Indian State viewing it’s citizens as responsible adults so long as this story represents the thinking of Indian society.

Majority Does Not Make Right

Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram says:

“If rightly or wrongly people perceive that commodities future trading is contributing to a speculation driven rise in prices, then in a democracy you will have to heed that voice.” (italics mine)

The proper function of a government is to defend the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  A majority of individuals cannot gang together and demand to lynch an unpopular individual.  Nor can a majority demand that an unpopular economic activity be stopped so long as does not violate the rights of man.

The reason countries have constitutions and laws is so that majority opinion does not overcome justice.  A majority is not given the right to be heard or to demand it’s way by sheer strength of being a majority. 

There is adequate history to prove that individuals and societies that learn this lesson prosper in the long run and those that do not fail.

By his statement, Mr. Chidambaram just does not understand this simple principle.

Tianamen Revisited

Anyone who has doubts about the true nature of China’s government would do well to read the following link and then consider if they can still be neutral:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989

Olympics For Everyone?

A common line of thought goes that the Olympics are “for everyone.”  That we should put aside all differences to participate and be happy.  At least, this is what China and it’s sympathizers want us to believe.

This line of thinking in it’s relativistically correct haze ignores the context.  The context is that games are played between people and nations with a common set of values.  The values in the case of all sporting events are of individualism and liberty.

China, on the other hand, is not a nation that respects either liberty or the rights of individuals.  Instead, China is a totalitarian state that still in this day and age runs labour camps -

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_camp
• http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/china-98/laojiao.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Wu

In light of the nature of the Chinese government, it is ridiculous to expound on the shared values between China and the people of the free world.  Further, China should never have been allowed to host the Olympics and the Chinese should not not even be allowed to participate so long as their system of government is illiberal.

Dragon Attack

TimeOnline reports that the blue clad Chinese who run along with the Olympic torch are members of a paramilitary offshoot of the Chinese army (or is that really the People’s army?)

Given all the protests that are taking place, every country though which the torch passes is allowing foreign soldiers the right to attack it’s own citizens on it’s own soil!

After this, there should be no more talk of national sovreignity.

Please everyone, bow to the dragon.