C.C. Fair gives a Track II Indian a lesson

Track II is this diplomacy some idiots from India are carrying out with Pakistan, not understanding the fundamental nature of Pakistan. Prof. C. Christine Fair gives one such idiot a 101 lesson.

This link will start the Youtube video at the right point:
http://youtu.be/VrxDtncXZZg?t=45m22s

(Can't embed the video and start at a given point, it would seem.)

A curious inversion

In the Bill Maher - Ben Affleck kerfuffle the other day, Affleck voiced a conventional opinion. e.g.,

Affleck said that a minority of radical Islamists shouldn’t give a bad name to the overwhelming majority of Muslims who do not share the same extreme views.

In this view, there are a small percentage of crazies, who give the rest of the community a bad name. I found a contrary view in a somewhat unusual place, below the fold.

Rangoli 2014

Previous years.

Life as a dhimmi - 14

(via Agnimitra on BRF).

Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, per Wiki, 1564-1624,  "has been described as the Mujaddid Alf Thānī, meaning the "reviver of the second millennium", for his work in rejuvenating Islam and opposing the heterodoxies prevalent in the time of Mughal Emperor Akbar."  He stands prominently in the lineage of the Naqshbandi Sufi order.  The writing below explodes the idea that Sufis are "moderate".

 

 PS: if you're puzzled how Sirhindi jumps from Hindus to Jews, it is an artifact of the compiler of this, Andrew Bostom; Sirhindi has a letter on the killing of Jews.  It is strange only because Sirhindi likely never met a Jew.

PPS: The "accursed kafir of Gobindwal" I think is Guru Arjan the fifth Sikh Guru.

A Climate Change Non-Event

Indian Prime Minister Modi in his visit to the US, at the event at Madison Square Garden, at the Council for Foreign Relations, at the United Nations General Assembly spoke repeatedly of the crisis that climate change is bringing upon the planet, and of his plans for clean energy for India.  He has the slogan "zero defect, zero effect" for manufacturing in India - i.e., Indian manufacturing will try to be world class and try to have zero net effect on the environment.

Strange that this has received next to zero coverage in the US media and blogs. 

If you estimate the sustainable rate of carbon dioxide emission (so that CO2 concentration remains constant) for the planet, and divide it by the world population, you get a per capita carbon budget (tons of CO2 per person per year).

Two important observations:

1. Indians as of 2007 were well below this per capita limit.
2. 1250 million Indians want to industrialize and fast (that is why they voted for Modi).

 So what India is able to do is crucial to the future of the planet's climate.

When the Indian Prime Minister Modi comes to the US and talks about climate change, and his aspiration to industrialize in a carbon-neutral way, and the US media collectively gives a yawn, it is infinitely and amply clear, that climate change is not taken seriously here, even in the liberal section of the media. When a key player in the world's carbon dioxide economy lands on their shores, and talks planet-friendly, it is a non-event.

Conclusion: Climate change doesn't exist for the Republicans; and for the Democrats, it is merely a way to bash Republicans as anti-science.