Never let it be said that there's racial or religious discrimination in India! Oh... wait a minute...
OK, let it be said. In Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat, police in Surat district dressed actors in white skullcaps and long tunics to play the part of "militants" -- "Islamic" implied -- in mock security drills. The whole exercise was captured on video, as was another drill in Narmada district in which the "militants", to add a bit more realism, shouted "Islam Zindabad (Long live Islam)!"
Muslim leaders in India and the neighbouring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh have called the videos "atrocious and highly condemnable". They say the videos stereotype Muslims, who make up nearly 14% of India's 1.2 billion population, as narrow-minded, fanatical, terrorists bent on murdering all infidels, yada yada yada, whereas Islam is, as we all know, the Religion of Peace(TM).
The exercise was "a mistake", said Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel. "It's wrong to link religion with terrorism," he said. "The issue has been resolved and the matter should be put to rest now. The mistake has been rectified by my good Mrs. Patel." [Ed., please check that quote for accuracy.]
Police initially tried to brush off the criticism. Inspector Sherlock Patel [Ed., please check name] said the skullcaps were used "to give [the ones portraying terrorists] a different look", but later apologized saying the situation could have been avoided, "had not someone done something evil to the plans." [Ed., please...]
In the months since becoming prime minister, Mr. Modi has talked about inclusiveness, but his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has its core base among hardline Hindus and many Hindu fundamentalist groups -- yes, the Hindus have fundamentalists too -- have recently been accused of forcibly converting Muslims and Christians. Mahatma Gandhi is no doubt spinning in his grave. [Wouldn't he have been cremated, not buried? Ed.]
Speaking of the Great Soul and religious tolerance, BBC News reports that a row broke out a few days ago after Indian government minister Niranjan Jyoti used an abusive term to refer to non-Hindus, by asking people at a public rally to choose between Ramzada (children of the Hindu god Ram) and Haramzada (bastards). Prime Minister Modi said he disapproved of her language but refused to sack her.
Friday, January 2, 2015
"Don't touch that! It's H2SO4!" shouted Tom acidly
Translated into many languages, the books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Tom Swift has also been the subject of a board game and a television show. Development of a feature film based on the series was announced in 2008, but as far as I know, it never went into production.
What makes Tom Swift interesting to me is the way he talked. The numerous ghost writers who penned Tom Swift (under the name of Victor W. Appleton) never let Tom say anything simply. There was always an adverb following the quote to describe how Tom said it -- sternly, seriously, happily and so on.
This was such a cliché that people started making jokes about it -- puns or "Wellerisms". Examples: "Let's have a Judy Garland show!", said Tom gaily. - "Where's my favourite picture magazine?", asked Tom Lifelessly - "I can't find my old board game," said Tom Cluelessly.
Apparently Walt is not the only fan of these jokes, known for decades now as "Tom Swifties". This morning I discovered a whole website devoted to Tom Swifties, which includes a link to a dictionary of them. "I recommend it to all lovers of puns and word play," said Tom encouragingly! [That wasn't a very good one. Ed.]
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015!
From our cabin in the pines
Walt, Poor Len [and Ed.!]
wish all our readers
If you follow the Julian calendar, please visit this page again after two weeks.
"Out of Mao's Shadow" -- true stories of oppression in Communist China
The late Right Honourable Pierre-Eliot Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada from 20 April 1968, to 4 June 1979, and again from 3 March 1980 to 29 June 1984. During his reign -- I use the word deliberately -- he changed Canada from the Great White North to the Great(ish) Not-so-white North, just as he promised.
His son, Justin, aka Trudeau Lite, is now leader of the Liberal Party, and poised, some think, to become prime minister if Steve Harper gets his just desserts next October. Trudeau II caused a bit of a stir amongst Canuck chattering classes when he expressed admiration for the way the Chinese government gets things done.
He had been asked a question about which nation’s administration he most admired and why, and gave this response. "There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime. I mean there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about, of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted, that I find quite interesting."
That's kind of like saying that Hitler built some nice highways, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin deserves credit for running a pretty tight ship. It's true that the Communist rulers of the self-styled People's Republic of China (PRC) know how to get things done. Did they not dam up the mighty Yangtze and build a high-speed railway that will take you from Beijing into the heart of occupied Tibet? And how about the 2008 Olympics? Great accomplishments, to be sure. But at what cost?
The fact is that Communist China is one of the most authoritarian police states in the world. The price for its economic and material achievements is paid by the Chinese people in physical suffering -- imprisonment, torture and execution -- and deprivation of the human rights and freedoms.
In the early 90s, Beijing lost out to Sydney in its bid to host the Olympics, because of Western criticism of China's abysmal human rights record. When it applied again, in 2001, the pitch was that its record had improved, and if it was awarded the Olympics, it would do better. And so Beijing was awarded the Games. People wanted to believe -- then as now -- that increasing prosperity and engagement with the international community would soften China's authoritarian political system.
And did it? The answer, according to Philip P. Pan, is NO! Mr. Pan was the Washington Post's Beijing bureau chief from 2000 through 2007, and witnessed firsthand the persecution and prosecution of Chinese citizens who had the courage to assert the rights supposedly guaranteed to them under the PRC's constitution. He also investigated accounts of the fate of others who had earlier -- before 2000 but after the death of Chairman Mao -- fought and died for a freer society.
In Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China (Simon & Schuster, 2008), Mr. Pan presents detailed profiles of 11 Chinese who fought for a freer society. The result is a not-so-pretty picture of what life is like for large numbers of ordinary Chinese in the post-Mao era of economic and political "development".
Mr. Pan's book is history, written in the best and most engaging way, in tales from the lives of real people. The author takes us inside the dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of ordinary men and women struggling to come to terms with their nation's past and take control of its future. Among the 11 people we meet are...
* An elderly surgeon who exposed the Communist cover-up of the SARS epidemic, then, years later, had the courage to write about his experience during the Tiananmen Square Massacre. For his pains, Jiang Yanyong, "The Honest Doctor" (that's the title of Chapter 8) was detained, interrogated, subjected to house arrest, and forbidden ever again to visit his children in the USA.
* A filmmaker, Hu Jie, who spent years making an unauthorized documentary on the execution of a young woman, Lin Zhao, during the Cultural Revolution. Ms Lin was at first an avid, slogan-shouting, little-red-book-waving Communist. But her eyes were opened by the mindless violence, mass starvation and other horrors unleashed by Chairman Mao. Her denunciation of the Communist Party and its "system" landed her in prisons and mental hospitals, where she wrote hundreds of pages of thoughts and pleas in her own blood. Hu Jie's film "Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul" (Chapter 2, followed by "Blood and Love", Chapter 3) was an underground success, but led inevitably to the knock of state security agents on his door.
* A blind man, Chen Guangcheng, who wasn't satisfied to be a masseur or musician -- about the only work open to blind people in China then and now -- so learned the law by self-study. Although not a lawyer, Mr. Chen devoted himself to bringing court challenges on behalf of the poor and oppressed, especially peasants who were being taxed to the point of starvation, and suffering the loss of millions of babies aborted or killed at birth because of China's evil One Child Policy. We read in "Blind Justice" (Chapter 11) how Mr. Chen was abducted, beaten and imprisoned, but lived to tell his story.
Do any of the stories have a happy ending? Yes and no. Like some films where titles at the end tell you what became of the characters, Out of Mao's Shadow has an epilogue in which we learn what became of Dr. Jiang, Mr. Hu, Mr. Chen and the others. Except for Lin Zhao, they all survived. They are still alive.
But did they win their battles? For the most part, they fought the Communists to a draw or, at best, a narrow win. But the larger war for basic human rights and freedoms continues. 11 Davids -- or 11,000 or 110,000, as in Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution -- are not yet enough to be more than a mere annoyance to the Goliath that is the Communist Party of China.
Out of Mao's Shadow challenges the conventional wisdom that free markets automatically lead to free societies. Justin Trudeau should read it. So should Pope Francis, Hussein Obama and all the other naive leaders of the West who think that "engaging" and "dialoguing" with the Communists will make them change. And yes, you should read it too!
His son, Justin, aka Trudeau Lite, is now leader of the Liberal Party, and poised, some think, to become prime minister if Steve Harper gets his just desserts next October. Trudeau II caused a bit of a stir amongst Canuck chattering classes when he expressed admiration for the way the Chinese government gets things done.
He had been asked a question about which nation’s administration he most admired and why, and gave this response. "There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime. I mean there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about, of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted, that I find quite interesting."
That's kind of like saying that Hitler built some nice highways, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin deserves credit for running a pretty tight ship. It's true that the Communist rulers of the self-styled People's Republic of China (PRC) know how to get things done. Did they not dam up the mighty Yangtze and build a high-speed railway that will take you from Beijing into the heart of occupied Tibet? And how about the 2008 Olympics? Great accomplishments, to be sure. But at what cost?
The fact is that Communist China is one of the most authoritarian police states in the world. The price for its economic and material achievements is paid by the Chinese people in physical suffering -- imprisonment, torture and execution -- and deprivation of the human rights and freedoms.
In the early 90s, Beijing lost out to Sydney in its bid to host the Olympics, because of Western criticism of China's abysmal human rights record. When it applied again, in 2001, the pitch was that its record had improved, and if it was awarded the Olympics, it would do better. And so Beijing was awarded the Games. People wanted to believe -- then as now -- that increasing prosperity and engagement with the international community would soften China's authoritarian political system.
And did it? The answer, according to Philip P. Pan, is NO! Mr. Pan was the Washington Post's Beijing bureau chief from 2000 through 2007, and witnessed firsthand the persecution and prosecution of Chinese citizens who had the courage to assert the rights supposedly guaranteed to them under the PRC's constitution. He also investigated accounts of the fate of others who had earlier -- before 2000 but after the death of Chairman Mao -- fought and died for a freer society.
Mr. Pan's book is history, written in the best and most engaging way, in tales from the lives of real people. The author takes us inside the dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of ordinary men and women struggling to come to terms with their nation's past and take control of its future. Among the 11 people we meet are...
* An elderly surgeon who exposed the Communist cover-up of the SARS epidemic, then, years later, had the courage to write about his experience during the Tiananmen Square Massacre. For his pains, Jiang Yanyong, "The Honest Doctor" (that's the title of Chapter 8) was detained, interrogated, subjected to house arrest, and forbidden ever again to visit his children in the USA.
* A filmmaker, Hu Jie, who spent years making an unauthorized documentary on the execution of a young woman, Lin Zhao, during the Cultural Revolution. Ms Lin was at first an avid, slogan-shouting, little-red-book-waving Communist. But her eyes were opened by the mindless violence, mass starvation and other horrors unleashed by Chairman Mao. Her denunciation of the Communist Party and its "system" landed her in prisons and mental hospitals, where she wrote hundreds of pages of thoughts and pleas in her own blood. Hu Jie's film "Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul" (Chapter 2, followed by "Blood and Love", Chapter 3) was an underground success, but led inevitably to the knock of state security agents on his door.
* A blind man, Chen Guangcheng, who wasn't satisfied to be a masseur or musician -- about the only work open to blind people in China then and now -- so learned the law by self-study. Although not a lawyer, Mr. Chen devoted himself to bringing court challenges on behalf of the poor and oppressed, especially peasants who were being taxed to the point of starvation, and suffering the loss of millions of babies aborted or killed at birth because of China's evil One Child Policy. We read in "Blind Justice" (Chapter 11) how Mr. Chen was abducted, beaten and imprisoned, but lived to tell his story.
Do any of the stories have a happy ending? Yes and no. Like some films where titles at the end tell you what became of the characters, Out of Mao's Shadow has an epilogue in which we learn what became of Dr. Jiang, Mr. Hu, Mr. Chen and the others. Except for Lin Zhao, they all survived. They are still alive.
But did they win their battles? For the most part, they fought the Communists to a draw or, at best, a narrow win. But the larger war for basic human rights and freedoms continues. 11 Davids -- or 11,000 or 110,000, as in Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution -- are not yet enough to be more than a mere annoyance to the Goliath that is the Communist Party of China.
Out of Mao's Shadow challenges the conventional wisdom that free markets automatically lead to free societies. Justin Trudeau should read it. So should Pope Francis, Hussein Obama and all the other naive leaders of the West who think that "engaging" and "dialoguing" with the Communists will make them change. And yes, you should read it too!
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Attention Walmart shoppers! Please check your guns at the door!
This just in from beautiful downtown Hayden ID -- a town of about 9000 souls up in the Idaho panhandle, about 40 miles north of Coeur d’Alene.
Errr, better make that 8999 souls. A spokesthingy for the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department has confirmed that an unidentified woman was shot dead by a 2-year-old boy at the local Walmart yesterday.
It was an accident, you understand. The kid was one of several children with whom the woman was shopping. He reached into her purse in search of who-knows-what and put his little hand on a pistol she had concealed there. It discharged, as the cops say, killing her instantly.
There's a lesson there somewhere, something to do with parenting skills, the American gun culture and possibly karma. Walt invites his reader to explain the lesson in 25 words or less. The prize and the name of the winner will be announced next year.
Errr, better make that 8999 souls. A spokesthingy for the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department has confirmed that an unidentified woman was shot dead by a 2-year-old boy at the local Walmart yesterday.
It was an accident, you understand. The kid was one of several children with whom the woman was shopping. He reached into her purse in search of who-knows-what and put his little hand on a pistol she had concealed there. It discharged, as the cops say, killing her instantly.
There's a lesson there somewhere, something to do with parenting skills, the American gun culture and possibly karma. Walt invites his reader to explain the lesson in 25 words or less. The prize and the name of the winner will be announced next year.
10 worst 9-1-1 calls of 2014
The year-end wouldn't complete without a list of some kind: best this, worst that, top ten the other. Walt has been making a list [and checking it twice? Ed.] but hesitates to publish it for fear of offending someone and being hailed in front of a human rights tribunal or the Legion of Decency.
As a substitute, and in keeping with the tradition, we present the 10 worst 9-1-1 calls of 2014, as compiled by E-Comm, the largest 9-1-1 call centre in British Columbia, and published by CBC News. In Letterman order, here they are:
10. "What's the date today?"
9. Home internet isn't working.
8. Wants help finding lost glasses.
7. Food they ordered is cold.
6. "Is today a stat holiday?"
5. "Can you call a taxi for me?"
4. "What's the number for my travel agency?"
3. Pizza not fresh; wants a replacement slice.
2. "What's the fine for jaywalking?"
1. Wi-fi at a local coffee shop isn't working!
These aren't as far-fetched as you might think. Long ago, before there was 9-1-1, I used to get calls like these from my sister-in-law! And what ever happened to 4-1-1? "Information" operators used to keep lists of stupid questions they got asked every day!
Walt's Agents 1 and 78, both of whom have manned ["personned", surely. Ed.] information desks, have similar lists. One day I'm going to put them all in a book. People will have to call 9-1-1 to find out where to get it.
Footnote: Readers in the UK are advised to dial 9-9-9 for answers to their stupid questions. People wishing to call the Springfield Police Department should call 9-1-2.
As a substitute, and in keeping with the tradition, we present the 10 worst 9-1-1 calls of 2014, as compiled by E-Comm, the largest 9-1-1 call centre in British Columbia, and published by CBC News. In Letterman order, here they are:
10. "What's the date today?"
9. Home internet isn't working.
8. Wants help finding lost glasses.
7. Food they ordered is cold.
6. "Is today a stat holiday?"
5. "Can you call a taxi for me?"
4. "What's the number for my travel agency?"
3. Pizza not fresh; wants a replacement slice.
2. "What's the fine for jaywalking?"
1. Wi-fi at a local coffee shop isn't working!
These aren't as far-fetched as you might think. Long ago, before there was 9-1-1, I used to get calls like these from my sister-in-law! And what ever happened to 4-1-1? "Information" operators used to keep lists of stupid questions they got asked every day!
Walt's Agents 1 and 78, both of whom have manned ["personned", surely. Ed.] information desks, have similar lists. One day I'm going to put them all in a book. People will have to call 9-1-1 to find out where to get it.
Footnote: Readers in the UK are advised to dial 9-9-9 for answers to their stupid questions. People wishing to call the Springfield Police Department should call 9-1-2.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Looks like "a pile of trash" to me too
- What's dis yere? A pile of trash?
- NO, fool. Dat be a memorial to Mike Brown, killed by the racist Ferguson police!
- But it sho looks like trash. Look, you can even see where it been burned.
- Hey, dat was an accident. Somebody din't know dat if you puts candles next to teddy bears and balloons, dey gonna burn.
- Well why it lyin' all down da middle ob de street like dat?
- Fool! Din't I tell ya, all dem Ferguson people racist! Some honky done drove his car into de memorial.
Well, I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. But "a pile of trash" was what it looked like to Officer Timothy Zoll of the Ferguson MO Police Department. At least, that's what he told a reporter for the Washington Post who called what about a tip that the trash had been trashed on Christmas Day by an unsympathetic (and doubtless white) motorist.
The Post quoted Officer Zoll as saying, "I don't know that a crime has occurred. But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?"
Seems to Walt like a good question, but the Post characterized the comment as... wait for it... racist. But St. Louis radio station KMOX later reported that Zoll told its reporter he had been misquoted and actually said that the memorial might have been destroyed by a motorist unfamiliar with the area who had mistaken it for a pile of trash.
That explanation didn't wash with the cop's bosses though. They said yesterday that "the officer admitted to Department investigators that he did in fact make the remarks attributed to him, and that he misled his superiors when asked about the contents of the interview."
For his sins of racial insensitivity and political incorrectness, Officer Zoll has now been placed on unpaid leave, while the investigation into the dastardly crime continues.
City officials were at pains to note that police Chief Thomas Jackson kept investigating the statement even after Officer Zoll initially denied making it. "The City of Ferguson wants to emphasize that negative remarks about the Michael Brown memorial do not reflect the feelings of the Ferguson Police Department and are in direct contradiction to the efforts of City officials to relocate the memorial to a more secure location."
A more secure location? Walt suggests the Ferguson Memorial Sanitary Landfill. And my suggestion has nothing to do with the identity or race of the dear departed who was being "memorialized". It's just that I am sick and tired of seeing these unsightly and pointless "memorials" that pile up on the site of any sudden and public death.
The practice of leaving flowers, candles, teddy bears, balloons, crudely lettered signs and other detritus at the scene of the accident or crime is maudlin, mawkish and pathetic. Pointless, too.
The only people who are made better off by these empty gestures are the sellers of toys, flowers, candles and what-have-you. For them, a sudden death -- particularly of a child or other "innocent" -- is better than Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Christmas all rolled into one!
I don't know how, where or why this sloppy sentimental nonsense started, but I hope one day we'll see memorials, in the more dignified form of flowers and wreaths, confined to the cemeteries in which the victims are buried. Toys, balloons and suchlike dumped in the city streets deserve to be treated as... well... trash.
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