How Communism compelled China to eat wild animals for survival

A lot has been written about China’s wet meat markets. For obvious reasons.

But there is a political angle to this which has been written about very little. Again, for obvious reasons. Things that make the left look bad tend to get edited out of history, out of media and out of popular discourse.

So here’s that angle. It’s a purely political angle. And the leftists have been trying to cover for it by accusing detractors of being against a race or culture.

This has nothing to do with race nor with culture. This is all about the despicable political ideology of Communism. And how Communism has risen from the grave again to threaten us all.

I’m not going to go simply by the name. The one party state in China may be run by the “Communist” Party, but we all know that they gave up Communist economics a very long time ago. Then why blame Communism for the Wuhan Corona virus? On the face of it, that’s a fair question.

Yes, the authoritarian instincts of the Chinese Communist Party did play a very big role in this pandemic. It is because of these instincts that they covered up their cases, destroyed samples and suppressed reporting.

But there’s much more.

How did China’s exotic meat market industry arise in the first place?

Well, the Communist Party took over power in China in the year 1949. They did everything that good Communists do, collective farms and all.

And like every Communist state everywhere, they failed. For two decades, the Chinese lived through a famine. Twenty years of absolute hell on earth. The estimated death toll from Communism in China?

30 to 50 million victims!

I generally prefer to convert that to lakhs and say 300 to 500 lakh people. In fact, I believe this is a subtle mistake that everyone in India makes while talking about Communism. The death toll should be explained in lakhs, not millions. For cultural reasons, we Indians tend to comprehend things in lakhs and crores, not in millions. So if we want Indian people to fully understand what Communism means, always put it in lakhs.

Now even a death toll like that is not enough to make the Communist leadership blink or feel any remorse. But it is large enough that they would start worrying about a revolt.

What was the prescription of the Communist Politburo of China to its starving people? Go eat any wild animal you can find and survive on that. Because Communism can’t feed them.

This is how it all got started. Desperate hungry people forced by their government to subsist on anything they could find in the forests. With the coercive power of the Communist state behind it, this soon became a thing across China.

Remember that the Communist government would regulate every other kind of market for food. In fact, markets were largely banned anyway. The only thing that was not banned nor regulated was going to the forest and eating whatever wild meat you could find. Before long, a black market had come up. And in the decades that followed, it became an industry worth over a hundred billion dollars, with a lobby of its own.

And it all began because the politburo that ruled China could not feed its people.

Even today, many decades after the fall of Communism, the dead hand of evil has risen from the grave and is threatening to destroy the world. Communism is not happy with its 1000 lakh victims over the last century. It has come back for more.

If there is a lesson here, it is that we should never underestimate the evil that Communists do. Even if it feels like they are long gone, they are not. The evil they did is going to live after them. And it can bite us in ways we never even dreamed of.

By the way, Venezuela is on the exact same track. The Communist government of Maduro can’t feed its people. And guess what?

Watch out folks! The next pandemic is coming from Venezuela.

 

Delhi CM Kejriwal is guilty of a crime against humanity

Even at the best of times, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has been given to making xenophobic jibes against Purvanchalis in Delhi.

This is from Sept 2019. Arvind Kejriwal does not see the blood, sweat, tears and toil of the people of Bihar or UP or Jharkhand that goes into making Delhi the super productive metropolis that it is. This is the human capital that drives the tax base of the city. The taxes that he harvests, with which he showers freebies and buys votes.

But he doesn’t want them. He just wants their labor. And in a time of crisis, he has simply taken them to the Delhi/UP border and dumped them. And then he unleashed his media friends to blame UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for some reason. And of course PM Modi for the huge crowds at the bus stand in Delhi’s Anand Vihar yesterday.

Let’s dissect this. The man has been living in Delhi for five years. He is an Indian citizen. That makes him as much a part of the population of Delhi as Kejriwal himself.

In a time of crisis, how can it be the responsibility of Uttar Pradesh government to fetch him? Is Kejriwal trying to say that just because the man is from Uttar Pradesh, he cannot truly belong to Delhi? What sort of racism and xenophobia is this?

Even more ridiculous, can you seriously expect the government of Bihar or Jharkhand to arrange pickup from Delhi? And why should they? They are Indians, living and working in Delhi, contributing to the economy of the city. In a crisis, how can Delhi government turn its back on them?

So there are many levels here.

First, there is the Nazi like Chief Minister of Delhi, who decided to dump the entire underprivileged population of his city at the time of a pandemic (I rarely use such strong language, but this is really one of those times).

Second, this is the worst possible time for crowds to gather and for long caravans of people to move across the hinterland.

Third, Kejriwal is pushing these marginalized people into India’s poorest states. The states that are least equipped to deal with a pandemic. A breakout of disease in these places could kill lakhs of people. But Kejriwal does not care about that. This is what makes his act a crime against humanity.

I have heard many excuses for Kejriwal yesterday, among them efforts to shift the blame to Modi for an “unplanned” lockdown.

Yeah, what planning? How do you “plan” for a pandemic that has brought America and Europe to its knees? We don’t have time because the virus doesn’t give us time. And even if we did have time, it is hard to imagine how one could “plan” a shutdown for a nation of 1.3 billion people.

Ok, so if I am giving all this leeway to PM Modi, why not Arvind Kejriwal? Why doesn’t he get to make the same excuse?

Well, because the peer groups for comparison are different. There are migrant laborers everywhere in India. And nobody is having fun anywhere. But nowhere did the situation get so out of control and turn into a humanitarian tragedy as in Delhi. So you have to compare Kejriwal’s response to his peers across the country. And this is where the Chief Minister of Delhi has failed miserably.

As for PM Modi, his peer group is quite different. We have to compare India’s situation to that of other countries across the world. Definitely, there are places such as South Korea and possibly Germany that have done better than us. But with America and most of Western Europe faring so disastrously, it is hard to argue that India has done a bad job.

Specifically in the case of Delhi, the “unplanned lockdown” argument is even more spurious. Delhi CM had in fact declared a lockdown 48 hours before the Prime Minister declared a nationwide lockdown. The day before the PM’s announcement, 75 districts had already been placed on lockdown, which basically included all major urban centers.

So what unplanned lockdown in Delhi? You mean with 48 hour notice?

Not surprisingly, Kejriwal’s media friends created a shameful spectacle yesterday. The people are fleeing Delhi, not for Uttar Pradesh. How could the blame be on the government they are fleeing to and not on the government they are fleeing from? If a Jewish person was escaping from Nazi Germany, you should blame Nazi Germany and not the government of the place they are escaping to.

The entire purpose of the lockdown was for people to stay where they are. It was entirely up to the government of Delhi to make some arrangements for people to stay there. We were told anyway that Delhi is a paradise where everything is free. Yesterday would have been a good time to prove it. I am no fan of Nitish Kumar, but I simply don’t see how it is the job of Bihar CM to arrange pickup of Biharis from Delhi.

And again, why should he? Biharis living in Delhi have a right to be taken care of by Delhi government in a time like this.

But India’s media was busy laying out a carpet of roses for the xenophobic CM of Delhi.

In fact, India’s no.1 liberal news website said in its report yesterday that Anand Vihar Bus Terminal is not even in Delhi, moving it about 20 kilometers east into Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. Liberal media is willing to teleport entire bus terminals to save Arvind Kejriwal.

But, like I said yesterday, where is the incentive for secular CMs to work when they know they will be showered with praise from media anyway?

I would say the lowest point for Indian journalism yesterday came just after a prominent newspaper actually did some honest journalism by mistake. They ended up reporting that Delhi government was cutting off electricity and water connections of migrant workers, forcing them to flee. Mind you that this newspaper is generally known to be very anti-BJP in its reporting. Some low level intern must have been under the impression that journalism is about facts, not agenda.

The report went viral. Within hours, the report was “corrected” and the part about Delhi government atrocities removed. Can you feel the terrifying Orwellian stranglehold of the left? I can only hope the intern who did some honest journalism by mistake was not fired.

It is not for fun that common citizens like us feel the compulsion to speak out in the public sphere. To take time out of our personal lives and raise our voices, in whatever small way we can, for no pay and no direct benefit. We feel forced to do it because otherwise we will only be left with sold out media that will silence an intern for reporting how the CM of Delhi cut off electricity connections of migrant workers. And media that will happily move Anand Vihar bus terminal from Delhi to Ghaziabad.

 

 

 

Undeserved media praise for ‘secular’ Chief Ministers makes us less safe, not more

India is in crisis. The number of people who have tested positive for the Wuhan Corona virus is now disturbingly close to the 1000 mark. Countries such as the United States, Italy and Spain are now rapidly approaching 1 lakh confirmed cases. Only yesterday, the pandemic claimed over 900 lives in Italy and 300 in the US. We can only shudder at the thought of the nightmare scenario that could unfold in India.

Amid this, you would be pleasantly surprised (and possibly bewildered) to find that some in the media think that India is actually making the war on the virus look “easy.”

Or at least, some states are:

So that is the list of 7 states where the war with the virus looks “easy.”

Wait! Maharashtra? Kerala? Punjab?  Aren’t these among India’s worst affected states? Didn’t over 300 people escape quarantine in Punjab, endangering everyone? If the battle in these states looks “easy,” how can it add up to a crisis overall?

Ok, there is this canard being spread that India is not testing “enough.” Perhaps it only looks like Maharashtra, Kerala, etc are worst affected, because they did the most tests?

But then, how did Jharkhand make the list? According to the same article, they’ve done just 61 tests so far.

Somebody should explain this discrepancy. If the most affected states and the least affected states, if the states doing maximum tests and the states doing minimum tests are all making the battle look “easy,” how come India is in crisis?

Among the list of achievements of these star Chief Ministers touted in this article :

(1) Chhattisgarh CM getting credit for installing banners of himself across the state. Oh and a tweet by some guy called Sudhir Mishra who thinks Bhupesh Baghel is doing a fantastic job.

(2) Rajasthan CM getting credit for writing a letter to PM Modi.

(3) Puducherry CM getting credit because his police lathicharged some street vendors.

It doesn’t take much to notice that all the star Chief Ministers being praised in this article belong to a certain political camp. This would be fine, if these were normal times.

But in times like this, if Chief Ministers belonging to a certain camp feel like media will not hold them accountable, it takes away their incentive to work effectively. And that makes us much more unsafe at a time when the life of millions of people could be at stake.

This is not just a matter of one article. Consider the ultimate trailblazer when it comes to receiving media praise: the Communist government of Kerala.

By Feb 14, 2020, Kerala had successfully fought and contained the deadly virus. Mission accomplished.

Or not.

On March 5, Kerala won praise again, this time from the imperial BBC. However, the BBC was slightly less effusive, downgrading Kerala from “successfully fought and contained” to “efficient handling.” Perhaps our former colonial masters were jealous.

As of March 28, cases in Kerala continue to increase rapidly, making it the second most affected state in the country. Despite successfully fighting and containing the virus over a month ago.

Perhaps this would have happened anyway. But there is a valid concern: if the govt of Kerala notices that they are receiving global accolades for free, why would they do anything at all? Did undeserved media praise make the govt of Kerala complacent?

Which is the worst affected state in India? Maharashtra. But imagine this.

The article quotes about half a dozen people to draw this conclusion. Among them, one Congress Rajya Sabha MP, one ex-aide to Rahul Gandhi and a Congress spokesperson. At least one of the people complained that Aaditya Thackeray is the “true pillar of strength” behind the CM, but is not getting due credit for it.

This is comical. Except that there is nothing funny about the pandemic right now.

Here is the Associate Editor of The Hindu.

Now consider this. We have all seen the disturbing images of migrants having at the Delhi/UP border, so desperate that they consider walking hundreds of kilometers back to their villages in Uttar Pradesh. Could Arvind Kejriwal, with the resources of the national capital, have done nothing for these unfortunate people instead of leaving it all to Uttar Pradesh?

He just didn’t have an incentive. Because he knew he was getting showered with certificates of appreciation.

When PM Modi came to power in 2014, less than 40% of households in India had access to toilets. Have you ever wondered how this happened? What were our secular and liberal Prime Ministers doing for six decades?

Perhaps they didn’t have the incentive to do anything. Perhaps because they were showered with excessive praise for doing precious little. That’s why we ended up with the collective failure where 60% of households did not have toilet access.

This is data from the World Bank on per capita GDP of India vs Pakistan. Observe how Pakistan’s green line stays consistently above India’s blue line for decades. Until around 2007, when India finally manages to push its nose ahead.

In other words, 60 years for India to pull ahead of Pakistan in per capita GDP.

How did this happen? Perhaps because media and intellectual class was busy showering praise on ‘secular’ Prime Ministers by quoting one Congress MP, one Nehru-Gandhi family aide and one Congress spokesperson?

When you take away the incentive of political parties to work, they don’t. In decades after independence, India’s secularism could not guarantee even one toilet per family. PM Modi has had to arrange that since 2014.

Now, all of a sudden, we have been plunged into a situation where we might need one ventilator per Indian. It is good that liberals are now asking: what about quality healthcare? Expectations from India are surely growing even faster than the spread of Wuhan Corona virus. Now we are expected to have a better healthcare system than America, France and UK. It’s been (almost) six years of Modi already. What could be taking so much time?

Very well. The Govt of India should welcome this challenge. And the commitment of the media to keep the Modi govt accountable. At the very least, the Central government needs the states to cooperate. As a matter of basic decency, perhaps the media should try not to take away the incentive of non-BJP Chief Ministers to pitch in and help.

RBI and Govt are firefighting : But how long?

So it is finally here. After trying not to cave for weeks, the RBI finally delivered a 75 bps rate cut today. Along with that, a 3 month moratorium on term loan repayments, including EMIs. Credit card debt does not fall under this category though. These moves were targeted at relief to middle class folks, after the govt’s 1.7 lakh crore package for the poor yesterday.

Let’s take the 1.7 lakh crore package first because that impacts the most people. In fact, many more people than you would think.

Here are the upshots

(1) PM Kisan payment of Rs 2000 in first week of April

(2) Rs 1000 payment to 30 million poor senior citizens.

(3) Rs 500 per month to female Jan Dhan account holders

(4) Small hike in NREGA wages.

(5) 5 kg of staples (rice/wheat) and 1 kg of dal per month for next 3 months.

This is really not a lot of money, nor a lot of food. Sadly however, this does make a difference a staggering 880 million people. Extremely vulnerable people, who have been pushed to the edge.

Honestly, I am fed up of people dissing the effort by saying it is not a lot of money and the government should have done “more”. From where? Show me the resources? Do these people think the government has a secret stash of money rotting somewhere that they are simply denying to people out of some kind of selfishness? This is a horrible situation that nobody could have planned for. I mean, there are top hospitals in New York where healthcare workers are wearing trash bags to protect themselves. Nobody is prepared for this. Nobody could have been. So stop dissing India because the government cannot arrange doorstep delivery of meals to 1.3 billion people at a time when people are literally dying on the streets all across America and Europe.

I think the government really should also have set up a fund where people can contribute voluntarily so that cash transfers can be made to the poor. A fund like this would swell up quickly. In fact, people will (or at least should) contribute generously *both* for selfish and unselfish reasons.

The ‘unselfish’ reasons are obvious, but the ‘selfish’ ones less so. It is spending that drives the economy. Even spending by the poorest of the poor…sales of soap, toothpaste, biscuits, everything. If demand crashes, nobody’s job is safe. No high flying executive is safe. Without significant wealth transfer to the poor immediately, everyone is going to be out of a job.

The RBI’s announcements today were directed at a slightly more well off section of the population. The middle class and their EMIs. While these people are not on the edge, remember that the middle class accounts for most of the spending. There had to be something to lift their spirits. Not that anybody can (or should) go out to eat right now, but at least a bit more money in their pockets will enable them to spend when this nightmare finally ends.

The markets reacted somewhat negatively to the RBI announcements, but at this moment the market seems to have a mind of its own. The market in the US had reacted negatively when the Fed announced it would pump in a trillion dollars a few weeks ago. In India, the rate cut failed to cheer the market as well. Although Bank Nifty went up by 2%. In fact, the Nifty 50 rose, while the Sensex 30 fell, both by small margins. Such disagreement between the two indices is quite rare, indicating a very neutral sentiment about what happened.

There is a job here for govt and RBI to do. Making sure that banks actually pass on the benefits of low interest rates to their customers. In the past, we have seen very slow transmission of these rate cuts. The RBI and govt have both expressed irritation at this. But now is the time to make sure the banks comply.

The same goes for EMIs. Technically, the RBI has not stopped EMIs for three months, they have given the banks the option to do that. The final decision can be taken only by the bank. It is here that the government has to use its clout to make sure the banks don’t engage in any funny business.

The question is when the nightmare will end.  We have purchased a bit of time, but not much more. And what’s the endgame? The US, with 80,000+ infections now, is the most affected country, exceeding even China. The number of deaths too has climbed sharply, with nearly 1300 dead so far. The official toll in China is around 3000. The way we have seen the Wuhan Corona virus take a human toll, the US may hit 3000 deaths within a week.

My nagging fear keeps resurfacing here. What if India’s best case scenario turns into the worst case scenario? What if we successfully stop the virus, only to find out 3 months later that the entire West is affected! What happens then? Do we never open our borders again? Will we be left as the only country with no immunity? Because, it is no longer possible for America or Europe to get a grip on the virus. They might as well stop testing now and just wait for the pandemic to pass, however bad it gets.

 

If India is testing too few, why is the percentage of “positives” in India so low?

Since the time the pandemic began, India has been facing a constant barrage of criticism. Why is India testing so few people? Are India’s stringent testing criteria leaving out too many affected people who are spreading the disease all around the country?

Let us hope at least some of this criticism comes from well meaning concern, although I suspect much of it does not. But without anyone on either side getting defensive about their position, they really do need to explain this.

While these numbers are changing rapidly in real time, these figures are broadly correct.  Till now, India has carried out a total of 25,144 tests and detected 693 cases, which comes to 2.7%.

Meanwhile the United States has carried out roughly 370,000 tests and detected around 60,000 infections, which is a rate of 16-17%.

Those two are very different numbers and very far from each other.

The irony here seems to be this: the wider you cast the net, you should have a lower and lower percentage of actual affected persons.

On the other hand, India is testing people who are already showing symptoms, have traveled abroad or have come into direct contact with those having a travel history. For a fairly long time, India was applying even more stringent criteria : only those with travel history (or direct contact with such people) and who are already showing symptoms. In other words, India was testing almost exclusively people in the highest risk category of contracting the Wuhan Corona virus. This should have pushed the percentage of detected infections higher, not lower.

South Korea has drawn praise all across the world for its efficient and widespread testing. So far, Korea has carried out about 350,000 tests and detected about 9000 cases of the virus, which works out to 2.5%. That is strikingly close to India’s number.

This genuinely could be good news for India, a ray of hope. It does suggest that India might actually be testing at a very appropriate rate. So far, with around 700 infections, that means the disease might not have gone out of control in India. It might really still be stuck in Stage 2 instead of the truly terrifying Stage 3 (community transmission).

There are other considerations here, of course. We know that the number of infections goes up exponentially. The testing ability also goes up with time, but perhaps not as fast. Perhaps therefore the ratio between the number of infections and the number of tests will go up as time passes?

So what if we went back a little into the past and looked at these same countries when they had done fewer tests?

By Feb 29, Korea had done 55000 tests and detected 3000 cases. This works out to 5.7%, which is more than the 2.5% in Korea today. So the ratio went down with time, not up.

The French Health Agency has some data that is particularly eye opening in this regard.

Till March 15, France had carried out 36747 tests (not far from our current 25000 tests) and discovered 6153 cases. That’s a rate of 17%, a very far cry from our 2.7%. As of now, France has carried out 1 lakh tests and reported about 20,000 cases, which works out to 20%.

There is a very good chance here that India is doing something right. There is no room for complacency here, but definitely grounds for cautious optimism.

Lockdown : Downsides of under-reacting were simply too scary

So India is officially on a lockdown. Twenty one days.

For what it’s worth, India was already locking down anyway. The Indian Railways had come to a halt. All international flights had been stopped. A day later, all domestic flights were stopped. Inter-state travel was banned. Then, lockdown was announced in 75 districts. A day before the PM’s announcement, Maharashtra had gone into a complete curfew already.

The Prime Minister has now formalized what was happening. As far as the economic cost goes,  the 75 districts locked down the previous day would represent most of the GDP of the country anyway. After all, one interesting feature of the Wuhan Corona virus pandemic is that it is going from the “rich” to the “poor.”

Will the lockdown really be worth it? Honestly, this is impossible to answer. What we do know is that the rate of infection and the death tolls in Western countries were frankly terrifying.

Yesterday, 150 people died in the US. Almost 250 people dead in France. So bad is the situation that the tragedy in places like US and France isn’t even being reported a whole lot. The headlines belong to Italy and Spain, were 600-700 people are dying daily. This may not even be the full death toll. The Spanish Army, now out on the streets, is finding bodies of old people who had been left around to die.

The worst in humanity has begun to surface. The fear of imminent death is looming and people are doing savage things. In India, we hear that landlords are beginning to turn doctors away from renting homes! There was the video of the poor Indigo employee whose family is being ostracized by her neighborhood. In panic like this, the animal instinct is now baring itself.

In India, while we have seen few deaths so far, the number of infections is beginning to climb at a scary pace. Ten days ago, we would see 10-20 infections a day. Within no time, it rose to 30-50 a day. Now, we are lucky if we can keep it under 100 infections a day. What if this exploded to 1000 a day? Or 10,000 a day? The US is now reporting several thousand cases a day. The same could happen in India.

Luckily, the death toll has stayed very much under control so far. But who knows for how long? After seeing the way the number of infections began increasing, do we really have the appetite to run the experiment and find out?

One thing that we can say for certain is this : Every country which tried to take it easy and thought the crisis would blow over, has paid a terrible price.

Here is the President of France on March 9.

And here is the President of France on March 16.

Well, that escalated quickly.

The British initially said they had a plan. They wanted to go on with their lives as usual, chasing something called ‘herd immunity.’  This is where they are now.

In the United States, President Trump initially compared the Wuhan Corona virus to the flu, which kills 37000 Americans every year. But he appears to have changed his mind again.

One thing seems clear. The virus does not spare anyone. It does not care about anyone. If we under-react, the virus could extract a terrible toll. It seems everybody eventually comes around and undertakes extreme measures. The only question is when.

India has gone into lockdown with only 500 or so cases. That makes us one of the nations earliest on the curve, to implement extreme measures. But waiting another week could have been catastrophic.

Of course the lockdown brought out the usual caravan of Modi haters and their narrow minded taunts, now all over social media. Why isn’t everything better planned? Why couldn’t India have tested all 1.3 billion people already? Did you hear that Iceland has tested its entire population, all ten of them? Well, maybe not, but you get the picture anyway. And now that 1.3 billion people are under lockdown, where is the plan for doorstep delivery of supplies to hundreds of millions of households?

There are two possible explanations for this. Maybe they are our sincerest well wishers. Maybe they have sky high expectations from India, now expected to succeed at something where all of Europe and the United States have failed miserably.

Or maybe they are just impatient to see India fail and by extension, Modi. There has been a real thirst and a real curiosity in the West about India. For Indian liberals and their sponsors in the West, it seems catastrophe in India can’t come soon enough. With the lockdown, there is now genuine fear in these liberal circles that India won’t hit the per day 1000+ death toll they have been promising their editors in the West. For backup, they search for opportunity in the terrible economic toll that this lockdown will take. Either way, the more the misery of India, the more they make merry.

We really are on our own here. It does look like nobody wants us to succeed. Which is a disheartening thought, considering that Indian people have never wished harm upon any other nation. But India’s growing might has opened up deep seated insecurities and prejudices both about skin color and non-Abrahamic faiths.

The good news is that our fate is in our own hands now. If the lockdown succeeds, we will make history. Let’s make it happen.

Amid Wuhan Coronavirus disaster, Indian Communists massacre 17 in Chhattisgarh

Communism is a tireless form of evil. It is the curse that keeps on taking more and more from the world. Snatching more innocent human lives, causing more and more human misery. No matter how much misery they cause, they are never satisfied. They want to cause more.

Right now, the world is writhing in pain. Lakhs of people are infected with the Wuhan virus. Some 12,000 people are already dead. It is not unrealistic to believe that 50,000 people could die. Some pessimistic estimates would put the number at well over 1 lakh.

Very well. The grim reaper of Communism licks its lips and counts its victims. From 1001 lakh already killed over the last century to 1001 lakh.

The Communist Party of China could have prevented this. They could have stopped millions of people from leaving Wuhan. They could have chosen to listen to their own scientists and doctors, instead of forcing them shut. In the rest of the world, the global elite was either compromised or bought out. The World Health Organization declared that there is absolutely no reason to put travel restrictions on China. The top medical journal Lancet said that any such restriction would be racist and xenophobic!

The Communist Party of China was willing to let its own people and the rest of the world perish. The global elite were happy to play along.

In India, the number of infected people is now over 400. Eight people are already dead. The Railways have been stopped. The cities are on lockdown. A nation shivers.

At a moment like this, who would attack the Indian state? Who would be so dishonorable as to strike a nation already suffering from disease?

Well, someone with not even the slightest sense of honor, dignity or humanity. A truly anti-human force.

Again, that would be Communists.

These innocent people are grieving for their loved ones. As many as 17 men in uniform, massacred by Communists in Chhattisgarh yesterday.

The day before, 17 of these CRPF men had been missing in action after being ambushed by Communists. Yesterday, their bodies were found.

Remember that our intellectuals are busy making excuses for this. Exactly like they are busy making excuses for China and busy taking their anger out on Trump, Modi or even an average person who might have beaten a thali yesterday. The sympathizers of the murderous Communist Party are the celebrity free speech activists on the international stage.

I wonder what spurred Indian Communists to undertake this killing spree yesterday. Were they jealous of their comrades in China grabbing all the headlines? Or were they worried that the disease unleashed by their comrades would kill people only in urban centers? So in remote locations like Sukma, the Indian Communists decided to take a more direct approach in their war on humanity?

Let me leave you with this simple calculation that will tell you how bad Communism is.

Suppose the Wuhan Corona virus leaves 1 lakh people dead.

Communism had killed 1000 lakh people over the last hundred years.

In other words, take the current Corona virus disaster. Multiply it by 10. And then imagine it happening every single year for the last 100 years.

Now you have a picture of what Communism is.

Pandemic? Holocaust? Genocide? There is no word in the English language dictionary to cover what Communism is.

Why Janata curfew matters : We can’t let Communists look like their method wins

The Indian Railways has ground to a halt. The streets are deserted. Shops are closed. People are in their homes, too scared to come out. India fears the fate of Europe, where nearly 1500 people died from the Wuhan Corona virus yesterday. In the US, tens of thousands of people are already affected.

Why did this happen? Why has civilization stopped suddenly? Why are we in this crisis?

This happened because the Communist Party of China, which runs a totalitarian regime, refused to warn the world in time. They suppressed the news, destroyed samples, allowed millions of people to leave Wuhan and go all around the world.

Communists have always been against freedom. At least for the moment, they appear to have succeeded spectacularly. For now, we are all in jail.

But there is a second battle brewing, one which the Communist Party is also trying to win. They are trying to show the world that only their method works. That only a totalitarian Communist government can implement the kind of harsh curbs that are needed to stop a pandemic.

Already, the effect has been felt across the free world. From the United States to India, people are beginning to look at their democracies and wonder if it is a kind of weakness. The governments of Spain, France or Italy cannot force people to lock down in the way the Chinese state can. Left to their own judgement, people will make foolish mistakes. In a pandemic, the mistakes of a reckless few can doom us all. Perhaps freedom and democracy is not such a big deal after all?

When people begin to question the value of liberty itself, you know the Communists are winning. We cannot afford that.

This is why a concept such as “Janata curfew” is so important. The government isn’t forcing us. It is appealing to our conscience, our intelligence and our sense of duty. Saying that a free society can be trusted to do the right thing.

In India, left liberal sympathizers of the Communist Party have been mocking us, especially the appeal to come out of our homes at 5 pm and applaud those at the forefront of fighting the virus. They say that clapping won’t stop the virus.

We know it won’t. But we are demonstrating something even more important. We are showing them that free people can be trusted to do the right thing. A democratic country can pull together and fight a pandemic. We can save our lives and our way of life.

We have already lost our physical liberty to this virus. Now the Communists are making us question the liberty of our thoughts and our minds. If we start losing that, we would have nothing left.

We have to stay separate right now, but in our minds we are all in this together. Humanity will survive and so will freedom.

It really is time to cancel everything

A week or so ago, I read an essay in The Atlantic, which made a deep impression on me. I think I might have mentioned this on the blog, or at least on Twitter. The essay was called ‘cancel everything.’ Well, it is time India did that. Because we are on the verge of things spinning out of control.

At the moment, India has around 300 cases of the Wuhan Corona virus. Being more pessimistic, let’s say the real number is twice that. So that is 600 people.

If nobody interacts with anybody else for 14 days (incubation period of the virus), the disease probably will disappear. A disease which increases exponentially makes us feel very vulnerable. But, at the same time, remember that the disease itself is extremely vulnerable to small changes in behavior. Every small change we make today saves thousands of lives down the line. Perhaps just 10 days down the line.

Of course, that is easier said than done. How do you shut down a nation of 1.3 billion people?

This is a point when every decision needs to be looked at through a simple prism of life or death. Is this or that hardship literally going to kill us? If it isn’t going to physically kill us in the short run, we need to undertake that hardship right now to stop the virus.

Speaking of extremes, most people can easily survive 3 days without food. Possible exceptions would be those who have diabetes. So, everybody needs to go home and stay inside no matter what the cost. Unless you are certain that staying indoors would literally kill you. For example, if there is a fire in your building, you should step out. Otherwise not.

If we all stay inside, the chances of coming into contact with someone who has the virus are absolutely tiny. Even if there are 10,000 people in India who are infected, you won’t run into any of them as long as you stay in.

At this moment, the economy is trashed anyway, so there is no point thinking about the slump in economic activity. The economy will bounce back only if we survive. Also, the whole world is dealing with this disaster, so we can copy each other’s ideas to beat the recession that is coming.

We need a plan now to get through the terrible weeks that are coming. Each community will have to evolve its own plan because the government can’t possibly operate on such a hyperlocal level. As and when shops open in brief intervals for people to pick up essentials, we will need community initiatives to decide who goes out. Perhaps only one member per household. Perhaps one representative for every few houses. Perhaps young men and women (below 30) from the neighborhood who take orders and deliver to people’s houses.

Of course, none of these options is risk free. You can’t have too many people going out to shop at once, or else the market will become a hotspot for community transmission. If you have same people going to every door to deliver, it can become a case of ‘doorstep delivery’ of virus. That’s why each community needs to evolve its own plan on what they think is best.

Luckily, almost everyone these days is part of a neighborhood whatsapp group and these can help confer and decide on what is best for each community. Without discipline and cooperation, we are all doomed.

Most importantly, if you know somebody who is breaking quarantine rules, it is time to point them out to the police. Being a nosy neighbor is finally good for something.

Over the next few weeks, the government will have to start giving cash handouts to those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Yogi Adityanath has already begun a small handout of Rs 1000 to daily wage laborers. At least the CMs of Bihar and Jharkhand should follow suit immediately. Within a week, the Central Government must step in with its own stimulus plan. Fiscal deficit targets will of course go for a toss, but who cares right now? Anything might happen tomorrow. Somebody could come up with a bright idea that saves the world.

And if things get sufficiently bad, the world might actually get together and demand reparations from the government of China. Right now that seems far away because China is so powerful. But there is definitely a slight change in the tone of global media in the last 2 days over the conduct of the Chinese government. As the death toll from Wuhan Coronavirus mounts, global media is realizing that Chinese $$$ are of no use if we do not survive physically. Even if they survive, the extreme recession will hurt their pocketbook much more than anything China can pay in bribes.

Let’s wait and watch on that front. But as of now, we have to cancel everything.

 

 

With Wuhan virus, political correctness is being ‘monetized’ for the first time ever

No, my blog is not on lockdown due to the Wuhan virus, but it might as well be. Is there anything to talk about except the virus?

Today, the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh collapsed. The rapists of Nirbhaya were hanged. And yet, it feels like nothing is so important to talk about as the Wuhan virus.

Let us be 100% clear on this. This pandemic is China’s fault.

China, this is on you! YOU are responsible for thousands of deaths across the world. YOU are responsible for the global economic crisis and recession which is coming. YOU are responsible for what could be hundreds of millions of people losing their livelihoods.

China had the first case on Nov 17. They didn’t tell the world anything. They hid it all. By mid December, several Chinese labs had found evidence of a ‘mystery virus’. But China destroyed the samples, stopped the tests and covered up the news.

Even when the news filtered to the world, China kept feeding us nonsense news. Here is the World Health Organization on Jan 14, reporting what they had been told by Chinese authorities.

No evidence of human to human transmission? Really?

Why do we need to keep repeating this is China’s fault? Doesn’t  everyone know by now has heard that the virus began in Wuhan in Hubei province in China?

Well, yeah. But history is an ever changing thing. Public memory is short. China has hit the propaganda game hard to stave off the PR nightmare.

Just two months ago, it was acceptable and totally commonplace to refer to this as the Chinese virus.

By mid-March, opinions published on CNN had shifted.

In fact, liberal media was now publicly challenging Trump on why he and other Republicans were calling it “Chinese virus.” Suddenly the term that everyone was using just 2 months ago had been declared racist.

You know what’s coming. They will scrub it all clean. That tweet from CNN may disappear some day. Any website containing any reference to that term might be scrubbed clean. Algorithms of social media giants might start identifying the expression “Chinese virus” as hate speech and start auto deleting any post with those words.

Nothing is secure, except the thoughts in our head. They know human memory is perishable and they will work non stop to make us forget. See if you notice the game being played in this tweet.

That man is an Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University.

Did you catch that? Did you see how cleverly he framed the sentence? He tried to misdirect us like a street magician. The really relevant part of that sentence is in the first part (which you are likely to miss), not the second (which you are likely to remember). Cleverly and wickedly, Prof. Wang has sown the idea that there is some “debate” over where the virus came from!

That’s how it starts. Now they will say we must “teach the controversy” over where the virus came from.

Nothing is safe, except for the thoughts that we can hold on to in our heads. And keep passing around to those we know. The future generations must know what the world suffered because of the fault of the Chinese government.

With the Chinese virus pandemic, we are seeing something new and terrifying. For decades now, the network of political correctness has been laid all across the free world. But like many tech startups that later became giants, the revenue model for this was not immediately obvious. A lot of liberals got highly paid jobs working for this startup.

But, ultimately, the funding was coming from something resembling venture capital. A vast network for manipulating public opinion was being created, but it was not immediately clear how it would be ‘monetized.’

Well, now we know who would be willing to pay big $$$ for access to this network.  Right now, the Chinese government wants history wiped clean. And liberals can help. Liberals can use their vast network to declare this or that as “politically incorrect.” And once something is declared politically incorrect, it is as good as banned!

That’s exactly what China wants. That’s exactly what China is getting right now.

The Chinese govt does not want the world to remember that the pandemic is their fault. Liberals have declared the term “Chinese virus” as racist, thus effectively banning it.

We all suspected that political correctness was a veiled form of fascism. And for the first time, we are literally seeing political correctness being made into a tool for serving dictators. Be very certain that this tool will be used again and again.