Marcus Aurelius:
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
Enterprising villagers in drought-struck, electricity-bereft Tamil Nadu have come up with a simple, low-cast way not just to survive, but thrive, under the harshest of conditions:
“”Farmers of Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district have turned away from using chemical fertilizers to get good yield despite acute water shortage, monsoon failure and power cuts prevailing in the State.
Though Tirunelveli is known for its temples and halwa, about 45 km south of this bustling town is a clutch of villages, predominantly agriculture-based depending on monsoon, quietly carrying on farming activities, growing chillies, paddy, small onions and vegetables.
There are no government bus services, schools or health centres in many of these villages. For any medical emergency the villagers need to travel nearly 20 km to the neighbouring Thisayanvilai town.
Until a few years ago, many farmers in this drought-prone region sold off their lands or left them barren. Today, however, many villages here are successfully using their own inputs — Panchagavya, an organic manure — and reaping good yield.
“This year many areas in the State dependant on reservoirs for irrigation could not grow crops due to acute water shortage. Areas irrigated by wells face two problems. Many of these wells depend on rain for re-charging and several of them have dried up due to poor rainfall. Adding to this woe is the power cut. Due to power shortage even if there is water in the wells farmers cannot pump the water out. Despite these problems, our farmers have been able to raise good crops of groundnut, vegetables and paddy,” says J.H.S. Ponnaya, the 80-year-old head of the NGO Sands (Suviseshapuram and Neighbouring Development Organisation) at Suvaseshapuram in Tirunelveli.
“The reason is that all of them are consistently using Panchagavya for their crops. Panchagavya can be easily prepared by the farmer. Cow dung and urine are the main inputs required for this. We have trained hundreds of farmers in this area over the last several years in making it for their own use,” he said.
Mariapitchai, a small farmer in Vijayaachambadu village, says that he has been able to harvest his paddy crop 10-15 days ahead of the usual time of 5 months. The paddy is healthy and there are no symptoms of drying or scotched appearance due to high heat. He harvested nearly 3,000 kg from his 2.5 acres.
UPDATE:
Zahir Ebrahim in the comments questions the figure $75 billion. Well, I used the term “apparently” because there’s not much concrete to go by, but that is the figure (or $70b) given out by critics.
How credible is it? No way to know for sure, but besides the Gazprom shares, Putin is said to secretly own shares in many other companies:
“While many previously state-owned industries were privatized, Putin allegedly has used his power to build large secret ownership stakes several multi-billion dollar commodity firms. His most vocal critics assert that Putin has leveraged his power to acquire a 4.5% ownership stake in natural gas producer Gazprom, a 37% stake in oil company Surgutneftegas and 50% stake in Swiss oil-trader Gunvor. Gazprom alone does over $150 billion in revenue annually, Guvnor does $80 billion and Surgutneftegas over $20 billion. Using their most recent market capitalizations, Putin’s combined ownership stakes would give him a personal net worth of $70 billion!So what evidence is there of Putin’s secret obscene fortune? Let’s start with the small stuff. Putin is known to sport a $150,000 Patek Philippe watch on most occasions and his total collection has been valued at $700,000. He also has full access to a $40 million ultra-luxury yacht that features a wine cellar, Jacuzzi, helipad and outdoor barbecue area. In terms of living accommodations, Putin has access to 20 mansions throughout the world including a lavish ski lodge and Medieval castle. The crown jewel of his property portfolio is a $1 billion palace overlooking the Black Sea that he allegedly owns through an anonymous trust. Furthermore, Putin makes frequent use of 15 Presidential helicopters and more than 40 private jets, many of which feature gold plated interiors.”
The reports are based on an interview given by Stanislav Belkovsky to Die Welt, also described here.
Some other related links about Putin’s associations with the oligarchs:
Roman Abramovich once had close and privileged ties to Putin.
Abramovich fell out with one-time associate Berezovsky but stayed friendly with Putin.
Oligarchs like Abramovich, Fridman, and Miller are close to Putin.
The second plundering of Russia, according to Stanislav Belkovsky
More here about Putin’s business dealings.
Corruption alleged by Boris Nemtsov, Deputy PM under Yeltsin and an Opposition leader.
NOTE: I’m going to do another post about Putin because I think I might have swallowed some disinformation put out. I didn’t realize that the $70-75b. figure only came from that interview, because I saw it repeated by another investigator, but I’m wondering now if there is some disinfo in all this.
ORIGINAL POST
It’s been interesting to me to see the right regarding President Putin as some kind of Christian hero
Even Bill Lind has joined the chorus.
It’s certainly true that Putin says a lot of things that conservatives want to hear.
He’s outfoxed the Bolsheviks of the US State Dept.
But, as I’ve pointed out before, there’s plenty of evidence that Putin himself is beholden to the right wing of the New World Order.
One can accept the secession of Crimea as a relatively peaceful process and an understandable reaction to the US’s own belligerent posturing and meddling in the region, but it doesn’t follow that one should then swallow the narrative of Patrick Buchanan that Putin stands for Christianity.
These are deep waters. Nothing is as it seems. Anyone who subscribes to black-and-white narratives can be easily manipulated by the powers-that-be.
A lengthy article on the Russian Orthodox church since the fall of communism argues that the Moscow Church was completely under the Soviets and acted as an agent of the KGB; that the transition to “democracy” in the 1990s was only a transition to criminality and a change in rhetoric not substance; that there is little real orthodoxy left under the Sovietized Orthodox Church; and that simony, occultism, paganism, and ecumenism reign in the present-day Russian church, not traditional belief.
The blog La Russophobe has a list of what it calls “Putin murders” – assassinations of civil society figures – journalists and activists.
That list would be the Russian equivalent of the Clinton body count.
In India, The Hindustan Times points out that no world leader annoys America’s belligerent leadership more.
But the enemy of my enemy is…sometimes….just another enemy:
The red flags are there to see:
1. Vladimir Putin to revive Soviet Hero of Labor award (Daily Telegraph, Dec 11, 2012)
2. Vladimir Putin compares Lenin to holy Christian relics (Daily Telegraph, Dec 12, 2012)
I am going to retract this assessment of Putin’s net worth. The reason is that the origin of the figure comes from an interview by a Putin biographer, Stanislav Belkovsky, in Die Welt, who claims Putin has never sued him. The estimate seems to be based on Belkovsky’s book on Putin’s finances and his research as head of a Moscow think-tank. It’s not improbable, given Putin’s career as a close associate of several oligarchs, himself a KGB chief, and allegedly involved in corrupt dealings following the death of Yeltsin, who passed on power to him.
However, I went back to look more closely and came across a retraction by the Economist of one of Belkovsky’s claims, on threat of suit.
($75 billion $40-70b, apparently from shares in companies including his 4.5% shares in Gazprom revenues). That makes him the richest man on earth
[Lila, added on 4/8): He is said to own shares in several other companies, the total of which at market valuation in 2007 was $40b. I assume the $70-75 is accounted for by the valuation since then, but I didn’t calculate it myself.]
4. Vladimir Putin’s Jewish embrace: Is it love or politics?
QUOTE: “Putin has carefully cultivated relationships with Russia’s many subgroups and regions as a means of projecting his government’s authority.”
QUOTE: “Under Putin, harsh laws have led to a crackdown on ultranationalist groups that once had flourished in Russia.”
QUOTE: “Putin may be good for Jews, but he’s bad for Russia,” said Michael Edelstein, a lecturer at Moscow State University and a journalist for the L’chaim Jewish newspaper.”
QUOTE: “Freedom of expression has been severely restricted and politically motivated prosecutions remain widespread under Putin, according to Amnesty International’s 2013 report on Russia.”
QUOTE: “The preferential treatment of Chabad by Putin’s government “is creating a monolithic Jewish institutional life and preventing grass-roots development, which is the real key for Jewish rejuvenation,” said Michael Oshtrakh, a leader of the Jewish community of Yekaterinburg.”
5. Putin targets foes with zombie guns, which attack victim’s central nervous system
‘Such high-tech weapons systems will be comparable in effect to nuclear weapons, but will be more acceptable in terms of political and military ideology.” (Exactly the same rationale used by the CIA to justify “torture-lite,” radiation weapons, microwave weapons, etc.)
7. Putin is alleged to have been a Royal Arch Mason who trained with MI6, according to The Big Breach, a memoir by a disgruntled MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson.
The relevant material is summarized at this blog.
8. 9/11 insider job “impossible to conceal” says Vladimir Putin (Russia Today, August 2, 2011)
Why does Putin deny that 9/11 could have been an intelligence coup?
Perhaps, because he himself came to power in just such a KGB/FSB coup and has too many skeletons in his own closet…
Perhaps, because one way to fight the opposition is to lead it….
Bring the popcorn and settle in to watch another chapter in the ongoing global culture war. If you cultivate the right frame of mind, fear and despair should quickly give way to malicious amusement.
In Saudi Arabia, the “hard-right” so long the favorite bogeyman of leftist demagogues, has finally turned up. In predictable response, there will be an increasing demand for thought-control in the West. The lines will be drawn even more firmly.
And all those who predicted the death of religion will have to eat their words as religion rises in every corner of the globe – whether pagan (US), Orthodox Christian (Russia), Hindu (India), Jewish (Israel and all its sycophants).
The Independent reports that Saudi Arabia, where the gloves were never on, has turned up the volume in the culture war:
“To that end, King Abdullah issued Royal Decree 44, which criminalises “participating in hostilities outside the kingdom” with prison sentences of between three and 20 years, Human Rights Watch said.
Yet last month further regulations were issued by the Saudi interior ministry, identifying a broad list of groups which the government considers to be terrorist organisations – including the Muslim Brotherhood.
Article one of the new provisions defines terrorism as “calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based”.
Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said: “Saudi authorities have never tolerated criticism of their policies, but these recent laws and regulations turn almost any critical expression or independent association into crimes of terrorism.”
From GreatGameIndia.wordpress.com, a report about the PR agency behind Narendra Modi:
“Apco’s involvement in various intelligence and security-related projects is done through its strategic partner and sister company Asero Worldwide. While Apco’s expertise is in the field of communications, Asero specializes in homeland security and risk management consultancy.
Ken Silverstein, the editor of Harper’s Magazine (June 30, 2007) described Apco lobbyists as the “crucial conduit through which pariah regimes advance their interests in Washington”. He exposed APCO’s specialised experience in working on behalf of authoritarian regimes such as Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan.
Apco and Asero have many overlapping consultants and management members. For example, Doron Bergerbest-Eilon who sits on Apco’s International Advisory Council was also founder and president of Asero Worldwide.
Mara Hedgecoth, the daughter of Apco CEO and President Margery Kraus also sits in Asero as Vice President. At the same time, Mara Hedgecoth also serves as Vice President and Director in Apco Worldwide.
ASERO’s (MOSSAD) Management Team :
Asero is almost like a retirement home for ex-Mossad and ex-Shabak secret services officials.
David Harel – Managing Director and Vice President, Israel. Former head of international relations for the protection and security division of the Israeli Security Agency
Oded Raz – Vice President, Former Senior ranking security official of the Israeli Security Agency
Gadi Kalai – Director, Former Regional Security Manager (RSO) of the Israeli Security Agency (ISA)’s North Region
One of Apco’s favorite legislators is Senator Joe Lieberman, who is a staunch supporter of military aid to Israel. Lieberman’s wife, Hadassah was Apco’s leading lobbyist for health care and pharmaceuticals clients.
MODI Makeover
Adolf Hitler was a brilliant propagandist. Narendra Modi too believes in the power of image. This is probably why the chief minister hired a US lobbying firm which has serviced clients like former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and President-for-life of Kazakhstan Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev.
This Washington-based firm, Apco Worldwide, was hired by Modi sometime in August 2007, in the run-up to an important Assembly election, to improve his image before the world community. Among its recent clients are Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Communist youth leader-turned-Russian billionaire with mafia links.
The firm has a distinction of taking contracts of boosting images of leaders who fell out of favour of their followers.
On the face of it Apco Worldwide’s brief is to build and sell Brand Gujarat to the international community. APCO, through its 32 offices across the globe, has been promoting Gujarat as a great investment destination. APCO has also been managing Modi’s own behaviour and projection, for which the cost has been over $25,000 per month since 2007.
NOTE ADDED:
I don’t endorse Vox Day’s point about Christians “inventing” the Crusades and the Inquisition. A lot more was going on in both historical events, but that’s for another post.
UPDATE:
Oh…oh. This is the brouhaha that got VDay purged from his position. Apparently, he got into a verbal duel with one Ms. Jemisin, about the purpose of self-defense laws in the US.
Ms. Jemisin, probably a knee-jerk leftist on such issues, made a snide remark that provoked Day’s undoubtedly racialist rant:
Guns, she said, exist so that people like Beale (whites) can “just shoot people like me , without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence.”
This run-of-the-mill articulation of a leftist bromide was apparently too much for Vox, who came unhinged and did his bit to get the boot from Science Fiction Writers of America…(he called her a “savage” and compared the IQ of her tribe unfavorably to the IQ of his).
Oh dear. Childish and offensive. But all day long English teachers teach texts, written in cold-blood, printed, and distributed to minor children, that make far more offensive statements, and it’s called “English Literature.”
Should we boot out half of our academic texts to save someone’s hurt feelings?
Or should Ms. Jemisin learn the art of racial riposte well enough that no one would dare trifle with her?
With black writing and art celebrated everywhere, it’s time for an accomplished professional to be able to shrug off that kind of thing, instead of calling for purges. Thought-control is the last thing any writer should urge, for whatever reason, at this stage of the game.
ORIGINAL POST
From the comments on a post by VoxDay, a writer who has joined the list of “purged” bloggers on the net:
“Bigot, homophobe, racist,”- the words have been used up. All you had was shaming language and polite enemies. Now you have neither.”
And more here from Vox, the “brutalist”…
(Repeat: I do not endorse Vox Day’s views in toto, nor do I share his Arianism or his beliefs about genetics or cultural history):
“This is for the benefit of all the logical slowpokes. It is logic so basic that even those who are intellectually limited to the rhetorical level should be able to follow it:
- If you have the right to demand that I bake you a cake, then I have the right to force you to attend church, mosque, or synagogue.
- If you have the right to fire me because you don’t like my political position on the legality of homogamy, I have the right to fire you because I don’t like your political position on the legality of homosexuality.
- If you have the right to deny me access to the news media because I don’t believe in climate change, I have the right to deny you access to the media because you don’t believe in God.
If atheists truly want a power struggle for the right to be intolerant, Christians will eventually engage and win. Because we will die before we will give up our beliefs and you will not. We invented the Crusade and the Inquisition, two institutions so historically intimidating that atheists still shiver and tell each other scary stories about them centuries after the event.
We will revive them before we will abandon our faith. And while we would prefer to live with both Christian and traditional Constitutional values, if we are forced to choose between the two, we will choose the former without even thinking twice.”
Andrew Sullivan on the persecution of heretics by gay-rights bigots:
“The guy who had the gall to express his First Amendment rights and favor Prop 8 in California by donating $1,000 has just been scalped by some gay activists. After an OKCupid decision to boycott Mozilla, the recently appointed Brendan Eich just resigned under pressure:
In a post at Mozilla’s official blog, executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker confirmed the news with an unequivocal apology on the company’s behalf. “Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it,” Baker wrote. “We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.”
The action comes days after dating site OKCupid became the most vocal opponent of Eich’s hiring. Mozilla offered repeated statements about LGBT inclusivity within the company over the past two weeks, but those never came with a specific response from Eich about his thousands of dollars of donations in support of Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that sought to ban gay marriage in the state.
Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.
Update: A continuation of my stance here and my response to dissenting readers here.”
[Lila: Of course, the “religious right” of Sullivan’s piece is a bit of a strawman. The real thought-control is always from the left, these days.]
Well, just after Nancy Powell (the US envoy during the inception of the fake-slaver nanny case) bit the dust, we now have news that Devyani Khobragade is being charged again, this time in India by the CBI:
“In fresh trouble for the Indian diplomat, the Central Bureau of Investigation has decided to file a chargesheet against her and her father, Uttam Khobragade, in the Adarsh Housing scam.
Sources said the chargesheet against the two would be filed in the next couple of weeks after the agency found “documentary evidence” to prove that Devyani obtained a flat in Adarsh Housing society on the basis of a false affidavit.”
This is probably a bit of grand-standing ahead of the April elections to show that the government is quite capable of investigating its own. It’s more evidence to to suggest that both Khobragade and Powell were disposable entities in a larger game.
This is Nancy Powell, former US envoy to India.
This is Indian consular head, Devyani Khobragade, who is married and has children.
Khobragade and other Indian diplomats were at frequent logger-heads with the US State Dept. on a number of issues – from the issue of domestic labor to the Indian SC’s ruling criminalizing homosexual activity.
That happened just before the arrest of Khobragade and her subsequent strip-search.
“It was a series of diplomatic cables sent on behalf of US ambassador Nancy Powell that led to her being forced to resign by the US State Department, which didn’t want to be saddled with the Nancy legacy for doing business with a new government in New Delhi.
Top diplomatic sources said that Powell authorised cables during diplomat Devyani Khobragade arrest row described the Indian position as weak and that it will not escalate the matter as the country was in an election mode, the reverse happened because of elections round the corner there was an unprecedented Indian anger and response which dipped the relationship to an all time low.
Earlier too Powell was blamed for not advising the Washington to do business with Narendra Modi and the US only courted Narendra Modi recently after the intervention of the US State Department.
The envoy was also blamed for being on frequent trekking tours and even the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi had informed the interlocutors in Washington that her conduct was not helpful to the relationship.
Earlier in the day, US Ambassador to India Nancy Powell has resigned from her post, days after speculation that she may be shipped out.
“US Ambassador to India Nancy J. Powell announced in a US MIssion Town Hall meeting March 31 that she has submitted her resignation to President Obama and, as planned for some time, will retire to her home in Delaware before the end of May,” an announcement in the US Embassy website said on Monday night”
Comment:
Search for the posts on Khobragade on this blog and you’ll see we were right on the money in this case – legally, morally, and politically.
As for Ambassador Powell, what went wrong can be summed up in one sentence:
Ideologues don’t do diplomacy. They’re only good at war-making, verbal and physical.
The New American has a disturbing story on a radical invasion of parental rights:
(h/t to Laurence Vance at LRC blog):
“Citing a radical United Nations treaty known as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), lawmakers in Scotland approved a deeply controversial new law assigning an individual government overseer to each and every child in the country charged with monitoring their development. However, the draconian measure, which has sparked criticism and outrage around the world as a brazen assault on parental rights and privacy, is already in the process of being challenged in court.”
Beverley Eakman explains here why the UN’s definition of “human rights” differs fundamentally from the US definition, being more a guarantee by the government of specific outcomes, and thus, Marxist, by definition.
