today

The recent raising of the matter of the trial of George Fernandes for corruption and the subsequent decline of Tehelka, apparently caused by BJP pressure, brought two futher issues to my mind. Firstly the resulting feeling of less faith in the BJP, not because some politician had found himself with a problem, but because the party had stooped to bullying a newspaper known to be widely read, just because it did not suit the current party line. At what point does this become serious suppression of a widely held public view, leaving open questions as to a suitable means of recourse. All very well for pipesuckers like the English or Americans, one may say, but in fact in the new information age of the 21st century perhaps it becomes sadly more relevant to a modern India. After all, one ideal of terrorism is to suppress free speech and should one not therefore concern oneself with such factors as its attempted suppression by the BJP?

The second issues concerns 'Signs of the Times'. Now that is a paper I have read casually for many years. As a scientist I feel and am very aware that there are parts of it which certainly appear too New Age (sort of watered down Brian Josephson stuff) but I do accept that it tries to live by its premises and could become a source of new understanding and new angles on the unknown which one may eventually explore in quite different directions. Unfortunately on or about Oct 11th, 2006 it put out a podcast, available free onsite, which implies that it, too, is soon likely to disintegate. So it seems to need more money and/or subscribers now, a common complaint with magazines. This paper does regularly supply interesting political as well as scientific links (the name of Arkadiusz Jadczyk is of course well enough known to the cognoscenti).

Winston Churchill (or his speechwriter) once said something like "The lights of Europe are going out - we shall not see them again in our time". SOT would go further, and in a podcast for example claim there is in progress an intentional cull of the poor of the world by the rich, worse than genocide.

IMO: I suppose that makes it poorocide not genocide, but certainly there are groups in (of course) Texas and elsewhere who actively recommend poorocide. Whether George Bush is of their number is not known.