Columnists

"I've been hearing that from envious people since I was in standard 1. Between 1971 when I started Primary School to when I completed by Bar Exams, I became number 1 numerous times and whenever that happened, those who had performed dismally would shout "Pride Comes Before A Fall!" Mediocre performers have continued to shout the same thing at me ever since. The good news is that green envy has never sabotaged the progress of any determined organic intellectual and visionary leader. So, yours are like the croaks of toads in a pond. They will never deter the Lion from drinking water."

"The US hates having to admit it was ever wrong."

"This is the state of the Bengali media. There is no free media, in fact, it is not even the media, they are just typists for the state government."

"The media in Bengal today is not free media, even though there is no gun trained on the media there. These people do not hide the truth or news because of the fear of guns, but they hide it because of money. The government gives money to media houses, and according to the government, the news is reported. This practice has far-reaching consequences. Suppose a historian is collecting information about Bengal violence in the future, what will he find? When he looks at the current news and newspapers, he will think ‘nothing major happened, some minor incidents happened.’"

"If we look at the political aspect of the demographic change in West Bengal, today there is a political veto of the Muslim community. This means that it is the Muslim community that decides who will rule, and how. This also means that Mamata Banerjee may be ruling, there may be 10 more Bengali Hindu ministers, but the one who will be driving them from the backroom will be the Muslim community."

"It cannot be denied that this is happening in Bengal. 30% of the total population there are Muslims (some say 23%, some 25%, but 30% if the voting figures are to be considered). The border districts adjoining Bangladesh, such as Nadia, Dinajpur, Murshidabad, Malda, and a large part of South 24 Parganas, all have become completely Muslim dominated."

"The violence that started on the afternoon of May 2, 2021, had only one objective – to break the backbone of the BJP organization. BJP got 38% votes, the Majority of the Hindu vote was in favor of the BJP, which means the support of a large percentage of voters was with us. Therefore, the aim was to create such an environment using violence that in the future, support for BJP should be eliminated, and the backbone of the organization should be broken. The fear should be such that the supporters of the BJP do not come out of the house and the same thing happened."

"It’s true. This violence was unexpected. Nobody expected it. There is victory and defeat in elections, but the way violence started right from the counting centers has never been seen before. To date, this has not been seen anywhere in India. The BJP workers or even the organization were not prepared for this level of violence, this allegation is absolutely true. There have been attacks on our workers. Close to 50,000 workers had to be homeless. Close to 20 people were murdered. During all this, our organization could not help its workers in the slightest."

"Having exposed its fangs publicly, Washington will not readily admit it miscalculated horribly. If Modi comes to power, a working relationship with the US Embassy will be established. But let us have no doubts that the repair job will also be accompanied by surreptitious attempts to undermine him."

"Today, the countries that had kept up a civilised relationship with Modi despite the US’s strictures—these include Japan, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Israel[,] and even China—are happy with the knowledge that their transition to a new regime will be extra smooth. Nor will the others who changed their tune midway feel disadvantaged. It is only the US that invested politically in the witch-hunt against Modi that feels seriously threatened."

"[...] France [...] too had invested heavily in the Congress establishment and in the skewed advice of its so-called India experts."

"For them, flaunting an anti-Modi badge ensured privileged access into the corridors of UPA power. And there's no denying that until at least a year ago, the US remained the flavour of the season for both Congress ministers and a supplicant media."

"Whatever the reasons behind dubbing Modi an international pariah and the subject of a diplomatic boycott involving both the US and the European Union member states, one conclusion was inescapable: it was a brazen attempt to pronounce judgment on the internal affairs of a sovereign country. Modi, after all, hadn’t been held guilty [of] "mass murder" by an Indian criminal court. Indeed, there were no charges against him then or subsequently. Yes, the Gujarat leader had been pilloried mercilessly by both his political opponents and the human rights lobby that has formidable international links. A political aversion to Modi was translated into the diplomatic censure of a man who held a [c]onstitutional position. It was a step too far and one that didn't lend itself to an easy U-turn."

"I don’t think that this arrest will either frighten or silence Arnab Goswami. It will enhance his appeal and make the Shiv Sena and Congress appear ridiculous."

"In 2008 or 2009, I approached a leading publisher with a proposal to write a political study of the Modi phenomenon. Their editor got back saying that the staff was horrified at the very idea that a sympathetic study of Modi should even be considered."

"An atmosphere of hate was systematically built up. The whole purpose of it was to suggest that only one community has a veto over decision-making in India"

"Some people (cabal members) who thought that they had a monopoly over truth and over wisdom found that the masses didn’t agree with them…These people are now confused …and want to say that they’re the repository of the entire truth and everything else is false consciousness."

"It is one thing of offer, as Mr. Advani has consistently done, a powerful critique of the prevailing political culture. But the problem lies in designing an alternative... How, for example, does the concept of Hindu Rashtra...square with the notion of 'justice for all and appeasement of none? The campaign for the Ram Mandir, while important in symbolic terms, is unlikely to be a substitute for a comprehensive, alternative philosophy. Having tapped the reservoirs of anti-status quo, the BJP is unlikely to progress if its critique stops at the secular-communal issue. Mr. Advani has struck a powerful blow at the shibboleths of Nehruvian consensus; his successor will be frittering away the advantages if a simultaneous assault is not launched on the other article of the reviled faith - socialism."

"Many of those who read history at Delhi in the mid-1970s and later, still bear the ugly scars inflicted by the thought police of sarkari Marxism. 'There are two interpretations of history', a leading representative of the Red Cretin Brigade used to inform his students casually, 'the bourgeois interpretation and the Marxist interpretation, and the Marxist interpretation is the correct one.' ...Whereas the British Marxists established their reputation by crafting their radical concerns their Indian counterparts took cheeky short cuts. it may also explain why substantive research on Indian history has increasingly become the prerogative of British, and a few American and Australian universities. The presiding deities of Indian historiography have meanwhile devoted themselves to writing politically correct text books that present history as chapters of received wisdom. They have also drafted resolutions for the Indian History Congress and written articles in the press on the Ayodhya issue."

"Despite their old marketing campaign, Apple is not the company "for the rest of us." Apple's primary goal is meeting Apple's goals, often without regard to who is hurt along the way."

"The premise of $600+ mobile device sales as a mainstream purchase by ordinary Americans, never mind overpriced $300 plastic-cased watches, appears to be a fantasy dream. The iFemineProduct has quite-clearly peaked and started its decline ..."

"Ya gotta be fruity to carry that crap [an iPhone] around in your pocket."

"There are two problems with Apple Pay — and both are problematic. The first is that not everyone has an [i]OS device, or one that supports it. And not everyone ever will, despite the wet dreams of the entire Dallas Cowboys team blowing Tim Cook nightly that dance in his head."

"What makes anyone think [Apple Watch is] going to "disrupt" anything, other than the careers of the people who planned and executed that abortion?"

"[Ford] has publicly declared that fellating employee egos takes precedence over enterprise data security. A company that takes this position deserves what befalls them as a consequence."

"There are many who claim that Apple is not a "one-man" company. Baloney. Apple was always a one-man company. Most firms that pull off the sort of "flash and jizz" game that Apple has are -- it's just reality. But now that's gone and (literally) eaten by worms."

"America has no obligation to let you bring products into this nation without tariff or impost while you exploit the existence of authoritarian governments and environmental arbitrage. A 100% tariff on all of Apple's foreign-produced or assembled products should make the decision easy ..."

"The only reason the Mac has been such a low priority to Apple is that it's been such a low priority to Apple."

"What exactly do the intellectuals want out of their Rococo Marxist mental acrobatics? Is it change they want, change for all the para-proletariats whose ideological benefactors they proclaim themselves to be? Of course not. Actual change would involve irksome toil. So what do they want? It's a simple business, at bottom. All the intellectual wants, in his heart of hearts, is to hold on to what was magically given to him one shining moment a century ago. He asks for nothing more than to remain aloof, removed, as Revel once put it, from the mob, the philistines . . . "the middle class.""

"Since no example of Leninist socialism is other than totalitarian and bureaucratic, one wonders how the doctrinaire ideologists can dismiss so disdainfully those who point out that the promise of socialism in freedom, while surely praiseworthy, remains a promise only, not something experienced in reality. The utopia of socialism with a human face has been crushed everywhere even before it could be born. How distressing that becoming humane, which should be the least we could expect from a regime dedicated to liberating humanity, should present for socialism a problem as impossible as squaring the circle."

"America is the object of their loathing because, for a half-century or more, she has been the most prosperous and creative capitalist society on earth. Ultimately it is liberal democracy - or quite simply liberty itself - that they are eager to destroy, even though they are among its foremost beneficiaries, being free to travel anywhere, anytime in order to hatch their plots. If their diktats were carried out, if frontier barriers were reestablished everywhere, with passports and visas even for tourists, there could have been no Seattle and no Goteborg."

"The principal function of anti-Americanism has always been, and still is, to discredit liberalism by discrediting its supreme incarnation. To travesty the United States as a repressive, unjust, racist—almost fascist—society was a way of proclaiming: look what happens when liberalism is implemented!"

"It is clear that international law must evolve, even if it will be difficult to find the new and appropriate notions that will allow it to … However, it is unlikely that we will ever be capable of building a world that is qualitatively better than we ourselves are."

"Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is working to destroy it."

"Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

"Similarly, societies where news is censored cannot enjoy the luxury of false objectivity because they do not have the true variety. In free civilizations, false objectivity must be fought by true objectivity, not by some alien bureaucracy. Prejudiced history is eliminated, or at least combated, by serious history, and corrupt journalism can only be defeated by honest journalism, not by a government commission whose first act may be to distribute some secret subsidies."

"The United States is the only country where these revolutions are simultaneously in progress and organically linked in such a way as to constitute a single revolution."

"Today in America—the child of European imperialism—a new revolution is rising. It is the revolution of our time... and offers the only possible escape for mankind today."

"I read everything he writes."

"First, anti-Americanism is used as a reflection against which to define French identity. For instance, the French critique of the failures and hypocrisies of American multiculturalism reflect back on the idealized French republican model based on assimilation, integration, and equality. Moreover, anti-Americanism can be mobilized by political entrepreneurs to legitimize certain policies, especially status quo policies. For instance, when politicians discuss implementing affirmative action, opponents of the reform immediately invoke the American model to ensure rejection of the new policy. Similarly, Jean-Francois Revel, one of the few anti-anti-American intellectuals in France, has argued that “the principal function of anti-Americanism has always been, and still is, to discredit liberalism by discrediting its supreme incarnation”"

"Like Transcendentalism, Revel's revolution would encompass "the liberation of the creative personality and the awakening of personal initiative" as opposed to the closed horizons of more repressive societies. The perturbation would come from the privileged classes, he said, because that is the way of revolutions. They are launched by those disenchanted with the culture's ultimate reward system. If a new prototype of society is to emerge, rather than a coup d'etat, dialogue and debate must occur at the highest levels."

"[Revel] ...described the United States as the most eligible prototype nation for world revolution. Real revolutionary activity, he noted, consists of transforming reality, that is, in making reality conform more closely to one's ideal. When we speak of "revolution" we must necessarily speak of something that cannot be conceived or understood within the context of old ideas. The stuff of revolution, and its first success, must be the ability to innovate. In that sense, there is more revolutionary spirit in the United States today, even on the Right, than elsewhere on the Left. The relative freedom in the United States would make it possible for such a revolution to occur bloodlessly, Revel said. If that happened, and if one political civilization were exchanged for another, as seemed to be happening, the impact might be felt worldwide by osmosis. This radical transformation would need the simultaneous occurrence of smaller revolutions—in politics, society, international and interracial relations, cultural values, and technology and science."

"As immigration trends suggest, anti-Americanism is not deeply rooted as a popular prejudice. In Europe, anti-Americanism is much more a hobgoblin of the political, cultural, and religious elites. According to a SOFRES survey of May 2000, only 10 percent of French feel dislike for the U.S. After September 11, according to another poll, 52 percent of French people interviewed said they had always felt warmly toward the U.S., against 32 percent who said the opposite. Historian Michel Winock concludes that "anti-Americanism is not an attitude of the average French person; it is typical of a certain segment of the elites.""

"The success and originality of American integration stem precisely from the fact that immigrants' descendants can perpetuate their ancestral cultures while thinking of themselves as Americans in the fullest sense, sharing basic ideals across racial and ethnic barriers. In France, the characteristic attitude of newcomers from North Africa, Turkey, and sub-Saharan Africa is predominantly one of alienation, confrontation, rejection, and hatred."

"Soon, many European elites insinuated that the jihadist attacks had some moral justification. These anti-American views began to circulate well before the campaign to dislodge the Taliban kicked off on October 7. The bombing which became the most frequently invoked reason to take sides against the U.S. had not yet even begun."

"Shortly after 9/11 a French spokesman for the activist group ATTAC quoted the adage: "He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind." French prime minister Lionel Jospin seemed to be pointing in this direction when he asked, "What lesson are the Americans going to draw from what has happened?" The lesson, Jospin indicated, should be for the U.S. to moderate her unilateralism. For Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops' Conference, the lesson to be drawn from terrorism was that "the West must not seek to dominate the rest of the world.""

"Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and 'fascist', while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up."

"This is the message of critics not only in Europe, but also in the United States itself, where anti-Americanism continues to prosper among university, journalistic, and literary elites. But in Europe, these ideological reasons for blaming America first are multiplied by simple jealousy of American power. The current American "hyperpower" is the direct consequence of European powerlessness, both past and present. The United States fills a void caused by our inadequacies in capability, thinking, and will to act."

"Europeans firmly believe these sorts of caricatures--because they are repeated every day by the elites."

"Poverty and inequality like this should cause Europeans to cringe in horror, especially since (we have it on good authority) there is no safety net in America, no unemployment benefits, no retirement, no assistance for the destitute--not the slightest bit of social solidarity. In the U.S. "only the most fortunate have the right to medical care and to grow old with dignity," as one writer recently put it in Libération. University courses are reserved only for those who can pay, which partly explains the "low level of education" in the benighted US."