Will there be a Happy New Year for children?

As 2016 starts, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kailash Satyarthi writes a heartfelt plea about protecting our children. New amendments to the Child Labor Act will allow children below the age of 14 years to help their families in 'non-hazardous' family businesses or in the entertainment industry. He gives examples of 3 children, between the ages of 8 and 10 years, being treated like slaves by their uncles. 'Uncle' is a generic term in India. It is possible that the children were sold by their parents to fill their own stomachs. In Bangalore 3 girls were sold to 2 men who assaulted them sexually. They ran away once, only to be resold by their parents to the same 2 men. In Tamil Nadu 3 girls, even younger in age, were sold by their parents to 2 families who employed them as household servants and tortured them. Child labor is abhorrent and must be eliminated. But how? When adults have the right to produce as many children as they want and parents have total control over their children. In 2012 there was a huge controversy when Norwegian Child Protection Service removed 2 Indian children from the care of their parents. Foreigners have accused the Norwegians of using child protection as an excuse to abduct children from their natural parents and hand them over to Norwegians who do not have children. No politician in India would ever dream of protecting children. The reason is simple: Children do not have the right to vote. So to show their hypocritical concern they passed the Right to Education Act which forces private schools to reserve 25% of their seats for children from slums. Very noble. Except that the reason that middle class children do well in studies is that with educated parents they get a lot of help at home, which will show in exam results. So, to stop widespread failure of poor students all exams up to Class 10 were made optional and no student could be detained. Which meant that there was no way of knowing whether children were learning anything in school, so teachers stopped teaching. Only 48% of Class 5 students can read Class 2 texts and only 44% of Class 8 students could do divisions. Government school teachers are incompetent so the crafty politicians thought that RTE was a cheap way of getting votes. Now 18 states are going to revoke the policy of no detention of students for failing in exams. Uttarakhand, a Congress ruled state, says that it cannot afford the cost of RTE. With such enormous right to education is it any wonder that there are 75,000 beggars, that is 21% of the total, who have passed Class 12. What can they do when 2.3 million applied for jobs as peons in UP, around 25,000 with post graduate degrees. Unless you are in politics when you become deputy chief minister. Instead of giving phony rights children should be given the real right: The right not to be born. Will anyone listen?

Wisdom does not come from knowledge.

As 2015 comes to an end we can look forward to the last year of Barack Obama as the President of the US. In November next year the US will elect a new president and on 20 January 2017 we will hopefully see the last of the gasbag. After George Bush, who has been ridiculed as a moron, Obama was thought to be a cerebral president, an alumnus of Harvard Law School, no less, but he leaves the world an infinitely more dangerous place than when he first came to power. Much like Dr Manmohan Singh was built up as a great economist, only to reduce our economy to near bankruptcy in his determination to cling on to his chair, whatever the cost to the nation. Obama probably thinks that he is so smart that the rest of the world should do as they are told. What he has not understood is that the US may be the richest and the strongest nation in the world but it is just another country on Mother Earth. The Climate talks in Paris earlier this month ended with a wishy-washy deal because the US insisted on the same levels of sacrifice from emerging nations. Obama had already signed a deal with China, which allows China to peak its CO2 emission levels by 2030 and the US would try to reduce CO2 below 2005 levels. If numbers one and two are not going to reduce their emissions why would anyone else? Mother Earth has just reminded Obama that she is the boss. Floods are affecting several states and 69 tornadoes have hit the US in December. 49 people have died and damage will be in billions of dollars. There are floods where Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay meet in South America while Storm Frank is causing more misery in Britain which was already inundated from previous rains. The Arctic temperature is going to rise to above freezing when it should be -20 Celsius at this time of the year. Apparently the El Nino is going to be as bad as in 1997-98, which was the worst on record. Having engineered an armed coup in Ukraine against an elected president, Victor Yanukovych, the country is now at the point of anarchy as rivals fight for power while the eastern half of the country gradually breaks away. Strangely, former President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, a US stooge, is the governor of Odessa. While Iraq was Bush's stupidity, Libya is Obama's. It is astonishing that a 'cerebral' man did not learn from the chaos produced by removing Saddam Hussein. His nuclear deal with Iran is seen as a triumph but what was he hiding? You get a bad smell when you learn that the NSA was spying on Israel's Prime Minister, including on his conversations with members of the US Congress. Having dismissed ISIS as 'JV team' he has started bombing ISIS in Syria which, of course, allowed Al Qaeda to re-establish bases in Afghanistan. He can be proud of his record of killing hundreds of civilians by using drones indiscriminately. Is it better to be a serial killer than a moron? That is surely a cerebral debate.

Without experience Nehru did a lot better than the present lot.

Couple of days ago, the Congress, theoretically India's largest party, became 131 years old, having been founded in 1885. However, the Congress is not the party it was. It was trounced in the Lok Sabha elections last year, which saw its share of seats cut from 206 in 2009 to a paltry 44, and was denied official leader of the opposition status. It is in power in only 8 states out of 29 and in 2 others, namely Bihar and Kerala, it is part of the ruling coalition. Perhaps, to illustrate the sickness inside the party an article, criticising Nehru and Sonia Gandhi, appeared in Congress Darshan, which is a Congress mouthpiece published from Mumbai. The article, written anonymously, mentions details of Sonia Gandhi's life and that her father was a fascist, which he was. It claims that Jawaharlal Nehru made a mess of foreign policy by not listening to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who was Home Minister at the time. We would add other charges such as, not using air power against China in 1962, accepting China's claim over Tibet, probably refusing a seat at the UN Security Council, following a communist model of command economy, which has made India one of the most corrupt countries in the world and not making education free and compulsory, like in the west. The most confusing is the complete capitulation to Pakistan since independence. Every time our brave soldiers have sacrificed their lives to win against Pakistan our politicians have signed away all the gains without anything in return. If Lal Bahadur Shastri's death was not natural who signed the treaty with Pakistan in Tashkent? These are not fantasies or conspiracy theories but questions of enormous importance for national security. Did Nehru sign a deal with Britain to let Pakistan do what it wants in return for becoming the Prime Minister? Did Gandhi know or, even suggest, such perfidy? Whatever Nehru did we must remember that no one in India had any idea of governance after 600 years of depredation under Mogul and British conquerors. Most countries could not make a successful transition to democracy after independence from colonial rule. Pakistan is a failed state under army rule and the first President of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was gunned down, along with his family. That has to be the greatest achievement of Nehru: That he kept the army under civilian control, that he stood for elections every 5 years and that he established centers of excellence, such as the IITs and AIIMS. Compared to that the present Congress is clinging on to The Family for some reflected glory, which has dimmed considerably. " The party is so huge that it needs to have some ideology which is not present - instead the focus is on just one family," said a professor. Exactly. A party which claims to be liberal, secular and socialist, which means everything to everyone, without any reason for existence except to grab power by any means possible. The great socialist, Rahul Gandhi has just gone to Europe for a holiday. He tweeted us a Happy New Year. How twit!

Is it wrong to have principles or ideals?

As 2015 comes to an end there are hundreds of articles by pundits and 'intellectuals', giving a synopsis of events in the year gone by and their interpretation thereof. While liberals write voluminous articles on every subject we can think of conservatives write very little. This is as true in the US as it is in India. The New York Times is known to be leftist, as a cartoon by the Republican Senator, Ted Cruz so aptly illustrates, and an article in the paper lists a number of cracks that appeared in liberalism in 2015. The biggest problems were in Europe. Greece and Spain voted for left wing parties while many in France voted for the far right National Front. In Britain the Scottish Nationalists won big in Scotland and there is a danger of Britain leaving the EU. Angela Merkel's decision to admit 1 million Muslim migrants into Germany has provoked a furious backlash. In the US, Donald Trump leads the Republican race, making outrageous statements, while Black Lives Matter shut down a shopping mall and an airport terminal over shooting of black men by police in the US. The article ends optimistically saying," It is wise to bet on the current order, in other words, and against its enemies and rivals and would-be saboteurs." Is it? Liberals are so arrogant in their moral superiority, so offensive in their criticism of anyone they brand as 'conservative' and so intolerant of any view that does not echo their own egotistical interpretations, that they are as fanatical as ISIS. An Indian who prides himself on his liberalism writes that the difference between liberal and conservative is between " open minded versus close minded ". " To my mind, the liberal is defined by a lack of ideology," he writes. That is precisely the problem. The liberal has no principle, no ideal and no truth to hold on to. He is prepared to compromise with anyone or any lie to prove his lack of ideology. When Neville Chamberlain signed a peace deal with Hitler he was told," Your name will go down in history as a statesman who saved civilisation from destruction." Dozens of students at Yale, an Ivy League University in the US, signed a petition to revoke the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, because they are against criticism of other views. In Finland, there were riots in a normally peaceful town of Kempele when a 14 year old girl was raped by an Afghan migrant. Sharia courts in Britain are forcing women to stay locked in violent marriages, a study showed, prompting a furious columnist to question why feminists do not object to these courts. It is the liberals' tendency to excuse terrorists as a tiny minority, extremely perverted rapists as juvenile and to mock any dissent as loonies, deluded by a false feeling of 'victimhood', that will be the death of liberalism. There will definitely be a series of extremely violent wars in the world. Liberals will be responsible.

Invent anything and we will use it for fighting.

From a list of " 100 Events That Changed The World " in the National Geographic, 14 events have been selected which show how man has used every invention for the purpose of killing. Man learnt the controlled use of fire 1.4 million years ago, which immediately gave us a defence against wild animals and allowed us to keep warm, cook food and create light after sunset. Fire would be used later to mould metal into arms. If there is one invention that civilisation rests on it must be that of the wheel in 3,500 BCE. Transport, pottery and pulleys all depend on wheels, but by 2,000 BCE Hittities were using chariots for war. They also started using iron by 1,400 BCE, which quickly led to weapons and armor made of iron. In 1569 CE new maps of the world with variably spaced latitude lines would make navigation at sea much easier. This would lead to the colonisation of Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas by white Europeans, resulting in widespread genocide, slavery and plunder of resources, whose effects are being felt till today. The industrial revolution, which started in 1712, would allow Europeans to subjugate peoples of the world but also resulted in wars between themselves, as each nation tried to gain dominance, resulting in the two World Wars. In 1876 Graham Bell invented the telephone which revolutionised communications and could be used to send signals in code. In 1903 the first manned flight would take warfare to the skies and would lead to the theory of 'shock and awe', a bombing of such ferocity that any population would be devastated . The power of the atom was used by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, probably as trial and also for revenge for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Today 9 countries have nuclear weapons, with Iran on the threshold of making one. Terrorists in Libya took control of 11 commercial jetliners last year and ISIS has got hold of a flight simulator to train some of its fighters to fly airplanes. ISIS is looking to buy nuclear weapons. Load a nuke into a commercial plane, fly low over the sea onto a city in Europe and explode the bomb in a suicide mission. Not hard to imagine, is it? The latest Star Wars movie has already raked in over $1 billion and as the name says, it is not about love among the stars but about killing, although they have tried to put an intellectual gloss on the fighting by feeling 'The Force' and the use of the lightsaber. The ISIS has been adept at using the internet as a recruiting tool by showing extreme violence interspersed with pictures of celebrating Eid, farming and fishing. Now scientists are  close to finding ways to regenerate limbs lost in battle. We can look forward to armies of invincible cyborgs taking over the world, coolly replacing a damaged part with another. No wonder man has used even God for fighting.

We need money to grow, but from where?

The Finance Ministry has lowered its growth forecast for the current financial year to 7-7.5% from an earlier prediction of 8.1-8.5%. Politicians quibble about minor differences in the rate of growth of the economy presumably to impress financial institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, and credit agencies so that they write good things about us, which will encourage foreign investors to invest precious dollars, euros or yens in India. For us living in India such figures have no meaning. Our feel-good depends on our quality of life, on prices of what we buy, on availability of jobs, a smooth delivery of essential services and relief from the tyranny of government thugs. There is some progress but it is slow because the Congress left behind a moribund economy and has blocked all progress in parliament so far. Even at 7% India will be the fastest growing economy in the world with China second at 6.8%, the US at 2.6% and the Euro area growing by 1.5%, while Brazil contracted by 2.5%. For growth to continue millions of jobs have to be created which can only come from new investments. And therein lies the problem. Public sector investment is limited by the need to contain fiscal deficit while the private sector is completely frozen. The reason is that companies borrowed merrily during Congress regime because the Reserve Bank was bullied into holding interest rate at unreasonably low levels, in the face of soaring inflation, and they were given the impression that they would not have to repay their loans. The Reserve Bank has taken a tough stance against public sector banks on restructuring loans, which was a way of keeping bad loans off their books. The rot in the banking system is gradually coming to light and the figures are terrifying, at over Rs 6 trillion. Banks are reluctant to lend until their previous loans are repaid and taking over assets of leveraged companies will not clear outstanding loans because there is no market for stressed assets. Thus, the quality of loans is getting worse. Private sector debt has reached 52% of GDP and External Commercial Borrowing, which is loans in foreign currencies, has increased by 9% of nominal GDP. Only 39% of such loans have been hedged against a fall in the value of the rupee, which is expected to fall to around 70 against the dollar as interest rates rise in the US. That will make it more difficult for companies to service their debt. So, why not increase government spending to kick-start the economy and allow the fiscal deficit to remain at 3.9%? Trouble is that India has one of the highest fiscal deficits in the world, at 7.2%, if central and state government spending are added. Consumer inflation is also high at 5.4% while that in China is at 1.5%, in the US at 0.5% and in the EU area at 0.1%. Why? Because real estate prices increased at 13.7%. Property prices have to come down. But how?

Are we ordinary because we expect too much?

All politicians are liars, some more than others. Candidate for president in the US, Donald Trump has been deemed Liar of the Year by Politifact for 2015. Out of 77 statements made by Trump this year 16 were in 'Pants on Fire' category, which means absolute whoppers, and 77% were deemed to be lies. And yet he leads the Republican pack with 39% approval ratings, with Ted Cruz a distant second on 18%. So, why do his supporters overlook his blatant lies, his rudeness and his extremely crude language, saying that Hillary Clinton was 'schlonged' by Obama in 2008. When Trump was accused of being vulgar he defended himself by accusing the media of bias. People approve of Trump because he has not been in politics and so is seen as an outsider, which gives them an opportunity to " throw the bums out ". More important, people despise all politicians and so try to pick what they like out of all the promises that politicians make. In India, elections are decided by the poor who vote for whoever promises the most handouts, so there is no real debate about issues and the educated middle class think its a waste of time to vote. Trump's support comes from white working class people who have lost out in the transition of the economy from manufacturing to digital technology and finance and blame immigrants for taking away their jobs. This is apparently what is happening in Germany where support for right wing neo-Nazi is increasing. A few days back there was a mudslide of industrial waste in China. Industrial accidents are common in China but what is remarkable is the large number of excavators digging for survivors, the shining helmets and clean clothes of the rescuers and the advanced evacuation equipment. Contrast that with firemen in Delhi who took off their clothes and jumped bare bodied into sewage treatment tanks near Delhi airport, in this cold weather, to pull out bodies of Border Security Force officers, after a plane accident. No wetsuit or breathing equipment to keep the sewage off their bodies and out of their mouths. The daughter of one of the victims quite reasonably asked the Home Minister why our soldiers keep dying unnecessarily. We have lost hundreds of pilots in accidents because of faulty aircraft. Politicians and civil servants are never exposed to such risks even though they are the highest paid. Defence procurement is highly corrupt, with kickbacks in every deal. Who makes the deals? Politicians and civil servants. This is the real inequality in India. It is not that there are rich and poor, though there is huge inequality there, it is that politicians and civil servants have enormous powers over us and we can do nothing. Ordinary people all over the world are looking for real leaders. All we get are liars.

Are we killing them with our love?

" In a society so often intoxicated by consumerism and hedonism, wealth and extravagance, appearances and narcissism, this Child calls us to act soberly, in other words, in a way that is simple, balanced, consistent, capable of seeing and doing what is essential," said Pope Francis, talking about Jesus in his Christmas message. He means well. The Pope is asking everyone to control our greed, our insatiable desires for material possessions at the cost of ruining the earth and our own lives. Atheists might say that it is easy for him to talk because he has a very nice job, a nice apartment at the Vatican and a Popemobile to roam around in. This is in place of sedia gestatoria, which was a chair carried on the shoulders of attendants, until stopped in 1978. Priests in India do pretty well, with some of the richest temples in the world, despite India being a very poor country. In that respect they are little different from politicians, especially in India, who tax us heavily in the name of the poor, while giving themselves hefty pay rises and many other juicy perks with a being called a 'companion', while spending time abusing others in uncouth language and wasting parliament time on completely false pretexts so that there is no debate on any bill. But in all this discussion about helping the poor with handouts no one bothers to ask the poor what they want. Do they want to remain poor so that they can be showered with kindness, while being killed softly with love or do they want to become one of the reviled rich, with cars and beautiful clothes and gorge themselves on good food, with 'companion'? Even a professor from MIT in the US has a solution to Delhi's problem with pollution. Raise taxes and parking charges to unaffordable levels and levy heavy fines so that no one will dare to buy a car. Except that the US has over 800 cars per 1000 people while India has just 18, yes a measly, shameful 18 cars per 1000 people. Does the good professor find old Dilip Kumar movies romantic, wherein he is driving a bullock cart while singing patriotic songs? Doubt the poor in India aspire to such romance while watching Formula One. Why is the professor so enamored of the poor? Because he is head of the famous Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Lab at MIT and has won prizes for his work. He will become redundant if there are no poor to research on. In that respect poverty is like cancer. People get prizes and build fortunes for discovering various cures while the sufferers keep dying. Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez helped the poor, has virtually collapsed and now Brazil, where President Lula Da Silva did the same, is in deep recession. So, are we killing the poor with our love?

Does the west create terrorism?

The BBC is reporting that the Taliban has taken over the district of Sangin in Helmand province. The short report twice mentions that a quarter of British casualties in Afghanistan took place in Sangin, as if it was a tremendous sacrifice. It does not say anywhere how many civilians were killed by British troops. It is the good old "White Man's Burden ". Brand someone a baddie, kill thousands of innocent civilians to get rid of said baddie and then expect them to be grateful to the white sahib for killing their children. The US has never grown out of its cowboys and injuns mentality, so glorified by John Wayne, who was a draft dodger, apparently to continue an affair with Marlene Dietrich. The coward. Where were the valiant west from 1992 to 2001, when the Taliban was ravaging the country? They did not want to get involved. It was Ronald Reagan's support of the Afghan Mujahideen that later gave rise to the Taliban. The Brits came in to support the US when it attacked Afghanistan, looking for Bin Laden, after 9/11. Where are the Taliban coming from, if they were wiped out by the west? From Pakistan. What arms are they fighting with? They are fighting with US weapons. Who supplied them with arms and training? The ISI in Pakistan. Who supplies arms to the Pakistan army? The US, who else. Why are the Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan? Because the US, Britain and NATO withdrew all forces leaving an inexperienced Afghan army to fight without air support. Now they are blaming the Afghan army because a few British lives were lost defending Sanjin. They really are masters at lying. Earlier this month Cameron was pleading at the House of Commons for permission to bomb ISIS in Syria. All this time western countries were holding off because they wanted the Syrian opposition to get rid of Bashar al-Assad. Because he has been labeled a baddie. Now that Russia has started to bomb ISIS they also want to join in the fun. Meanwhile, Assad has been accepted as part of the solution and not the problem. How did ISIS become such a fighting force? Because former officers of Saddam's army are guiding them. But surely Saddam's army was destroyed by that efficient fighting machine, the US army? Turns out that Iraqi generals were bribed with millions of dollars to betray Saddam so valiant Americans rolled into Baghdad without challenge. Then the US withdrew all forces, as they have done in Afghanistan, leaving behind an inexperienced army without air cover. The Shia government of Iraq neglected the Sunnis who supported the ISIS. Assad is being assisted by Iran and Hezbollah from Lebanon who are experienced fighters. The only country which has managed to retain some control is Tunisia which has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Because it kept the gang of western marauders far away. 

The only way to stop being bullied is to become rich.

As expected the WTO meeting in Nairobi ended in failure, without even a fig leaf of an agreement full of bromides, as in the Climate talks in Paris. While in Paris it was mainly the US which put the onus of cutting greenhouse gases on developing countries, this time Europe joined the US in demanding cuts in subsidies in agriculture from developing countries, while preserving their own. India was blamed both times. An average American home is 2,600 sq ft for an average family of 2.4 people, while an average home in India is 504 sq ft for an average family size of 4.8 people. 32% of urban homes are 258 sq ft or less for families of 4.3 people, which means 60 sq ft for each person, which is the size of a prison cell in the US. The US is 4 times the size of India with 300 million people, while we have 1,300 million crammed into ever decreasing space. It is our fault. Our government has a program of subsidies targeted at poverty, which only encourages more children among the poor, increasing poverty. Instead subsidies should be targeted at those who do not produce children or have just one child. The reason why the US wrecked the Nairobi talks is because it signed the Trans Pacific Partnership with 11 Asian countries in October and can isolate India. The US already has the NAFTA agreement with Canada and Mexico and wants a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe. The US, being the largest economy, has natural advantages which it wants to enforce. It wants to force genetically modified foods on others and the Investor-State Dispute System in which a private enterprise can sue a government if it loses business due to changes in policy. Recently there was huge controversy in the US when Turing Pharmaceuticals bought rights to Daraprim and increased its price from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. Daraprim, or pyrimethamine, is at least 50 years old and is not covered by patent protection, so this was a brutal act. People have a choice in buying a cheaper car or not buying one at all but such choices do not exist in illness. Perhaps, the US government thinks that by allowing its companies to rip off its own people will justify ripping off people of other countries, which will be very lucrative. The US economy may not be as hot as they would like us to believe. Yields on junk bonds are rising and that has predicted a peak 8 out of 10 times in the past. Yields on junk bonds in the US rose by 47 basis points before the Great Depression of 1929, by 85 basis points before the Great Recession of 1937 and have risen by 120 basis points in the last 6 weeks. Record low interest rates have led to a boom in personal debts in the UK and 27 stock markets have given negative returns in 2015. By bullying weaker nations the US maybe precipitating a collapse of the global economy. Who will it trade with then?

What will we export when we make nothing?

A mid-year review by the Finance Ministry says that the GDP will grow between 7-7.5% this year, against a forecast of 8.1-8.5%. The plus points are that inflation is down, because of low commodity prices, especially oil, fiscal deficit will be within target of 3.9% and public investment in infrastructure has been galvanised. The minus points are that exports are falling, private sector investment is slow and the fiscal deficit target of 3.5% will be difficult to meet next year. The report suggests that government spending should be raised next year to stimulate growth, so a fiscal deficit of 4% would be acceptable. " The mid-term report recognizes weak demand as a key constraint and argues for the need to provide a policy stimulus to stoke it. There is no monetary or fiscal bazooka available to quickly revive demand. The rate cuts by RBI will mildly support the economy in the coming year. But this may not be enough," said DK Joshi, Chief Economist at Crisil. We have written many times that lower rates do not stimulate growth. We get less interest for our money while the rich borrow cheaply to increase their assets, so low interest rates merely transfer wealth from the middle class to the rich. Low taxes will increase demand by bringing prices down but this the government is unable to do because of the need for increased spending on infrastructure, to pay for the huge increase in salaries of useless civil servants, and the One Rank One Pension scheme. Allowing the fiscal deficit to increase, as the report suggests, is not easy. The government borrowed Rs 5.5 trillion this year to fund a deficit of 3.9%. The Reserve Bank raises money by selling bonds but the demand was so low that yields for 10 year bonds were at 7.8%, even though the interest rate has been reduced to 6.25%. If fiscal deficit is 3.5% next fiscal the government will need to borrow Rs 5.18 trillion, plus redemption cost of Rs 2.6 trillion, making a total of Rs 7.7 trillion. That will push bond yields over 8% and reduce liquidity by sucking out so much money from the market. Oil prices have reached bottom, so may start to rise and the Federal Reserve may increase rates further, putting pressure on the rupee, which will raise prices. What no one is telling us is whether increased consumer demand will boost our economy. Whatever we buy seems to be made by foreign companies. Cars, refrigerators, and even drinks are made by foreigners. Why do they keep whining about low interest rates when they are not interested in investing in India? A private company, Spacex has successfully brought  its first stage booster rocket back to earth. Who is the CEO of Spacex? Elon Musk. Our Prime Minister met him on a recent visit to Silicon Valley to request him to invest in battery technology in India. Americans invest, our fellows only ingest. So depressing.

Can you make liquor from milk?

One very big reason for Mr Nitish Kumar's victory in the recent elections in Bihar was that 63.6% of women turned out to vote, as against 56% of men. His promise of stopping the sale of all alcoholic drinks in the state drew in women and minorities. Even a couple of weeks back he promised to close down all liquor shops and enforce complete prohibition from 1 April next year. Bihar earned over Rs 30 billion from taxes on alcohol last year, whose loss will put a big dent in state finances, so a few days back Mr Kumar said that he will ban only country liquor, which are drinks brewed locally, but allow foreign made liquor sales to continue. Which is cute because the so-called foreign liquor is actually Indian Made Foreign Liquor, or IMFL, which is the official jargon for whisky, vodka, wine or beer. IMFL is brewed and bottled in India but the names sound foreign. To maximise revenues he has said that only government shops will be allowed to sell alcohol, so it will earn from commissions as well as taxes. Perhaps he is inspired by Tamil Nadu where the government earned Rs 210 billion in 2012-13 from its drinks marketing arm, known as TASMAC. Its revenues have rocketed from Rs 38 billion in 2002-03. This is certainly not what the women had in mind when they voted for him. To pacify the ladies of Bihar Mr Kumar has come out with a new wheeze. All liquor stores will be converted into shops selling milk. Maybe because the senior partner in his coalition government, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav loves the " fragrance " of cows and his twitter campaign was conducted from a cowshed in Danapur. Bihar desperately needs investment. Will business leaders and foreigners be impressed drinking milk with soda or tonic water or on the rocks, we do not know. Perhaps, locals will find a way to ferment milk to make it more cheerful. Power is so addictive that politicians make wild promises which only increase the suffering of people as widows are finding out in Punjab where a bankrupt government is selling off widows' ashrams, jails and asylum land to raise money. Politicians and civil servants are protected for life at taxpayer expense while taxpayers get nothing. Delhi Chief Minister had made lofty promises to appoint a powerful Lokpal, or ombudsman, which will hold his government accountable. Turns out that those were total lies and the poison-pen bill introduced in the assembly is deliberately designed to precipitate an argument with the central government so that an effective check on government can be avoided. From 1 to 15 January cars with odd and even numbers will be allowed on roads on alternate days. Schools have been closed during those days, which will take thousands of school buses as well as private transport, used to take students to school, off the roads so that the government can claim success with its strong-arm tactics. Do politicians have a genetic defect?

If there is vendetta, why not seek political asylum elsewhere?

In the event it turned out to be more of a whimper than a roar. Mother and son turned up in court yesterday with posse of lawyers and were freed on bail of Rs 50,000 each and someone to stand as surety. Ms Sonia Gandhi is reputed to be worth $2 billion, although no one knows for sure because it is well hidden. Almost on the same day Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turin Pharmaceuticals, had to post a bond of $5 million on a charge of running a Ponzi scheme, so Rs 50,000, which is less than $1000, is a joke for someone worth a fortune. As expected the Congress resorted to insulting the Prime Minister, accusing him of " politics of vendetta ". Politicians are accomplished liars but even by their standards this is pretty pathetic because the case has nothing to do with the government, the Prime Minister or the BJP. It was filed by Mr Subramaniam Swamy in January 2013 when the Congress was in power and Modi was still the Chief Minister of Gujarat and had no way of knowing that he will win in a landslide in May 2014. In fact BJP supporters are astonished and disappointed at how restrained Mr Modi has been, considering the culture of corruption created by the Congress. The Gandhi family is not accustomed to anyone daring to question them so they were naturally furious at this audacity. At first they thought that they would refuse bail, daring the judge to jail them which would bring out millions of people on to the streets in protest and weaken the government. Comparisons were drawn with Mrs Indira Gandhi whose arrest in 1977 brought down the Morarji Desai government. That is probably why Ms Sonia Gandhi defiantly declared," I am the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi. I am not scared of anyone. I am not disturbed." It must have donned pretty swiftly on wiser heads in the Congress that Ms Sonia Gandhi is no Indira. Indira Gandhi was Indian, she was the only daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, while there is another daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, named Maneka Gandhi, a minister in Modi's government, and Indira Gandhi won the war of 1971, which created Bangladesh. Also Morarji Desai was a Congressman and had been a minister in Nehru's government, so was seen as a traitor. Modi is no Morarji. The Gandhis can always seek political asylum in another country. The problem is that the Congress needs the Gandhis because without the family all the others will fight each other for power which will fulfill Modi's promise of making India free of the Congress. Their rage is born out of fear because Modi has no interest in collecting wealth, because he has no heirs to leave it to. If he dismantles the entire rotten structure built up over 67 years it will be impossible to build it up again. Hence the hatred. 

If everyone is too clever who wins?

Quaking with uncertainty and swallowing hard the US Federal Reserve raised interest rate by a timid 25 basis points, while repeatedly reassuring the world that the next hike, if it comes, is in the distant future. There has been enormous anticipation of when the Fed will raise rates with detailed analysis of how that will affect the global economy. As it happens there has been no reaction. Stock markets actually went up. So why bore us to death? Because low interest rates help the rich and the rich control the media. The rich have collateral and so can borrow at very low rates with which to buy assets, such as real estate and stocks, while those lower down the ladder get no returns from their savings. As cost of real estate rises the poor pay more in rent, which is a total waste, to those who own properties. This has given rise to a heated debate about how inequality is rising as wages have stayed stagnant, as productivity has risen sharply, while the rich have gained from non-productive financial markets. The top 1% already owns 48% of global wealth and another 5% owns 46% of the remaining 52%. To be fair, the strength of the dollar acts as a rise in interest rate by restraining inflation, because imports become cheaper, while exports become more expensive. If low interest rate helps the rich why did Joseph Stiglitz, certainly no right wing, write so strongly against raising rate? He says that keeping rate low will increase employment as people spend more on borrowed money, encouraging businesses to expand capacity on cheap credit. A tight labor market will raise wages and improve living standards. Stiglitz feels that an arbitrary upper limit of 2% on inflation should be abandoned and financial speculation should be curbed, but he does not say how. Global growth since the financial crisis of 2008 has been fueled by easy borrowing. Companies in emerging markets have borrowed $24 trillion and will have to more in interest. The rising dollar will also make the debt more expensive. Countries which depend on exporting commodities, such as Brazil, Russia and South Africa, will be very hard hit. And then there is China. In August China devalued its currency, the renminbi, by 2% but has been selling dollar securities ever since, to stem its fall. This had the effect of raising bond yields in the US and stopped the Fed from raising rate in September. This time the People's Bank of China announced an end to its dollar peg and moved to an exchange rate against a basket of currencies. This is apparently to depreciate the renminbi without revealing the extent to which it is falling so as to avert a currency war with other Asian countries, who will devalue their currencies to protect their economies against a flood of Chinese imports. Are the Chinese being too clever? Maybe they are not as inscrutable as they think they are.

Why is it so difficult to do simple things?

Courts are not meant to take policy decisions, only politicians can. A court can pronounce judgement on a matter before it, based on arguments made by lawyers, who are biased by whoever is paying them, but a judge cannot consult various sections of society and arrive at a compromise to benefit all, without victimising one section. The Supreme Court has banned registration of all diesel cars and SUVs in Delhi, with engine capacity above 2,000 cc, because these are owned by rich people. Why is it a crime for Indians to be rich? Last year 1.85 million cars were sold in India, that is less than half of what Volkswagen alone sold in China. A total of 23 million cars were sold in China and 16.5 million in the US last year. The Supreme Court also doubled the tax, cutely known as cess, on commercial vehicles entering Delhi which will increase prices of goods in Delhi, hitting long suffering citizens, while raising more money for politicians and civil servants to enjoy themselves. Motorcycles and scooters emit more harmful gases than cars, because they cannot have catalytic converters, but they are exempt, although they vastly outnumber cars. The order has confused car makers who do not know whether to continue to manufacture diesel vehicles. The automobile industry comprises 10% of the GDP, contributes 18% of excise duties and employs 19 million people, including in ancillary industries. Any damage to this industry has serious implications for the whole economy. Yet, the problem could have been solved so simply. The price of a barrel of oil dropped from around $115 to less than $40 last year, which was a golden opportunity to increase taxes on diesel and reduce them on petrol so that both cost the same as they do in the US and Europe. That would have increased tax revenues without increasing prices, because of the fall in input costs. More important, it would have moved car buyers away from diesel vehicles to petrol ones and given time to manufacturers to change their engines, without losing jobs. It would become profitable for truck owners to buy new vehicles with more efficient engines, which would increase sales and reduce emissions. We have written many times but we have no voice. Meanwhile, Ms Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul may not seek bail in the National Herald case. We do not know if the Congress is planning to create riots in Delhi if mother and son are sent to jail, though they are saying that they will not. Of course, people could riot 'spontaneously', as they did in 1984, and then the biased media will mount a hysterical campaign against the BJP government. Delhi Police mercilessly beat up protesters of Nirbhaya's gruesome rape 3 years ago. During Congress times. The pollution of politics. In Delhi.

Tax breaks do not create genius, freedom does.

A well reasoned article asks if tax breaks are really necessary for Indian companies to invest in research, or not. Indian business leaders plead for cuts in taxes based on " misinformation and alarmist propaganda ". Earlier India did not protect product patent but only the patent on process, so pharma companies copied new drugs by a different process, to sell at cheap rates in India. So, they did research on copying but not on discovering new drugs. Why? Because it takes a lot of money to discover a new molecule and years of trials before they can be licensed for sale to the public and even then, there is a danger of lawsuits in case of side effects. It is much safer to cheat on a drug that has already gone through the process and has been licensed in other countries. In some ways it is good to delay the introduction of a new drug, as was dramatically shown by the Thalidomide disaster in the sixties which we largely avoided. Today Thalidomide is used under strict supervision in reactions to treatment in leprosy, which is sadly still a scourge in India. The author suggests that R&D can only come from competition as firms are forced to innovate or become irrelevant. Companies which adopt new technology, like Google, Amazon or Uber will create massive disruptions in the market and those that are unable to adapt will disappear. Most research in the US takes place in universities with funding from private companies, philanthropists and some from the government. In India politicians and civil servants keep a tight control of all funding and scholarships for further study abroad are available only to their children. Our best science students migrate abroad on scholarships from foreign universities so their inventions, such as the USB port and the Pentium Chip, benefit foreign companies. Indian companies cry for tax breaks partly because other countries give tax breaks to attract multinationals, partly because decades of socialism has created a culture of crony capitalism, which favors some while excluding others, and partly because all companies will try to pay as little tax as possible. US companies are stashing over $2 trillion overseas to avoid paying taxes in the US and the recent takeover by Pfizer of Allergan for an eye-watering $155 has given rise to accusations of 'inversion', because Allergan is based in Ireland. Perhaps the biggest reason for the lack of research in India is that our laws are unstable. Special Economic Zones were set up with great fanfare, where companies would get tax breaks to set up manufacturing, but when the Congress needed money for social schemes to win elections they suddenly imposed a Minimum Alternative Tax. The government does not need to encourage, the government needs to disappear.

Why are we always begging?

At the recently concluded climate conference in Paris India was pleading to be allowed to use coal to produce electricity for millions of people who are still living in darkness. All kinds of figures were trotted out: 300 million people in India are without electricity, 10-12 million young people will need jobs every year for the foreseeable future, China produces 28% of global CO2 while we produce only 6%, and average electricity consumption per person  in the US is 13,000 units per year, as compared to 1000 units per Indian. The conference was a complete stitch up because the 2 biggest polluters, China and the US, had already signed a deal which allows China to peak its pollution by 2030 and the US to cut pollution below 2005 levels. They get the biggest pieces of the emission cake while we were left begging for crumbs. The scene shifts to Nairobi for a meeting of the World Trade Organisation where again we are pleading to be allowed to dispense a few pennies in subsidies to our poor farmers while the US and the EU insist on the right to dish out tens of billions of dollars. We were beggars in 1965 when an American, Lester Brown could foresee a famine coming to India and was able to persuade President Lyndon Johnson to provide millions of tons of grains in aid. We now have buffer stocks of 61 million tonnes of grains by paying farmers a Minimum Support Price, which is fixed above market price, on 25 agricultural products. This is what India is fighting to protect. With such measures our farmers should have become wealthy, as they are in the west. Yet, farmers, even in prosperous districts, keep killing themselves. Why? Partly because excess numbers of children mean that farms have been divided into smaller bits until they are unable to provide enough income for families. But mainly because irrigation was not developed, leaving farmers dependent on the vagaries of monsoon rains. The European Union has strict rules about the quality of fruits and vegetables that maybe sold to the public. Indians, on the other hand, have to spend lots of time finding good pieces. Even so apples maybe full of worms, mangoes maybe rotten inside, while looking perfect from the outside, and cucumbers maybe intensely bitter. Instead of wasting money on subsidies why can't our agriculture department sell seeds of top quality fruits and vegetables to farmers at reasonable prices? Instead a vocal group of scientists is clamoring for genetically modified food, which will give control of our food production to foreign companies. GM plants resistant to one variety of pests can succumb to another. Ask the farmers in Punjab. Meanwhile the Prince of Congress is so worried about our farmers that he will not allow any land to be sold, so farmers will locked into their miserable poverty forever. So, we continue to beg at various forums. We should be so proud.

It is the color of money which decides prices.

Retail inflation in India has gone up again and it seems that wholesale prices will also start going up soon, after falling for one year. Why is India so prone to rising prices, but not China where the inflation rate was 1.5% when the government is trying to move the economy from investment led growth to consumption led growth? Per capita GDP in China is $7593.9 compared to that of India at $1595.7, so spending should be many times that of India, putting upward pressure on prices. Because a great part of the Indian economy is conducted in cash and employs 90% of the workforce. It is estimated at 40% of GDP, at $780 billion. Although this money maybe defined as black because it generates no income tax there is another economy floating parallel to the real one, financed by bribes, extortion and scams. A report by a think-tank estimates that $51 billion in black money flowed out of India every year from 2004 to 2013, during Congress Raj. No wonder the Congress is using every trick to block the Goods and Services Tax bill, which will eliminate evasion of taxes to a large scale. They disrupted the Lok Sabha because the Chief Minister of Kerala was not invited to a function, organised by a backward community in Kerala, and attended by the Prime Minister. Firstly, the chief minister does not own the state and secondly, organisers have the right to invite, or not, anyone they please, to a meeting. The nation held hostage to manufactured outrage by a party which has kept the country poor for 67 years and destroyed the economy in the last 10 years of its rule. If $51 billion is flowing out of the country many times that amount is flowing into real estate inside the country. Land grabbing in the name of the poor is an extremely lucrative way to make billions. Slums have taken over more than 60 hectares of prime land belonging to Indian Railways, in Delhi. This is said to cost Rs 60 billion but it could be double that if the black money part is taken into account. The AAP government, which is planning to increase auto-rickshaws by another 10,000, by banning private cars, has forbidden demolition of the slums. Add to the vote bank by making us miserable and destroying the rule of law. The Railways, which is the lifeline of the country, spent 97.8 paise for every rupee it earned last year. This is set to rise to 110% once the unjustified pay hikes of over 23% kicks in. Since independence a vast system of corruption has locked the country into its tentacles. Politicians, civil servants and business fellows are collaborating in looting the people and they have bought the media to mount a series of false hysterical attacks on the government to stop it from functioning. The dark side always wins in real life.

If there is no work what will people do?

Our Prime Minister is frantically trying to increase manufacturing in India under the 'Make in India' initiative to create millions of jobs for around 69,000 people who are turning 25 years old everyday in our country. The revolution in Egypt that overthrew Hosni Mubarak is a lesson of the dangers of unemployment and poverty. But can India become a manufacturing hub like Japan, South Korea and China did? Regardless of all the advances in computers and space travel, human beings will still need clothes to protect us against the weather. To make clothes we need yarn which will come from cotton, which has to be grown by farmers, or from polyester, which is manufactured in factories from petroleum. The yarn will need to be tailored into clothes before being transported into stores for us to buy. So for every shirt or trouser that we wear a chain of people is working to provide it. Likewise for every car we drive in, every house we live in and every bulb we use to light the house at night. Manufacturing will always be needed, so all we have to do is to provide the infrastructure and simplify the rules and companies will rush in to build factories to take advantage of the cheap labor that we have in abundance. But it is not that simple? The nature of work itself is changing as efficiency of production has resulted in the manufacture of higher quality goods with fewer people. Developing countries, like India have moved into services without first establishing a large manufacturing base. This has been labeled " premature deindustrialization " by a professor. As artificial intelligence and robotics develop more and more manual jobs will be done by machines, which work 24/7, produce prefect results every time and do not need salaries. Therefore, those who are educated or highly skilled will get high end jobs with huge salaries while others will be employed in part-time or low end service jobs which pay little and offer no benefits. But strangely, by 2014 the global Total Factor Productivity, which measures combined productivity of capital and labor, was zero for 3 years running. TFP was down 1% from 1996-2006 and down 0.5% from 2007-2012. Surely if productivity is declining then employment of young people should be rising? But that is not happening. As technology changes the resulting disruption results in falling productivity at first which then begins to rise. This is best illustrated in how medical records are filed. As electronic systems take over there is increasing confusion as these systems are incompatible and hence do not communicate with each other. The first industrial revolution resulted in vast numbers of deaths as western countries conquered peaceful peoples to exploit natural resources, finally resulting in the 2 world wars. Is that what is happening now as new technology disrupts the old order? In which case more wars are yet to come. Terrifying thought.

Should we be forced to walk while they travel in convoy?

Like mafia bosses Indian politicians are used to making arbitrary decisions and enforcing them on us, because it suits them to do so. The decision to ban cars with odd and even registration numbers on alternate days has been taken, not because it will help people by reducing pollution, but because it is a means of earning cheap popularity by socialists who seek to please their 'vote bank' by tormenting the middle class. It is shameful, because it is mean and vindictive. Of course, politicians cannot get away with their nefarious activities without the support of an army of sycophants, known as 'chamchas', which means 'spoons'. A poll has found that 58% of people in metro cities think that restricting private cars will reduce pollution. How many people were asked? A grand total of, wait for it, 528 people in 6 metro cities, of which half, or 264, were in Delhi. The population of Delhi alone is over 18 million. We are not told whether these are car owners or are plain jealous. True, Delhi, at 10.79%, has the highest rate of people commuting to work by car, followed by Chennai at 6.14%. That is because public transport is very poor in Delhi, distances are vast, sexual harassment is rampant in buses and very often you need a vehicle to get to the nearest metro station or bus stop. Very few people drive for pleasure because poor traffic management results in massive traffic jams. The Traffic Police in Delhi never help the people by ensuring a smooth flow of traffic but are used to extract fines from drivers, often on flimsy grounds. Why is this order pure political thuggery? Because two-wheelers will not be affected, even though they cause 31% of pollution as against only 20% by cars. A study by IIT Kanpur says that car and jeeps contribute less than 10% of pollutants. Dust particles are a major hazard and huge amounts of dust are produced by construction activities, most of it illegal, in Delhi. Since that is where the black money is politicians conveniently ignore it. Not only that, motorcycles and scooters are greater pollutants than cars. They emit less CO2 but far more of other toxic gases which are worse for human health so exempting two-wheelers shows that the Delhi government is fooling people while potentially increasing earnings of auto drivers, who are great supporters of the Chief Minister. No doubt politicians will continue to be escorted by a posse of police cars with flashing red lights, known as 'lal battis' by the hapless suffering populace. To put it in perspective, 30% of people do not commute to work, 22.6% walk, 13.1% travel by bicycle, 12.7% travel by two-wheelers and 11.4% by bus. That comprises a huge 89.8%. Shouldn't our politicians be trying to ensure that everyone is rich enough to possess cars? Then they would not be able to win elections with socialism. So keep everyone poor. Scum.

Should promises not be made expensive?

Bihar has always been the bottom state in India in development, education and poverty. But it is very high in fertility and in the rate of violent crimes, second only to UP on both counts. Unless these states are brought up to the standards of the front runners, such as Haryana and Maharashtra we will have to see more shameful headlines about having the highest infant mortality in the world. Mr Nitish Kumar who has been Chief Minister since 2005, in alliance with the BJP, has a reputation for development. He was reelected last month, but this time as junior partner to Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD. His victory was partly due to votes based on caste and religion and partly on the promises of spending Rs 2.7 trillion on free electricity connections for all, unemployment benefit of Rs 1000 per month, new roads, water for every household and a toilet in every house. Perhaps Mr Kumar's victory was possible because women outnumbered men, because of promises of jobs for women and a ban on all forms of alcoholic drinks. He will lose Rs 40 billion in taxes on alcohol. Nepal, where alcohol is freely available, should sort out its problems with its new constitution quickly because it stands to make serious profits from smuggling. Politicians, police and civil servants will succumb to huge bribes from criminals. Illegal hooch will kill people. It will be interesting to see how Mr Kumar will keep control. It will make Bihar less attractive for investments. Since 1980 Bihar has been the poorest state in India by GDP, as well as by per capita income. Investments tend to go where there is good infrastructure and a pool of educated workers to pick from. That is why Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat attract investments, even though Gujarat is a dry state. No investor will go to a state where his children are in danger of being kidnapped, his wife raped or his fancy car taken away by force by local goons, protected by politicians. That is where good governance is so important. How much blood money Mr Kumar will have to pay his new partners for his victory remains to be seen but the immediate problem will be how he will pay for all the extravagant promises he has made. His friend Mr Kejriwal, Chief Minister of Delhi also made many extravagant promises which he cannot fulfill, except for free water and cheap electricity for the poor. Delhi is a dirtiest capital city in the world, with broken roads and frequent power blackouts, while Mr Kejriwal spends his time in histrionics and insulting the Prime Minister in crude language. Promises are free and prohibition has failed in every country where it was introduced. Mr Kumar campaigned on a slogan of " Bihari (a native of Bihar) vs Bahari (outsider) ". What should be his punishment if Bihari remains a word of abuse in the rest of India? Perhaps he is the best person to tell us.

The ultimate revenge?

Anyone who follows daily news will have been alarmed by reports of rising antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Bacteria containing the MCR-1 gene, resistant to every known antibiotic, have been discovered in China and Denmark, giving rise to predictions of a massive rise in mortality in sick people. How do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics considered 'strong' by humans? We have to remember that humans, or Homo sapiens, have been around for a maximum of 200,000 years while bacteria have been around for over 3 billion years. How do bacteria become resistant? Some maybe naturally resistant, and these strains take over when the susceptible ones are killed by antibiotics. Others may develop resistance through genetic mutations and still others pass resistance genes between each other. While we can transfer genetic material from one species to another only in very high-tech labs bacteria can transfer resistance genes to a completely different species, for instance from E coli to Klebsiella, naturally. Clever little blighters. In 2013 there were 480,000 new cases of Multi Drug Resistant tuberculosis in the world and 100 countries have reported Extreme Drug Resistance. The sexually transmitted bacteria, the gonococcus, has developed resistance to almost all drugs used in its treatment. Doctors are told not to prescribe antibiotics unnecessarily, for instance in viral infections, and to prescribe the right dose so as to prevent resistance developing. Our government is to issue guidelines so as to restrict prescription of antibiotics by doctors. It would be laudable if it were honest. Surely, pharmaceutical companies have a lot to gain by discovering new molecules to treat infections? Turns out that there has been no significant discovery in half a century. Why? Because it is expensive to find new molecules, they maybe be open to court cases in case there are side effects and their main sales are not from humans from but from animals. Vast amounts of antibiotics are used in animal farming, often in sub-therapeutic doses to prevent infections and promote growth. Apparently, 12,000 tons of Colistin, used as a last resort in humans, is used annually in livestock. Antibiotics are also used in salmon farming. No one can stop them because farmers are 'vote bank' in India and in every other country in the world. While human doctors are regularly lectured on restricting the use of antibiotics veterinary doctors are not. Dogs affected by Parvovirus are treated with Ceftriaxone+Tazobactam, used to treat serious meningitis in humans, Piperacillin+Tazobactam, used to treat the dangerous Pseudomonas, gentamycin, used for gram negative bacteria, and metronidazole, used for amoebiasis. We are super predators and animals are helpless but we maybe wiped out by resistant bacteria due to animals. The ultimate revenge. Ironic.

Should they be so sanctimonious?

Donald Trump has done it again. He said that all Muslims should be banned from entering the US until " our country's representatives can figure out what is going on". The statement looked totally premeditated and it seemed that he enjoyed making it because he repeated " what the hell is going on ", knowing that it would unleash a firestorm of outrage. Earlier he has suggested surveillance of all mosques in the US and a database of all Muslims living in the country. Criticism was swift and severe, especially from liberals. " The fact is what Donald Trump said yesterday disqualifies him from serving for president, and for Republican candidates for president to stand by their pledge to support Mr Trump, that in and of itself is disqualifying," said the White House Press Secretary. Some think that Trump is a closet Democrat who is dragging the Republican Party to the right so as to help Hillary Clinton win the presidential election next year. Whatever politicians may say many Americans support Trump's views. 49% of Republicans and 41% of Democrats supported a database on Muslims and 56% of Americans agree that " values of Islam are at odds with American values". 68% of Trump's supporters will vote for him even if he runs as an independent. So, are all these Americans redneck Christian fanatics, like the man who killed 3 people, including a police officer, at a Planned Parenthood clinic, because he is against abortion? An American Muslim wrote an angry article, listing wrongdoings by the US and European countries against Muslims. True, but why do millions of people from Muslim countries beg to enter western countries if they are so bad? The US used nuclear weapons against Japan, napalm in Korea and cluster bombs and agent orange in Vietnam but citizens of these countries do not go around killing innocent people as happened in Paris and San Bernadino. The writer says that these are a " vast minority of the Muslim world ". Are they? ISIS did not emerge from the air like some jinn but received financing from wealthy Arabs from Gulf countries. The governments of these countries are known to be financing Sunni terrorist groups throughout the world. Turkey has been bombing Kurds, who are the only group fighting ISIS on the ground, as opposed to bombing them from the air. And then there is Pakistan. The Mumbai attacks were planned and coordinated by the ISI when anti-Hindu Congress was in power. Hafiz Saeed is walking around free as is Dawood Ibrahim, both protected by the ISI. Even now Pakistan is trying to hide terrorist schools in Multan. We know about Bin Laden. If governments are financing and protecting terror groups then we are not talking about 'tiny minorities', are we? Not only do so-called liberals keep insisting that it is a tiny minority but if anyone disagrees he is a bigot. Sanctimonious liars.