Bloodthirsty Liberal

What a wide and terrible chasm exists between people like Moshe’s nanny and the terrorists that took his parents. It is hard to imagine that we are all the same species.

- Aggie

What a Bow Wow:

President Obama welcomed Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the White House with words that have inspired snickers in New Delhi:

“Yours is the first official state visit of my presidency, its fitting that you and India be so recognised,” 48-year-old Obama told the 77-year-old Indian leader.

The general reaction in India has been: Who the heck does this guy think he is? Note to the Great Diplomat: When you do a head of state an honor, you don’t remind him, in public, of the fact that you have done him an honor, particularly in self-aggrandizing terms of this sort.

Come on, shorty, one little bow. You know you want to. I practically pitched forward ass over teakettle to the little Asian dude, and you won’t show a brother some love? What’s up with that?

Obama reminds me of King Lear asking his three daughters to out-flatter each other in their professions of love for him. Katie Couric is definitely Goneril; Chris Matthews is deliciously right for Regan (get it?); and we stand apart as Cordelia, saying “nothing.”

What we’ve learned about how it was carried out

I think I won’t quote any of it. It is fascinating, just go to the link and read it. It isn’t hard to imagine something like this in a large city anywhere.

- Aggie

Study Mein Kampf

Hitler’s Mein Kampf on Indian curriculum
By Isabel Janner
Created 22 Apr 2009 - 17:24

Hitler is being promoted as a management guru for business studies students in India, who are advised by lecturers to read Mein Kampf and Hitler’s autobiography for educational purposes.

Sales of Mein Kampf topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone in the past six months and are expected to rise further.

A spokesman for Embassy Books in Mumbai, who publish Mein Kampf, said: “People are looking at it from a business angle, especially as Hitler had such a strong influence on the world.

“Students are told to use Mein Kampf and draw parallels with India to learn business strategies. Even for non-students Hitler’s books are popular texts and are clearly displayed in most book stores around India.”

A business student living in Mumbai said that many people in India see Hitler as a good role model for directing a company and cite him as an inspiration in people management.

I suppose I should have something witty to say, but I just feel sick.

- Aggie

I feel like a boy in sixth grade telling fart jokes.

But it’s true.

Cows With Gas: India’s Contribution to Global Warming

India’s city slickers go back to basics AFP – This picture taken on MArch 14 shows a farmer watering his cattle in the village of Purushwadi, 140 miles …

By MADHUR SINGH / NEW DELHI Madhur Singh / New Delhi – Sat Apr 11, 2:00 am ET

Indolent cows languidly chewing their cud while befuddled motorists honk and maneuver their vehicles around them are images as stereotypically Indian as saffron-clad holy men and the Taj Mahal. Now, however, India’s ubiquitous cows - of which there are 283 million, more than anywhere else in the world - have assumed a more menacing role as they become part of the climate change debate.

By burping, belching and excreting copious amounts of methane - a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide - India’s livestock of roughly 485 million (including sheep and goats) contribute more to global warming than the vehicles they obstruct. With new research suggesting that emission of methane by Indian livestock is higher than previously estimated, scientists are furiously working at designing diets to help bovines and other ruminants eat better, stay more energetic and secrete lesser amounts of the offensive gas.

Last month, scientists at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad in western India published a pan-India livestock methane emission inventory, the first ever, which put the figure at 11.75 million metric tons per year, higher than 9 million metric tons estimated in 1994. This amount is likely to increase as higher incomes and consumption rates put more pressure on the country’s dairy industry to become even more productive.

Yes, let’s put all 283 million cows on a diet. Let’s reduce their roughage so they stop passing so much gas. I wonder if constipated cows are better for the environment?

- Aggie

When we last caught up with Ghandi’s grandson, he was slamming the Jews

But today he was arrested for going after Muslims:

PILIBHIT: The great-grandson of India’s first prime minister was arrested Saturday as police investigated charges against him of making hate speeches and inciting violence against Muslims ahead of national elections, a court official said.

A political furor erupted after Varun Gandhi, 29, was filmed comparing a rival Muslim politician to Osama bin Laden and threatening to cut the throats of Muslims at two political rallies earlier this month.

Gandhi belongs to the powerful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has produced three prime ministers over six decades and has long promoted a secular government and tolerance for religious minorities. However, he is a member of the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Gandhi drove Saturday through the streets of Pilibhit, a town in the state of Uttar Pradesh where he is seeking a parliamentary seat, accompanied by thousands of supporters waving saffron Hindu flags.

Whoops - my bad. This is the grandson that blames Jews for the world’s problems The Ghandi who just got arrested is his great grandson. He’s the younger generation.

Grandpa is spinning in his grave.

- Aggie

Muslims in India reject terrorism

There are nine bodies — all of them young men — that have been lying in a Mumbai hospital morgue since Nov. 29. They may be stranded there for a while because no local Muslim charity is willing to bury them in its cemetery. This is good news.

The nine are the Pakistani Muslim terrorists who went on an utterly senseless killing rampage in Mumbai on 26/11 — India’s 9/11 — gunning down more than 170 people, including 33 Muslims, scores of Hindus, as well as Christians and Jews. It was killing for killing’s sake. They didn’t even bother to leave a note.

All nine are still in the morgue because the leadership of India’s Muslim community has called them by their real name — “murderers” not “martyrs” — and is refusing to allow them to be buried in the main Muslim cemetery of Mumbai, the 7.5-acre Bada Kabrastan graveyard, run by the Muslim Jama Masjid Trust.

“People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim,” Hanif Nalkhande, a spokesman for the trust, told The Times of London. Eventually, one assumes, they will have to be buried, but the Mumbai Muslims remain defiant.

“Indian Muslims are proud of being both Indian and Muslim, and the Mumbai terrorism was a war against both India and Islam,” explained M.J. Akbar, the Indian-Muslim editor of Covert, an Indian investigative journal. “Terrorism has no place in Islamic doctrine. The Koranic term for the killing of innocents is ‘fasad.’ Terrorists are fasadis, not jihadis. In a beautiful verse, the Koran says that the killing of an innocent is akin to slaying the whole community. Since the … terrorists were neither Indian nor true Muslims, they had no right to an Islamic burial in an Indian Muslim cemetery.”

I’ll be honest: The world will be a safer and better place when Muslim leaders worldwide do just what the leadership in India has done. When killing of Jews in Israel is considered just as abhorrent as killing people in India, we will have peace. I remember hearing that the Messiah will come when we bring him through our good deeds. I’m not holding my breath.

- Aggie

This is from researchers at UCLA

WASHINGTON: In the hunt for Osama bin Laden, can researchers using scientific theories succeed where spooks and spy-craft has failed so far? Can
UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) pull off what the CIA and FBI haven’t been able to?

Bet on us, invite a team of UCLA geographers, who say they have a good idea of where the world’s no.1 terrorist
leader was at the end of 2001 — and perhaps where he has been in the years since. To cut to the chase, he is likely in one of three large compounds in Parachinar town in Pakistan’s Kurram Agency.

In a new study published on Monday, the geographers report that simple facts, publicly available satellite imagery and fundamental principles of geography place bin Laden in one of these buildings.

“If he’s still alive, he honestly could be sitting there right now,” says Thomas Gillespie, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of geography at UCLA. “It is still the safest tribal area and city in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northwest Pakistan and one of the only tribal areas that the US has not bombed with its unmanned Predators.”

(Even as Gillespie said this, US drones conducted their first ever Predator strike in Kurram Agency on Monday killing 30, and possibly lending some credence to the theory. The researchers advocate that the US first investigate — but not bomb — the three buildings.)

But to return to the science, the UCLA findings rely on two principles used in geography to predict the distribution of wildlife. The first, known as distance-decay theory, holds that as one travels farther away from a precise location with a specific composition of species — or, in this case, a specific composition of cultural and physical factors — the probability of finding spots with that same specific composition decreases exponentially.

The second, island biogeographic theory, holds that large and close islands have larger immigration rates and will support more species than smaller, more isolated islands. In other words, bin Laden isn’t very far from where he was last seen and is in a familiar setting with the resources he needs.

Going by distance-decay theory, the researchers started by drawing concentric circles around Tora Bora, bin Laden last known location, on a satellite map of the area at a distance of 10 kilometers — or 6.1 miles — apart. “The farther bin Laden moves from his last reported location into the more secular parts of Pakistan or into India, the greater the probability that he will be in an area with a different cultural composition, thereby increasing the
probability of his being captured or eliminated,” Gillespie says.

Then, informed by island biogeographic theory, the researchers scoured the rings for “city islands” — or distinctly separate settlements of considerable size. “Island biology theory predicts that he would find his way to the largest but least isolated city of that area,” explains Gillespie.

“If you get stuck on an island, you would want it to be Hawaii rather than one with a single palm tree. It’s a matter of resources.”

The approach, according to an article on the UCLA website, netted 26 settlements within a 12.4-mile radius of Tora Bora. With a 2.7-square-mile footprint, Parachinar turned out to be the largest and fourth-least isolated city. Based on bin Laden’s last known location, the researchers estimate that he must have traveled 1.9 miles over a 13,000-foot-high pass into Kurram and then headed for the largest city, which turns out to be Parachinar.

But how did they zero in on just three compounds from the thousands of structures in Parachinar? The team came up with a short list of the criteria that bin Laden would need for housing, based on well-known information about him, including his height (between 6′4″ and 6′6″, depending on the source), his medical condition (apparently in need of regular dialysis and, therefore, electricity to run the machine) and several basic assumptions, such as a need for security, protection, privacy and overhead cover to shield him from being spotted by planes, helicopters and satellites.

So they looked for buildings that could house someone taller than 6′4″ and were surrounded by walls more than 9 feet tall (both as judged by mid-afternoon shadows depicted on the satellite imagery), and that had more than three rooms, space separating them from nearby structures, electricity and a thick tree canopy.

Only three structures fit the criteria. The buildings also appeared to be the best fortified and among the largest in
Parachinar. While the three structures meet all six of the criteria that the researchers believe would be required for lodging bin Laden, an additional 16 structures in Parachinar appear to meet five of the six criteria. If bin Laden is not in the first three structures, the US military should investigate these other buildings, the study recommends.

I’m running out of excuses to avoid Inauguration Parties, and they’re all over the place up here. You think they’ll buy relapsing-remitting smallpox? You should see my pus-filled blisters. If forced to attend an Obama-orgy, I’m thinking of bursting them with my Palin ‘12 button.

But here’s one event I would definitely consider attending:

On Tuesday, Jan 20, two communities that have been directly hurt by radical, militant Islam, will join forces to tell President Barack Obama, “Yes we can-and must-defeat the jihadists.”

Calling themselves the Coalition for Peace, American Jewish and Hindu groups plan to demonstrate in Lafayette Park in front of the White House from1-4:30pm.

All their banners will essentially urge Mr. Obama to “protect the Free World from radical Islam.”

I think Mr. Obama will be too busy talking, engaging, exchanging views with radical Islam to actually protect anyone from it. But it’s a nice thought.

You won’t find this in the European or US MSM

After Israel launched its military attack on Hamas military installations in Gaza in response to repeated attacks on Israeli civilians, the Arab street wasted no time in demonstrating with passion against Israel. In Europe, many Westerners also took part in the protests.

Arab media expert Itamar Marcus points out differences of how Hamas and Fatah cover conflict

As an Egyptian Muslim now living in America, I ask myself why the Arab street and its supporters in the West never show similarly strong response against Islamic terrorists who target innocents worldwide and explode markets full of predominantly Muslim civilians in Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Turkey, etc. When you consider that the Israeli attack killed some 400 mostly Hamas militant in the first four days, the passive attitude of the Muslim world against the terrorists represents extreme hypocrisy. If it truly cared for Muslims’ lives, it should have demonstrated in the same numbers and with equal vehemence against the Islamists who murder hundreds of thousands of their fellow Muslims, not to mention the Hamas slaughter of rival Fatah members - women and children included.

Another question is why we have not seen a similarly strong reaction against the terrorists who conducted the latest attack in Mumbai. Many Indians, Westerners and Jews were killed. Yet there was no spontaneous eruption of outrage and demonstrations in Europe to denounce the attacks as in the case of Gaza. Are these lesser lives than those of the Palestinians? Where is the organized public fury for the wanton killing of Indians and Jews?

We have witnessed the burning of churches in Iraq at the hands of jihadists. We also know that thousands of Christian Iraqis have fled because the Islamists imposed on them the traditional Shari’a choice for non-Muslims: Convert to Islam, pay a humiliating tax (jizzia), or be killed. Yet, we have not heard any thing from the Arab street or its supporters. Only stone silence. Are Palestinian lives worth more than those of Christians in Iraq?

…Then there is plain old anti-Semitism. It is so easy to demonstrate against the Jews or Israel and extremely rare to see demonstrations in support of Jewish victims, such as the altruistic rabbi and his wife who were singled out for special torture in Mumbai by the Islamists. It does the bloodstained European conscience good to be able to point a finger at supposed Israeli “aggression” to help alleviate some of its own lingering guilt.

Again, it is worth checking out the link.

- Aggie