Wholly Cow!

Kannada Prabha has this news item and we have no comments.

UPDATE: Apparently many private companies have beaten Madhya Pradesh government in this effort. Read the full MSNBC story here. Do we need any more proof that private enterprise is better than public sector?

Still Silent... II

Vijaya Karnataka editors still have not commented about a matter that's being discussed all over the state. Today's (November 16th, 2005) editorial is about Bihar.

On an unrelated topic, Mr.Natwar Singh is being attacked from both left and right.

In Praja Vani, Kuldip Nayyar writes the following:

In Vijaya Karnataka, S.Gurumurty writes:

Still Silent...

Vijaya Karnataka editors are still silent about the actions of Kannada activists. Still no editorial comment. Are they afraid? Your guess is as good as ours.

On an unrelated issue, we must praise Vijaya Karnataka about the article on Wall Mart. Quite frankly it is a point of view that's rarely seen in the Kannada news media.

Here is the gist:


On the other hand Praja Vani has an article with the still fashionable left-wing orthodox complaint about foreign investments

Here is the gist:

Shame!

On Friday the mayor of Belagaum was visiting Bangalore for some official work. While he was at the Legislators Home, he was attacked by some Kannada Activists.

Take a look at the picture. This is what love for Kannada has come to. SHAME!

(Picture from Vijaya Karnataka)

Praja Vani rightly condemned it in its editorial. Here is the gist.

You can find Praja Vani's news story on this act here. In our opinion it is better than the ones in Vijaya Karnataka and Kannada Prabha.

Kannada Prabha also had an editorial. However, unlike Praja Vani, it was less unequivocal. In fact, the first few paragraphs did not even mention this shameful act. Instead, it talked about the actions of Belagam Municipal Corporation.

While it called the act of these self styled Kannada "activists" as unacceptable in any civil society, it did not directly say this act a criminal one. Instead it mere called it "attracting the rules of criminal procedure code".

The editorial also ended equivocally:


The editors of number one Kannada newspaper, Vijaya Karnataka, have remained silent on this issue till today (November 14th, 2005). When the other two major Kannada newspapers wrote about this issue, the editorial in the paper was about Madhu Dandavate who died on Saturday (November 13, 2005). However, it has a letter written jointly by U.R.Anantamurty and others that condemns this shameful act:

Natwar Sings.. The Hindu Joins The Chorus

Mr.Natwar Singh -- the former foreign minister of India -- is in the news off late for wrong reasons.

In September an American Congressman questioned Mr.Singh's mental competence by calling him "dense".

Then his name figured in the report submitted to UN by Paul Volcker who investigated the corruption and kick-backs in the oil-for-food program in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Mr.Singh was forced to resign from his position.

On Tuesday The Hindu published an article to voice Mr.Prakash Karat's defense of Mr.Singh. Mr.Karat as you may know is the General Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist). According to Mr.Karat Volcker's committee itself is " to project the whole programme as a corrupt scheme".

As if not satisfied with providing Mr.Karat enough ink to defend Mr.Singh, on Wednesday, The Hindu published an opinion piece written by him. Good Communist that he is, Mr.Karat used the it to bash US and say all the things that is expected of him. He wrote: "Those who mounted the attack on the U.N. and the OFFP are totally silent about the loot of Iraq and the profiteering by U.S. corporations." Like a true intellectual , he also took enough care to remain "totally silent" about Saddam Hussein's atrocities.

Is Natwar Singh "dense"? We don't know. Is he a corrupt man? Again we don't know. But he seems to have no qualms about sharing platforms with a convicted felon who served time in jail. The convicted felon we are talking about is Lyndon LaRouche.

Mr.LaRouche is an American "politician" who runs his "party" like a cult. His ideology has shifted from far-left to far-right to now far-left. He is best known for being a perennial candidate for US presidency. In 1988 he was convicted for mail-fraud and sentenced to a 18 year jail term. In 1994 he was released on parole after serving 5 years in jail. He has many conspiratorial views including ones such as the Beatles being the "product shaped" by the Psychological Warfare Division of the British Intelligence service and AIDS possibly being a creation of "Soviet biological-warfare apparatus".

You can read more about Mr.Lyndon LaRouche here.

Due to his history and his kooky views, he is not taken seriously by anyone in the US mainstream.

Then again, The Hindu ("India's National Newspaper") and the Indian politicians are not in US mainstream. Either they don't know who he is or they don't care.

In May, 2003 when Mr.LaRouche visited Bangalore, some of our politicians were happy to join him. Chief among them were left-wingers Mr.Natwar Singh and Chandrajit Yadav. When left-wingers join with Western idiots to denounce US, our newspapers like The Hindu have to cover, no?!

Like a true-stenographer The Hindu reporter wrote about Mr.LaRouche's comments about "growing inflation" in US at that time. A simple internet search would have told that it was not true. Of course, it is too much ask from our reporters, don't you think?!

As an added bonus for The Hindu, Mr.LaRouche also seems to love China the darling of the newspaper.

[Note: We had earlier written about Mr.LaRouche in Kannada as part of an article about media credibility. We love recycling!]

It's All Relative...Even The Truth

The entire staff of 108 Sullu H.Q. recently found this particular article by Mr.Bhat. It's about .. among other things, Albert Einstein. And... you guessed it! It has many things which seem to have no basis in facts.

Due to a bit of sloppy writing, Mr.Bhat leaves the impression that Einstein got the Nobel Prize for his theories on Relativity and E=mc². Actually, the Nobel committee cited Einstein's work in photo-electric effect in awarding him the prize.

Mr.Bhat writes that Einstein had received "ranks" (high honor) in both mathematics and physics. In truth, due to his some what brash personality, Einstein's professors did not particularly like him. Forget about high-honors, he barely managed to get his diploma.

Mr.Bhat writes that after graduation Einstein worked as a waiter in a restaurant (hotel) and eventually got the position of a college lecturer through a customer.

Here is what Wikipedia says:

Upon graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post, mostly because his brashness as a young man had apparently irritated most of his professors. The father of a classmate helped him obtain employment as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office

Mr.Bhat further writes about Einstein begging the hotel customers for tutoring assignments and being an object of ridicule for such an abject behavior. According to Mr.Bhat this behavior even led to the termination of his waiting job once the hotel owner knew about it.

If these events did in fact happen, there seem to be no records. None of Einstein's biographies mention anything of this sort.

Mr.Bhat also writes about Einstein in desperation throwing all his certificates, awards and notebooks into a bin in front of his house.

Again, no such incident seems to have happened in Einstein's life.

By the way, Mr.Bhat had earlier written about a similar incident in the life of famed British journalist Sir Harold Evans. We had blogged about it. Then as now, there seem to be no records to indicate that the incident did indeed happen.

Due to a bit of careless writing --in our opinion-- Mr.Bhat leaves the impression that Einstein was working as a lecturer in a local college when he first wrote about Relativity. It is not right. It is very well known that he was working in the Swiss Patent office at that time.

In the entire article Mr.Bhat does not mention Swiss Patent office even once. However, Einstein's working in a hotel gets many paragraphs. Why? Is it because working in a Swiss Patent office does not fit well with Mr.Bhat's inspirational narrative of people rising from really dire conditions? We at 108 Sullu World H.Q. do not want to speculate. At least, not this time.

As the saying goes, we report, you decide.