Pakistani businessman's life in threat after he refused to join anti-western mob

[zebra24.livejournal.com]

Haji Nasrullah Khan - was threatened by angry mob, after he refused to close his shops and join aggressive mob to blame western countries for freedom of speech.
At first mob attacked businessman's house then mob forced police to take him in custody:
now he is accused in Blasphemy with potential death penalty punishment, even though no evidence except accusation from Muslim extremists.
Haji Nasrullah Khan's family luckily escaped before mob attacked his home.
Pakistani police "took action" - victim is arrested, nobody else is.

I just wonder how long media will ignore the facts and blame "provocateurs" for what happened in Muslim world?
How long western world can ignore Muslim totalitarian ideology in Middle East?

Where is Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch voice in support for oppressed people in Muslim countries?
Seems like AI and HRW too busy trying to forbid weapon and nuclear energy.
And CNN and FOX are too busy trying to blame "provocateurs" to give a coverage for that event.

Where is UN security council meeting for that reason? Isn't it enough?
US ambassador killed in Libya, France now is closing schools and embassies in fear of massacre and what was the leaders reaction?
Seems like they are "too busy" to notice that.
Obama is to busy trying to to cast aspersions on Romney.

Seems like almost nobody in media have the guts now to blame Muslim extremists for violence.
But everybody in public is "brave" enough to blame "provocateurs".
They are too coward to say a word in defense of freedom of speech and in defense of people oppressed by Muslim extremists over the world.

How little government is too much?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This is a hypothetical thought experiment for the purposes of deciding how a particular subtype of ideology decides what is or is not a 'Big' Government. Suppose that government over a very wide-spread area was to privatize 99% of its existing functions. The only one it's left with are maintaining garrisons of a professional army and taxation. All others are in the hands of very wealthy, private citizens. Is this too much government? Things that we would consider public business are in this hypothetical situation handled by wealthy private individuals, such as libraries, maintaining urban infrastructure, et panem et circenses.

If this is too much government, then the assumption would logically follow that even the political system of 2,000 years ago under the Roman Empire is too much government for some people in the 21st Century, leading to an equally logical question of what is sufficient government? What is the government allowed to do? Where are those lines drawn? If libertarians and their more militant cousins the objectivists do not like the government as it is now, what kind of government would they replace it with? This is a thread where negative answers, what you would have government not, is not acceptable. What you would have government do, OTOH, very much is.

To me the biggest, most glaring flaws in libertarianism and its various stripes is that they're ultimately the ideology of 'NO', without so much as a fractional basis of what they would allow in practice. To start with the most obvious point, a modern military is extremely expensive, so maintaining it will require a taxation rate that would itself be much higher than the average libertarian mentality that taxation is theft would allow for. So this means either privatizing the armed forces, like in the 'Good Old Days' or confessing that in practice libertarianism would simply neuter the contemporary Welfare state while retaining intact the bloated and wasteful military and security apparatus. Either way it's hypocrisy.

What Mitt Romney Could Have Said About the "47%" That Would NOT Have Been Stupid and Offensive

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

By now Governor Mitt Romney's increasingly ersatz presidential campaign has spent another full news cycle trying to repair damage from the candidate's own mouth and has lost more ground trying to convince voters that the Republican nominee is capable of expressing human emotions.

The controversy emerged when Mother Jones Magazine published a secretly recorded video of Mr. Romney speaking to would be donors in May where he stated:

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it -- that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are people who pay no income tax. ... [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

( Of course, there is a pretty good reason to contemplate why almost half of Americans owe no federal income tax: )

Chemistry slaves

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Bayer Loses Drug Ruling in India
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577277001285472654.html
Patent Agency Forces Drug Maker to Grant License to Local Generics Firm for Cancer Drug

This is a step in the right direction, which would hopefully transform the drugs market in the second most populous country in the world, and improve access of patients to life-saving medicines. It is a first step on a very long road to rectifying the rampant problem of pharmaceutical monopolies suffocating the local industry.

But then, there is this other problem, one that we could call the problem of "chemistry slavery". Western pharmaceutical companies regularly test new drugs on poor Indian citizens, many of whom do not even suspect they are being used as lab mice in medical experiments.

Of course the counter argument would be that they are doing this voluntarily. It is a fact that almost every big Western pharmaceutical company does its product trials outside of Europe or the US, and a large part of those tests are now done in countries like India. Last year the German company Bayer AG had to pay compensations for five fatal cases of test subjects. The amount was... 4000 euros per person. The ridiculous, even humiliating compensation had prompted the Indian government to work on introducing new rules that would force the companies to pay higher compensation in case of injury or death of trial patients.

( Read more... )