Samuel Johnson on Hypocrisy

Samuel Johnson writing about the misuse of the charge of “hypocrisy”:

Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.”

Zionist Inquisitors and the Media Narrative

“No media outlet mentioned that in 2003 Zionist media mogul Haim Saban acquired control of ProSiebenSat.1, Germany’s second largest broadcaster.

While wielding a major opinion-shaping media outlet during Merkel’s ascendancy as Germany’s first female chancellor, Saban described himself as an “Israeli-American” and “a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” Steve Rattner, Saban’s financial adviser, explained the motive for his media acquisition: “He thinks Germany is critical to Israel.” Rattner re-emerged as president Barack Obama’s auto industry “car czar” before resigning in mid-July due to a pension fund scandal…..

..In June 2006, a Saban-led group acquired Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S. With Latinos the fastest-growing voting bloc in the U.S., Univision is critical to Israel’s ability to sustain its control of U.S. foreign policy. Univision is the fifth largest television network in the U.S., reaching 98% of Spanish-speaking households through 62 television stations, 90 affiliate stations and more than 2,000 cable affiliates. [See “How the Israel lobby took control of U.S. foreign policy.”]….

. In addition to emerging as a reliable EU advocate for Israeli policies, Merkel threatened to arrest Williamson for Holocaust denial on a EU-wide warrant. A search of her phone records would doubtless uncover a discussion with a key supporter, Haim Saban.

Zionists and the lawmakers they groom are well positioned to advance a modern-day Inquisition—as when Bishop Williamson simultaneously faced arrest in Europe and expulsion from Argentina, the site of a seminary he directed and home to the largest Jewish population in Latin America.”

Read more about the framing of media narratives by Jeff Gates at Intifada-Palestine.com

The Hundred Who Made the Economy Collapse

Vanity Fair’s piece on the hundred who made the economic crisis manages to include blackberries and VIP rooms, Ralph Nader, George Bush and Bill Clinton, Woodrow Wilson, Republicans Hank Paulson and Hank Greenberg…

But it omits Robert Rubin….and Larry Summers…and Tim Geithner….and any of the numbers of hedge funds that were shorting companies for years….and it forgets AIG….and  Barney Frank..[Correction: It does include AIG and Barney Frank, a great improvement] and even good old Eliot Spitzer, who should have done much more, for all that sound and fury about going after crooks…

What a tendentious list.

More anti-Christian Bile at Vanity Fair

I was trying to get a grip on the mentality that produced the Sarah Palin smear job (I carry no water for Palin and think she was a poor choice for veep, but…)

..and I came across this gem, “Blame America (and Jesus), for Jaycee Dugard kidnapping,” from the September edition of Vanity Fair. It implies that belief in the divinity of Jesus is somehow linked up with some kind of kinky sexuality. I kid you not…

[ Just try substituting a few other religious figures for that.

How about “Blame India (and Krishna) for sex-trafficking in Mumbai slums”? How do you think that sounds?

Or “Blame Saudi Arabia (and Muhammed) for terrorism? (Sorry, we already have that going around)

Ok. Here’s a anothr one. What about “Blame Israel (and Moses) for torture in military prisons.”

Has a ring to it….

[Note to religious fundamentalists – the above is satire meant to deride Vanity Fair’s bigotry – no offense is meant to Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Krishna, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. Offense is meant to Vanity Fair, however, mainly for terminal idiocy and obvious bigotry].

Here’s the piece:

“It’s an American Gothic thing—or, by any other name, a white trash thing. On the fringe of communities across the country there is a mutant culture: trashy, marginal, uneducated, unhealthy, and nutty. People cluck about it, and are fairly careful to avoid it, but are, too, remarkably laissez-faire towards it. This is partly because white trash means…white. And partly because, in America, a white man’s home is his castle (no matter how much debris is in the yard), and you just don’t ask too many questions (and because so many homes in America look like the homes of sex offenders).

And partly because of Jesus.

If Phillip Garrido ranted about there being no God, if he passed out atheist tracts, instead of bizarre-o Jesus-saves stuff, he would likely have been carted off years ago. But Jesus saves you not just from your sins but from public opprobrium. It may not make you any less weird in people’s eyes, but it makes you part of a protected class of weirdos. Jesus is an acceptable refuge for the sex offender. God knows, Jesus may even incite the sex offender.

No matter. If you believe hotly enough in Jesus, you’re a good American—at least for all the other weird Christians with piles of crap in their backyards, which is a considerable demographic.”

More here, by Michael Wolff.

Vanity UnFair’s “Me and Mrs Palin” Is a Bit of Odious Fluff (Updated)

Vanity Fair has a piece on Sarah Palin through the eyes of her daughter Bristol’s boyfriend, Levi Johnston. The title itself is slimy, implying that there are cougar-like revelations to be had..

[Please note also the cover with its title,  “Keeping up with the Johnston,” the positioning of Levi’s hand on his stomach and Sarah’s photoshopped face over his hand].

O la la – Mrs. Palin is a glass-eating, baby-making monster because, get this, in her family of five with two working parents, the kids do the cooking and the older kids look after the younger kids. Sheesh. Hang the woman.

You can hear the VF staff tinkle – These conservatives are such hypocwites! (Thanks to whichever lefty writer I saw use that little howl of derision). Don’t they know real “family values” means parents should slave for kids so the kids never learn to take care of themselves?

Yep. We get it. “Family values” means helpless, dependent kids, so teachers and counselors can have harder jobs and state social workers can take over their guardianship and create yet another disenfranchised group in need of governmental protection.

And on another point, who invented the hideous word “kids” for teenagers? There was a time not to long ago when girls of 15 and 16 were married and mothers and boys of that age were working like responsible adults.

Dear Vanity UNFair, the piece said more about you than about the Palins, or the wretched adolescent who’s learned how to father kids out of wed-lock and trash the grandparents of the kid all while still just a precious little “kid.”

What a role-model for a young man. Or maybe he’s just another establishment media hack in training….

Note: Shows you how much the media actually cares about children..or anyone in need of consideration. Nice job to have the father of an out-of-wedlock baby (no moral judgment here, merely a recognition that it’s a baby deserving of a little adult sensitivity to its needs) trash the grandparents with whom dad lived not so long ago.

Smacks of those stories of communist spies or Hitler youth turning children against their parents.

Note:

Here’s a good take by Bill Kristol on an earlier Vanity Fair trash piece on Palin. Not that I see eye to eye with Kristol on foreign policy…or much else… but Kristol, unlike the author of the earlier piece, Todd Purdum, is smart.

Note:

Purdum (husband of Clinton press secretary Dee-dee Myers), was called a “scum-bag” by Bill Clinton….who probably knows whereof he speaks..

Further Note:

Check this fawning piece on Henry Paulson, at Vanity Fair. Funny how Todd Purdum, who finds it so easy to pick on a woman’s child-bearing and rearing decisions, her clothes and social class, has nothing except flattery for Paulson:

“It was February 2008, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a prince of Wall Street turned secretary of the Treasury, was reflecting on his biggest achievement to date: a $168 billion economic-stimulus package that had passed Congress four days earlier after swift, bipartisan prog ress through both houses. In light of all the later twists and turns that the global financial system and the national economy took, this measure would come to seem quaint and fainthearted. But at the time, it was a very big deal indeed, and Paulson felt justifiably proud. The stimulus had been his baby. Paulson had persuaded George W. Bush, whose relations with both parties in Congress were by then close to toxic, to articulate only the broadest principles, and not to present a detailed plan. Paulson himself, in endless night and weekend negotiations with congressional leaders, had delivered the final package.”

Notice the reference to Paulson’s “delivery” of the treacherous bail-out of America’s fattest cats.

Anne Applebaum on Ted Kennedy

Robert Bork’s America,” Kennedy declared, “is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”

That image – the women in the back alleys, the doors shutting on the citizens’ fingers – was powerful enough to prevent Bork from winning Senate approval. It is thus not unfair to say that the vitriol that has surrounded Supreme Court nominations ever since is one of Kennedy’s legacies, too….”

— Anne Applebaum in The Telegraph.

My Comment

Ms. Applebaum nails it. The “borking” of not just Supreme Court nominations but of political figures in general goes back to this sad episode in media history.

The Kennedys are American royalty, like the Bushes. So on an occasion like this, it’s probably not appropriate for an outsider to say more. Anyway, I was glad to see that conservatives, even rather shrill ones like Michelle Malkin, have been restrained enough and allowed Ted Kennedy’s family a few days of solemnity and sympathy, before discussing his political or personal flaws.

Why More Swine Flu Deaths in Bangalore?

From Sify.com:

“State health commissioner P.N. Sreenivasachari told IANS: ‘It’s difficult to say why Karnataka, more precisely Bangalore, which is endowed with adequate healthcare facilities, is witnessing large number of swine flu deaths. We too are puzzled.

‘We can say the virus is already in the air and it’s time people became more aware and cautious to stop the spread of the virus. However, from the point of view of the administration, we have provided adequate healthcare facilities to treat swine flu patients,’ added Sreenivasachari.

Principal secretary (Health) I.R. Perumal said people should not get panicky.

‘People with swine flu like symptoms should immediately get themselves checked, as the city is well equipped to deal with the pandemic,’ added Perumal.

On Friday, two deaths were reported from Bangalore, one came from Bijapur.

My Comment

Why? I have no idea. More international travelers is one reason and a plausible one. But I confess  I couldn’t help thinking about this piece I wrote in 2005, “Terror Hits Bangalore.”

One result of swine flu scare-mongering  will be a shift of money to influenza research – hitherto absent in India. That means funding for drug trials. I wonder who the lucky drug companies are that will benefit?

The two states hit hardest are Karnataka (where Bangalore is) and Maharashtra (where Bombay is). Those are also the states that are the destinations of most foreign travelers and where India’s IT business and stock market are located. Bangalore is the home of a booming biotech business. And a locus of the anti-globalization movement as well. Just thinking out a loud…

Deaths so far are a hundred or less. That’s in a country of roughly a billion and a quarter where tens of thousands die from traffic accidents (300 a day or around 100,000 a year) and from water-borne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, and jaundice. Hundred of farmers are committing suicide. None of that has qualified for the term pandemic….OR for the accompanying switch in research funding..

Here’s some information on malaria in India in 2008:

“While the official figures state that in 2008 India had 1.5 million malaria cases, resulting in 924 deaths, the real number of deaths is higher by several orders of magnitude.

“These numbers are a joke,” said Sunil Kaul, a doctor who works for a volunteer organization called the Ant that treats villagers. “In Assam alone we had at least 1,500 deaths last year.”

The real number of malaria-related deaths in India was closer to 40,000 in 2008, according to various non-governmental sources and some government officials who didn’t want to be named.”

Under-reporting and lack of knowledge about the disease are two of the main obstacles in retarding the spread of malaria. But interestingly, it’s also international organizations like WHO that obstruct progress in many ways:

“These problems are further complicated by foreign agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which — under the influence of global lending agencies like the World Bank and big pharmaceutical companies — have pushed India to adopt prevention methods that don’t suit the local conditions and to initiate huge, ill-considered projects rather than targeted ones. ….”

More here at The Global Post.


Swine-Flu is a Man-Made Panic..

My new piece on swine-flu is up at Lew Rockwell.

Please note, I have it as Harold Varnus in the piece. It should be Varmus, as in my previous blog post on the subject. In my defense, I wrote it mostly in very dim light…

“The latest in the barrage of media reports on swine flu is a Bloomberg news report (August 25, 2009) that it might hospitalize 1.8 million patients in the US and over-burden hospital intensive care units.

This comes from a planning scenario released by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology

The Bloomberg story cites some theatrical numbers:

  • Half of the US population infected (that is, over 150 million people)
  • 300,000 people in hospital intensive care units
  • 30–90,000 people dead
  • By-pass surgery emergency operations disrupted

But hidden in paragraph 5 of the Bloomberg piece is the most pertinent part:

These numbers are only “scenario projections” that were “developed from models put together for planning purposes only,” says a Centers for Disease Control spokesman.

So.

  • Statistical projections.
  • Projections from models of past pandemics. (And not the past, as in 1968 or 1957, but way back, as in 1918.)
  • Projections developed for planning purposes only.

That’s three stages removed from anything you could call reality.

But perish this tenuous link with facts, PCAST wants Obama to rush through vaccine production so that 40 million people can be infect – er – injected by mid-September.

And who should make that decision?

A doctor? The surgeon-general? A medical team?

Why, the homeland security adviser!

That’s John Brennan, a former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, deputy executive director of the CIA under George Tenet, and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (CTC) from 2004 to 2005 during the exact period when the CIA became most heavily involved in torture practices in Iraq and elsewhere.”

Note:

I wanted to state here that my social views are quite liberal, and I do not have any objection to voluntary family planning and contraception. I’m also firmly pro-choice. And in terms of the environment, I support far greater consideration by each of us, as individuals and as communities, for animal life, nature, and conservation.

But those are my personal views. Putting the legal and physical force of the corporate- state behind those preferences, in the form that Holdren apparently thinks will work, is, in my view, completely misguided.