The Global Fund- Charity, Foreign-Aid & Corruption.

CHARITY, FOREIGN-AID & CORRUPTION – Public should try to get complete grasp of the processes that lead to corruption !!!

The following excerpt is from a blog-page of David McCoy, (Linkhttp://www.medact.org/blog/bbc-panorama-global-fund-corruption/) who had been interviewed by a BBC Panorama team, about the corruption in the handling and distribution of “The Global Fund” . BBC World had telecasted this programme last weekend. However it is available on U-tube. Bill Gates,Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Bono had appeared on the promotion video for raising the fund.

The aim of the Global fund is preventing deadly diseases like malaria and TB. In the case of the fight against malaria, it is not any medicine or ‘high-tech’ solution, that is used to deal with the problem. Malaria is prevented through the supply and use of mosquito- nets, and $20million had been ‘spent’ on this alone !!!!

In my child-hood I had witnessed men with huge sacks combing our paddy fields in the night aided by a petro-max in search of edible frogs. These frogs were for export and the frogs became almost extinct that govt. imposed a ban on this activity. This is one major reason for the increase in the mosquito population, leading to the spread of many mosquito-borne diseases. And now the 'foreign-aid' (approx $20million) is directed towards buying mosquito nets !!!! What a funny scenario!? The population must to taught to look at nature in its divine aspect, different from the view of "subjugation, domination and exploitation" prevailing now.

And now the excerpt “The first is that corruption and the mis-use of public or charitable finance is not solely a developing country phenomenon. Embezzlement, scams and fraud exist in the UK, the United States and elsewhere. The second is that corruption in any country is a systemic issue and shaped by, among other things, social and cultural attitudes; the existence of financial management capacity and infrastructure; and the quality of local judicial systems. It is rarely isolated to a single actor or transaction. The third is that the biggest form of corruption affecting developing countries is not the embezzlement of aid, but the avoidance and evasion of tax by multinational corporations and the illicit outflows of private finance enabled by tax havens and banks. For every dollar of aid that goes into poor countries, approximately $10 flows out in the form of illicit financial flows. This is followed by large-scale corruption associated with arms deals and foreign direct investment agreements – involving both local and global actors” .

There are preposterous claims in the video, of white men/women saving lives in the third-world. We are part of the White-man’s Burden !!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eXYndcSqP0

ORGAN DONATION - IS IT A VIRTUOUS ACT, to be promoted as a social value !!!????

Ultimately, organ donations are not beneficial to society. People will abandon restrainful lives. They well-to-do will indulge themselves more in pleasures and vices. They feel any mis-hap to any of their body parts could be overcome either through treatment or as a last resort , by organ transplants.

People in general will not be motivated to insist on chemical/pesticide free food-products, for their consumption. Polluted air, water and food is one of the major reasons for organ failure, and if it affects a pregnant mother, it may affect the child in the womb too in many unforseen ways. That is, the harmful effects of pollutants will be carried forward to successive generations. eg. Bhopal, Chernobyl and Kasargod (Endosulphan) .Further people will become careless about their life style and consumption patterns, which is sure to intrude into other peoples's lives. eg. Chembanmudy quarries in Kerala. The people around is reported to have contracted respiratory diseases, due to quarry dust.

Post operative care is very expensive and ordinary citizens will find themselves between the devil and deep sea. Situations may arise in the family, where organ donation for/to a family member may lead to contentious issues. Medical industry which is the ultimate beneficiary is sure to exploit the situation. An MBBS seat now costs up-ward of fifty lakhs.The ordinary citizen is scared and uncertain about two expenses. Medical & Educational.The option to go in for organ transplant, due to societial and peer pressure, are sure to strain family resources further. Instead of the public promoting organ donation & transplants, they should seek ways and means to arrest and wipe out completely, organ failures among its members. Prevention is sure to be better than cure. - Finally in the larger context, organ donation is NOT A VIRTUOUS ACT.

WISHFUL THINKING OF A MISSIONARY - THE FAMOUS WILLIAM CAREY

The wicked, disrespectful  and intolerant mind of a Missionary is reflected in this poem. Most Hindus , especially those belonging to priestly vocation, will never compose such a poem, condemning the dieties/prophets of another religion.

Composed in Bengalee by Mr. Carey and translated  into English by J.Fountain.

The Indian  renouncing Heathenism, and embracing Christianity.  (p.309) www.wmcarey.edu/carey/staughton/308-309 .jpg

11.     In serving vain idols, why thus spend my days,

Since  nought but destruction attends all my ways?

The Lord of the world did descend from on high,

And was born in our nature all sin to destroy.

22.     Hitherto my whole soul, full of darkness has been,

And like other people I’ve gone on in sin,

With them I was drowning in misery’s deep,

And on earth I discovered no way of escape

33.     Seeb, Doorga, and Kallee, could  give me no aid,

No Debta nor Debbee, no offerings were made,

No Brammhan, no Yogee, no deed done by me,

No, not all these united can set my soul free.

44.     These all are quite useless, I’ve found them all vain,

From the power of JESUS some hope I obtain:

These heavens and this earth are the work of his hands;

He animates all things; all superintends.

55.     My sin,  and my holiness, now are my shame!

My passions, my wishes, my honour, my name;

I now lay all down at CHRIST JESUS’ feet,

And trust, though a sinner, I mercy shall get.

66.     Ho! All sinful people, this good news attend,

Salvation and Righteousness, now apprehend;

This, this is the order he gives unto you,

And then after death you to glory shall go.

Inhuman & dysfunctional political/economic system of the West.

This book review is captioned “Working to re-humanize work” by the reviewer. 

The political and economic system takes the blame for the de-humanization of work. Unless the system is changed, humanizing work/management will be elusive.

For Indians, the existing political & economic  systems they find themselves in, are of foreign origin.

Why must  we Indians carry ‘their’ cross?

It is also to be noted that the company Mondragón Corporation, belonging to the co-operative sector and mentioned in this review  is of Spanish origin. Sometime back I had  in my blog-page highlighted “Rethinking Our Concept of WORK” written by a Spanish Professor Shri Argandonna, from the University of  Navarra in Spain.http://msradha.blogspot.in/2013/11/rethinking-our-concept-of-work-about.html  Looks like the Spanish may steal the show from Indians, with respect to organizing life and work on a sane foundation.

I think the Village economic system that had prevailed here (India), was more refined that the co-operative system. The key-stone of the Indian material life was dependent on Karma-Yoga. In the name of ‘false/pseudo  secularistic  behavior’ especially in public, we are keeping away this valuable science from our younger generation. Unless it is given importance in the educational institutions, or in public discourse, whatever cajoling we do at home fails to impress the youngsters. But then there is the danger due to overexposure, because the subject-matter may become profane. Krishna/Vyasa was very specific that unless an individual shows respectful interest, the subject/knowledge should not be revealed to him. Gita 18:67

Now the book review :-

TODAY'S PAPER » FEATURES » BOOK REVIEW

December 10, 2013

Working to rehumanise work   Book review by ARVIND SIVARAMAKRISHNAN

(Words in Brackets and in  italics are comments made by me)

A study that has the courage to say ordinary people must be trusted to organise their own work

DEMOCRACY AT WORK — A Cure for Capitalism: Richard Wolff; Haymarket Books, P.O. Box 180165, Chicago IL 60618. $ 15.

We have been here before, most notably during the Great Depression, and for similar reasons, with an unregulated financial sector inflating itself to near-insane levels before the bubble burst. Helpless politicians, apparently unable to comprehend the nature or scale of this global stupidity, are no better at conceiving a political response now than they were then, and political dysfunction exacerbates economic dysfunction. Richard Wolff brilliantly identifies the reasons for our paralysis, and in an age permeated by a fear of decisive proposals he has the courage to say that ordinary people must be trusted to organise their own work. (That is the direction towards the  good old village industries that existed/exists in India )

Wolff starts with the fact that the state is in the corporate grip. In 2007-08, banks which owed hundreds of billions as a result of their own frenzied borrowing from other banks which had themselves borrowed colossally were fed trillions in taxpayers’ money; they were neither allowed to collapse, nor nationalized wholesale, nor prosecuted for almost certain criminality. They are confident that new regulations will not be introduced and that old ones will not be revived, and they remain the biggest welfare scroungers in history. The CEOs who have long supplanted even the tiny cabals of institutional shareholders nominally in charge led the post-crash rush for Washington handouts, and the neoliberal politicians whose campaigns they funded were furious that President Barack Obama’s stimulus package was too small. If the corporate banksnow lend at all, they lend to bodies like the United States and German governments, not to the small and medium-sized businesses which account for the great bulk of economic activity; their alleged ideological hatred of all things public conveniently vanishes, as it does in India, where gigantic and multiple corporate failures are concealed by endless refinancing at public expense.

Meanwhile, the U.S. corporate sector contributes under a fifth of the country’s total tax revenues. Ordinary people pay the rest. They have increased their productivity sharply in the last three decades, but with real wages held flat the only way they can consume enough to keep the system from collapsing is to live on their credit cards, and to do this more and more, as the state directs its — their — resources increasingly towards the corporates and away from public services and public infrastructure.

Keynesian remedies

Our political bankruptcy is worsened by the apparent untenability of responses which have rescued us in previous crises. A predictable revival of Keynesian formulae, whereby states would disregard budget deficits and spend to keep money circulating by getting people back into work, seems to have lost its earlier appeal. According to Wolff, the public — who pay the price for decades of an economic crisis they did not cause — fear that the initially increased budget deficits would mean even worse austerity for them. Secondly, Keynesian dispensations are inherently unstable. They are systematically evaded and destroyed by private corporations, often with the aid of an increasingly conglomerate-owned press, and in any case Keynes himself saw his remedies as temporary, not as structural defences against the inherent self-destructiveness of capitalism.

There is also good evidence for the impact of the corporate press; between 1960 and 1967, three flourishing British social-democratic papers, the Daily Herald , the News Chronicle , and the Sunday Citizen , were all destroyed by advertiser boycotts; their readerships totalled 9.3 million out of a total population of about 55 million, and they were highly respected by their readers. The Herald , which was funded by trade unions, had a readership of 4.7 million in the last year of its existence — more than twice the combined readership of the broadsheets the Times , the Financial Times , and the Guardian , but its 8.1 per cent of national daily newspaper circulation got it only 3.5 per cent of net advertising revenue per thousand copies. In face of access to such a huge readership, the advertiser boycotts amounted to gross economic irrationality. They were nothing other than ideologically-driven class warfare; today, even public-service broadcasters increasingly resemble the corporate press in tone and content.

Highly significant truths are therefore obliterated from public discourse. The absence of systemic critique means that sticking-plaster measures are messianically proclaimed as promises of imminent deliverance, and the corporate-driven destruction of mass labour organisations has all but ended any serious political pressure to regulate corporations or to hold major industries and services in public hands. In addition, it is almost never said that the total losses caused by the crash and by what even Larry Summers calls permanent depression far exceed the sums that would have been needed to keep the system going. In the United States alone, 20 per cent of productive capacity has lain idle since 2007, while millions and perhaps tens of millions are out of work and dependent on state benefits.

On Soviet Union

As for other alternatives, one of Wolff’s strengths is his honesty about the Soviet Union. The condition of Russian society itself and international hostility effectively combined to reduce global conceptions of socialism to state socialism, which is just another way of subjugating hundreds of millions to state institutions and the few who control those, whether for the sake of power or profit. Wolff unhesitatingly calls this state capitalism, in which a remote and oppressive apparatus appropriates the surplus value the workers’ own labour power generates.

Throughout the argument, Wolff complements his command of political economy with sharp sociological insight, not least in respect of the ways women’s expanded participation in the formal workforce has exposed capitalism’s destructive effect on the family, and his sense of the value of everyday association informs his own radical proposals for workers’ self-directed enterprises. These would go far beyond worker-managed ones, because the workers would themselves be the owners, the directors, and the workers; nobody outside the organisation could be a director, and posts would be rotated so as to prevent the excessive division of labour and to limit gross inequalities of income. The workers themselves would decide what to produce and how to produce it, and would do so in consultation with local bodies and communities – which could at the very least control the obscenities currently dismissed as externalities whether inflicted by private or so-called public bodies. Wolff has no general problem with profits, but the surplus which workers generate would be used for innovation and development under the same rubrics of reasoning and consultation, not under the present system whereby innovation is accepted only if it enables corporations to sack staff and increase profits.

Wolff, whose ideas are far less outlandish than they might seem to our deadened sensibilities, gives the example of the Mondragón Corporation; this federation of cooperatives based in Spain’s Basque region has been in existence for nearly 60 years and now has a staff of over 80,000. The organisation is explicitly committed to internal democracy, to creating jobs, and to the human and professional development of staff, as well as to the wider environment.

Wolff himself may or may not be something of an economic Aristotelian, but the idea that the informing principle of work must be reasoned, wide-ranging, and authoritative judgment in freedom from coercion and fear embodies a sense of what it is to be human which far transcends the imprisonment to which a collapsed capitalism and contemporary economic theory have consigned us.

Link http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-bookreview/working-to-rehumanise-work/article5442130.ece

Gandhian Economics - The only way forward.

The name of J.C.Kumarappa  and his take on the different kinds of economy, especially predatory economy figures in this recent op-ed article. Modern business practices (karma) are setting on boil, the entire world. It is reported that India has succumbed to US interests, in the WTO round at Bali. Very bad !!!!

Towards an economy of mutualism (Dec 04, 2013, The Hindu)

by MADHAV GADGIL

J.C. Kumarappa, the Gandhian economist who worked with the Planning Commission in the early years of Indian Independence, favoured industrialisation but insisted that its pursuit should not lead to the creation of an economy of violence. Recent disturbances linked to control over, and fate of, the rich water, mineral, forest and biodiversity resources of the Western Ghats of Kerala suggest that Kumarappa’s worst fears of a lopsided development have come true. As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz emphasises in his recent book, The Price of Inequality , any nation must aim at a harmonious development of its four capital stocks: not just man-made capital that GDP highlights, but natural capital, human capital and social capital as well. A GDP-centric viewpoint focusses exclusively on economic activity in the organised industries-services sector.

Chembanmudy quarries

 Thus, in the case of the controversial Chembanmudy hill stone quarries of Pathanamthitta district in Kerala, what will count as positive development gains are not only quarrying, crushing and truck transport, but also the boosting of sales of anti-cancer and anti-asthmatic drugs as a result of the ill-health caused by quarrying activities. In the absence of proper records, other relevant elements of economic activities such as the decline in agricultural productivity and loss of employment for agricultural labour that ought to be counted on the debit side will be overlooked. In addition, the GDP-centric view totally ignores the ongoing grave depletion of natural capital, human capital and social capital. Thus, in the case of Chembanmudy, landslips and blockage of streams are adversely impacting land, water, forest and biodiversity resources. Health, education and employment are three important components of human capital. In the Chembanmudy case, health has suffered, with even young children developing lung cancer. Mothers have petitioned that the unceasing truck traffic does not permit their children to focus on studies.

As for employment, there is little for local community members. Most of the small number of labour employed is from tribal tracts of Orissa or Jharkhand, people whose livelihood has been destroyed by rampant mining in their own native districts. There are horror stories making rounds of how this disorganised labour force is ill-treated, with no compensation for accidental injuries or even death. Indeed, the claim that India’s rapid economic growth is helping create much-needed employment is dubious; the annual rate of growth in employment in the organised sector that was 2 per cent when the GDP was growing at 3 per cent, actually declined to one per cent as the GDP growth rate soared to 7 per cent. So what we are witnessing is jobless growth, with accompanying erosion of human and social capital.

Social capital resides in social harmony, cooperation and trust. These too are suffering under the prevalent economy of violence. This economy is promoting grabbing and spoiling of land, water, mineral and forest resources to benefit a few, at the cost of the larger society. This is being facilitated by lawlessness and social injustice: witness the very large number of illegal quarries currently operational in Kerala, estimated at 1,700 out of a total 2,700 functional quarries. The disinformation campaign focussing first on our Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) report, and now on the Kasturirangan report, and the violence that has been triggered suggest that social disharmony has become the order of the day.

WGEEP points out that we are currently practising “Development by Exclusion, accompanied by Conservation by Exclusion.” This is because the many powerful interests that control decision-making today are not motivated to pursue development that would create mutually beneficial relationships among the beneficiaries of the organised industries-services sector and the bulk of our people dependent for their livelihoods and well-being on a healthy base of the natural resources. Nor are the powers-that-be properly informed of the realities at the ground level. This prevails all over the country, despite our well-entrenched democracy and the many constitutional and legal provisions to protect the environment and engage people in decision-making processes that are a result of a sensitivity towards what the people want.

Of all the States, it is Kerala that has led the country in democratic devolution and has made considerable progress in ensuring that people can influence the course of development and protect their environment and livelihoods. A notable example of this is the Plachimada panchayat in Palakkad district, where a Coca Cola plant had polluted as well as depleted groundwater, with consequent drying up of wells, loss of agricultural productivity and concomitant negative impacts on livelihoods. The people of Plachimada ensured that there was a proper scientific inquiry into the losses suffered by them. This provided sound scientific evidence that these losses amount to a whopping Rs. 260 crore. On the basis of this evidence, the panchayat rescinded the company’s licence. Notably enough, initially none of the political parties backed the people’s demands, but came round when confronted with a groundswell of sentiment. While cancelling the licence, the panchayat evoked its constitutional rights, arguing that as a local elected government it had the duty to protect the well-being of its subjects. So it had the right to cancel — or refuse permission to — anything that affected its subjects adversely. The company’s counter-argument was that the panchayat was a subordinate of the State government and thus could not operate out of its domain, since the State government had granted the licence for Coca Cola to operate. The High Court rejected this argument, affirming that people at the grassroots indeed have the authority to decide on the course of development in their localities.

The powers-that-be today would like to set aside these significant constitutional provisions empowering the people and helping them protect their environment. Instead, they are promoting a GDP-centric approach with little concern for natural, human, social capital. This is reflected in the rhetorical — and unconstitutional — question posed by the Kasturirangan panel: “How can local communities have any role in economic decision-making?” Evidently, the Kasturirangan panel wishes to facilitate the continuance of the present system of a predatory economy, but was obliged to prescribe some minimal level of protection for natural resources. Quite typically, this protection is proposed to be imposed from above and is not decided upon through a democratic process. But even this minimal protection is unacceptable to the beneficiaries of the current system who triggered the recent violence.

Duty to inform

Such lopsided development is clearly against broader national interests and since it is people at the grassroots that are best aware of what is happening to the natural, human and social capital, their inputs are critical to arriving at a development strategy that will promote a harmonious, balanced development. The sole duty of those wielding power should, therefore, be to inform the populace of all relevant facts and of the various development-conservation alternatives. Hence, WGEEP has explicitly stated that “we should attempt to develop a model of conservation and development compatible with each other … to replace the prevailing ‘Develop recklessly – conserve thoughtlessly’ pattern with one of ‘Develop sustainably – conserve thoughtfully’. The fine-tuning of development-conservation practices to [the] local context that this calls for would require the full involvement of local communities. It is therefore quite inappropriate to depend exclusively on government agencies for the constitution and management of Ecologically Sensitive Zones. Instead the final demarcation of the Zones and fine tuning of the regulatory as well as promotional regimes must be based on extensive inputs from local communities and local bodies.”

An important focus of the development of the Western Ghats tracts of Kerala should therefore be on properly informing and organising people down to the grassroots level to exercise their democratic rights. A well-informed and empowered citizenry will ensure that the environment is properly cared for even as we continue to industrialise, as has happened in Germany and the Scandinavian countries. What we need to concentrate on is implementing that which by all rights must be implemented, namely, the constitutional provisions for protecting the environment and empowering the people.

Of course, India must continue to develop a vibrant technology-based economy as well. Inevitably, this will end up employing only a small proportion of our people. But this modern economy must come to assume a mutualistic, and not predatory, role towards the natural resource-based, labour intensive sector of the economy. That is the only route to balanced and harmonious economic and social development.

(Madhav Gadgil is Chairman of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel. madhav.gadgil@gmail.com)

Modern economy must come to assume

a mutualistic, and not a predatory, role toward the natural resource-based,

labour-intensive sector of the economy

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/towards-an-economy-of-mutualism/article5419751.ece

Cholestrol vis-a-vis FATE !!!

Personal well being, work & life-style, medicine, philosophy of modern medical practices, business, profit, science, research, scientists, thought leaders, advertisement campaigns, TRUTH vs LIES and Western civilizational values  are reflected in the article given below. That the Western Civilization is Satanic (Aasuri) could be discerned without doubt.

“A plant poison becomes a money-spinner

PROFESSOR B.M. HEGDE (The Hindu,Sunday, Nov 17, 2013)

“The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.” — Kurt Vonnegut.

China has a valley in the north where the environment is very hostile — old, dark and lonely. Small plants live there very precariously. Red yeast rice is a very small plant there which has so many enemies locally as they find the rice tasty. Nature equips all of us, including red yeast rice plants, with tricks to live in spite of the hostile atmosphere. This rice produces a poison, lovastatin, which kills all foolish predators.

One researcher from the U.S. government found this poison and took it back home for further study. But it proved to be pretty useless from the U.S. Army’s point of view. However, this poison was seen to be blocking an important enzyme known as the HMG-CoA reductase. This enzyme is responsible for cholesterol production in the liver. The pharma lobby found out that, lovastatin, in smaller doses, blocks cholesterol production in our liver.

By this time cholesterol, the main lifeline of our existence, was already made into a demon needing to be killed at any cost. Many of you might not know that it was a lie. But we believe in telling lies to people. Truth telling and medicine just do not go together. Those of you who want to know the truth should visit the site: www.thincs.org

The medical world did not have a good looking, tasty poison to bring down the cholesterol our own liver keeps producing for our good. “Right” thinking people in the pharma lobby must have had a brilliant idea. Why not use the Chinese red yeast rice plant poison to block the liver’s cholesterol factory?

The other leading drug that we had at that time was cholestyramine, sand like powder, which had to be taken three times a day in two large tablespoons. A majority of patients used to vomit and stop taking the medicine. The business was not too good in that area. The plant poison came in handy at that time.

Soon we created enough “evidence” to show that lovastatin reduces the cholesterol level in the blood report effectively. The FDA, in its inimitable style, approved this drug for lowering cholesterol. Industry sponsored “thought leaders” soon got into action to have several studies done to show how good this drug was and went round the world delivering talks based on company produced “science” and succeeded in convincing the gullible medical world about the virtues of this red yeast rice poison.

Special conferences were organised lavishly where the invited “scientists” were feasted and entertained to boost sales and it was shown that the drug company profits went up exponentially to make shareholders happy. The company executives laughed their way to their banks!

To give the reader the taste of one such conference on fat hypothesis in disease we will discuss that (in)famous Transatlantic Conference on Cholesterol, presided over by the famous Scottish scientist, Sir Michael Oliver, Professor of Cardiology at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh and for a term President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and an FRS himself. He was a no-nonsense scientist and the conference ended in total disagreement about the role fat plays in vascular disease!

While on his flight back over the Atlantic, Sir Michael was reading The New York Times, in which there was a report on that conference with a title: Consensus Conference on Cholesterol with his name mentioned. He was surprised and equally enraged at the blatant lie. When he landed in Edinburgh, he wrote an article in the Lancet titled Consensus or non-senses Conference on cholesterol ? There was a long-drawn debate raging for a long time after. This will give you an idea how clouded the area is.

Now we have enough and more evidence to show how dangerous this red yeast rice poison is for the human body. While it definitely reduces the blood report of the fat profile, there is still no evidence that it reduces the outcome of premature death. In fact, we have evidence to show that in the long-run these drugs increase total mortality. In medical research, patient death is of no consequence. It is only a statistic! How does this happen? The enzyme HMG-CoA reductase blocks many other routes in the liver, the most important being production of Mevalonic acid, a vital part of good health and longevity.

There are rare births with congenital mevalonic acid deficiency. The child looks like an old man at one year and dies by the age of 2-3! If a doctor has seen a child with that disease, she/he will never prescribe this poison to any patient.

One other salient feature needs to be mentioned here. The cell wall in our body is made up of cholesterol. The wall has to be strong to be hydrophobic. Low cholesterol levels make cell walls weak, inviting cell necrosis, something that abets cancer growth!

Although the jury is still out on this poison, there is enough and more evidence to show that the red rice plant had this very powerful weapon to survive in that extremely hostile terrain in the cold valley of North China. I dare not prescribe that unless it is a terminal illness.

“… that statins are a widespread conspiracy aimed at fleecing the public and ruining their health. In fact, the majority of studies show that men, just like women, die more from heart disease if they have low cholesterol levels. And yet doctors are busy prescribing cholesterol-lowering medication to millions of men around the world.” — Campbell-McBride

( The writer is a cardiologist and former Vice-Chancellor, Manipal University. Email:hegdebm @gmail.com )

Now we have more evidence to show how dangerous the Chinese red yeast rice poison is for humans. While it definitely reduces the blood report of the fat profile, there is no evidence that it reduces the outcome of premature death”

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-openpage/a-plant-poison-becomes-a-moneyspinner/article5359616.ece

ABC analysis of Business Deals - The primary role of bribes

I often come across Mr Sanjit during my morning walks. He is a fresh MBA, having completed his course during  the 2011-2013 academic years from SRM Univ campus within the city. He had attended campus interviews, and he claims that he got a job offer from a insurance company, but did not join. He informs that out of the total students in his class, almost 50% got offer letters through campus interviews/selection. Within three to four months of  joining ,except for three or four, all others were again in the job market trying their luck. The placements through campus selection were in sales , and the employers were marketing companies associated with banks and insurance companies. The  target fixed for the first month was Rs.3 lakhs. This almost all achieved , courtesy  relatives and  friends. The second month the target was lowered to Rs. 2 lakhs. None could achieve this target, and the employers refused salary for the  new recruits. After being in the job for one more month without pay, all left the job . Sanjit has teamed up with his uncle, and is trying to sell building materials, to bulk users like flat promoters. His uncle is already in the building hardware business and owns one such  shop within the city.

Suppose if we do a ABC analysis of clinched Business Deals. The business deals of high value in the A category is dealt at the highest level involving ministers (politicians), capitalists, bureaucrats and rich bankers.  The winner is usually the one paying the highest bribes and other entertainments and adept at keeping the ‘transactions’ highly confidential.  Then comes the B category. This will be shared by the close relatives of ministers and top bureaucrats, crony capitalists, businessmen  with the help of party officials in the lower rungs of the hierarchy etc. This business is mostly through contacts and networks. Here also bribes, kick-backs  and other favors will be  the main consideration, but the scale will be a bit lower. The business in the C category is left  for the underdogs to pounce upon. These days this class is drawn from the lot of fresh MBA’s  and other graduates comprising the lowest level, and middle-level managers ,miserable beings who have to break their heads and slog it out, to squeeze out that last drop from the market. In such situations they may dearly long for their fore-fathers occupation, ie farming or other such traditional calling. The C category business act, is mostly  a façade put up by many businesses. It helps in turning black into white money.(Money laundering)

 The above business scenario happening worldwide , is corroborated by  a news report in today’s (15/11/2013)  The Hindu, which fully describes or rather exposes the manner in which big  international business deals are clinched.   If it is happening in China, then India will also not be insular to such business practices. That in part explains the huge funds in the hands of politicians of all hues. Eg. Take the case of the two Volvo buses which caught fire, one yesterday and the other a fortnight ago on the Bangalore –Mumbai & Bangalore-Hyderabad route respectively. Regarding the Mumbai bound bus quote from the Hindu  about ownership “The bus belonging to National Travels, owned by a former Minister and Janata Dal (Secular) legislator B.Z. Zameer Ahmed, had left Bangalore around 8 p.m. on Wednesday.” The Hindu quote regarding the ownership  of Bangalore-Hybd bus “Even as the bus accident on the National Highway near Kothakota in Mahabubnagar district stunned people, a preliminary investigation has revealed that the bus was registered in the name of J.C. Uma Reddy, a close relative of former Minister J.C. Diwakar Reddy.” The  way to entrepreneurship is through politics.  See (1) http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/7-die-as-bus-hits-median-and-bursts-into-flames/article5353266.ece (2)http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/bus-registered-in-the-name-of-diwakar-roadlines/article5299677.ece?ref=relatedNews

NYT: JPMorgan gave ‘lucrative contract’ to Wen’s daughter

ANANTH KRISHNAN

United States banking giant JPMorgan Chase secretly hired the daughter of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, paying her consulting firm $1.8 million (Rs. 11.38 crore) over two years as the bank looked to expand its interests in China, according to a Thursday report by The New York Times .

The newspaper said the bank had agreed a lucrative $ 75,000-a-month contract with a little-known Beijing consulting firm, Fullmark Consultants, which comprised only two employees — Wen Ruchun, the then Premier’s daughter, and a friend.

The NYT report said authorities in the U.S. were looking into JPMorgan’s relations with Ms. Wen “as part of a wider bribery investigation into whether the bank swapped contracts and jobs for business deals with state-owned Chinese companies”.

The report suggested that the U.S. bank courted Ms. Wen for her connections at a time when her father — who served as Premier between 2003 and 2013 — served as the top official in charge of economic and regulatory affairs.

Its efforts, the NYT suggested, paid off: in one instance, Ms. Wen’s firm, Fullmark, claimed in a confidential letter that it had secured a lucrative deal for the U.S. company with the government-run China Railway Group.

Courting ‘princelings’

A number of foreign investment banks and private equity firms have, over the past decade, courted the children of influential Communist Party leaders — known in China as “princelings” — to further their connections — and business interests — in the country.

The amassing of wealth by Party princelings has emerged as a source of increasing resentment in China, prompting, in recent months, a campaign by dozens of activists calling on officials to disclose the assets of their families, as well as renewed calls from economists to reform influential and opaque State-owned enterprises.

The NYT , in a separate investigation in 2012, reported that the family of the former Premier had amassed a fortune in excess of $ 2 billion, hidden through a web of investment vehicles.

Ms. Wen, the newspaper said, had adopted an alias — she went by the name Lily Chang in her business dealings — to avoid attention.While the newspaper said it did not discover anything illegal in Ms. Wen’s dealings with JPMorgan, its findings are certain to raise difficult questions both for the bank and for the Chinese leadership.

The NYT reported that the bank had also held stakes in a private equity firm co-founded by Mr. Wen Jiabao’s son, Wen Yunsong, and owned nearly $ 1 billion worth of shares in the Ping An insurance company — one of China’s biggest firms — where the Wen family held a stake, through a murky web of investment vehicles, that was valued at more than $ 2 billion in 2007, according to the newspaper’s 2012 investigation.

Link http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/nyt-jpmorgan-gave-lucrative-contract-to-wens-daughter/article5353230.ece

Unconscionable Rascals - (Karma analysis)

Even when the poor man’s house is on fire, the so-called American elites want to make money out of such events. For no fault of theirs,  the poor of the world, especially those in developing countries has to pay dearly for the all destroying fire,  fanned out of control, by the rich industrialized nations. In fact the rich nations are trying to instill a sense of guilt in the poor by pointing to their share towards  global warming.  The rich nations bigoted ‘scientific research’  has manufactured the conclusion that  ‘barbaric home-cooking’ using firewood and other locally available fuel like dried cow-dung  and decay of agricultural waste in farm lands  are two other major causes for global warming. It is very unfortunate that a Indian who shared a Nobel Prize, ie Rajendra K Pachouri, is  still the chairman of a committee which is behind such a campaign. Well, he has to return the favour conferred on him by way of the Nobel Prize.

American business honcho’s and American policy makers are unconscionable rascals. To be sure about this, kindly  read the following news report in today’s (15/11/2013)  The  Hindu. I had already highlighted America’s business interests linked to climate change in my blog posted on 08/11/2013 http://msradha.blogspot.in/2013/11/china-should-lend-ear-to-indians.html

The full text of today’s  news report is copied here :-

U.S. to oppose mechanism to fund climate change adaptation in poor nations

NITIN SETHI

Internal briefing paper accessed by The Hindu shows U.S. wants to promote its tech firms

In an internal briefing paper prepared for its diplomats across the world before the Warsaw climate negotiations, which The Hindu accessed, the U.S. has opposed the setting up of a separate mechanism on ‘loss and damage’. It has also pushed primarily for the role of private investments and finance to enable the poor countries to adapt to climate change.

The U.S., according to the paper, wants a 2015 climate agreement where no country is forced to take higher emission reduction pledges than the ones they initially volunteer. It has informed its diplomats to keep pushing the line with other countries that the U.S. was doing enough domestically on the climate change front and these were priorities for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

The cabled message, drafted by senior state department officials, sets not only the content for what is to be done internally by the U.S. delegation at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) but also how the diplomats should posture publicly to help the delegation that would negotiate at Warsaw.

On setting the emission targets under the new agreement to be signed in 2015, the note informs, “In Warsaw we seek to establish an expectation that parties will submit their commitments by early 2015 so as to finalise an agreement in Paris [in 2015 itself].”

Pushing pledges

Under the 2015 agreement, to become operational in 2020, the U.S. government has been pushing that all countries volunteer to pledge their commitments. The note says, “Specifically we are advocating an approach under which countries — both developed and developing — will put forth nationally determined mitigation commitments, followed by a transparent consultative process that will give other countries and civil society the opportunity to analyse and comment upon such commitments.”

In a revealing line it adds, “The idea is that sunshine will provide an incentive for countries to put forth ambitious commitments in the first instance and, even if not, there will be an opportunity for countries to decide to enhance their commitments before they are finalised.”

The U.S. stance differs radically from the demand of groups such as those of the small island-states, EU and others which require that the volunteered targets be increased after a review to see if they add up to the effort required to keep global temperatures under control.

The Hindu contacted senior U.S. negotiators and their spokesperson at Warsaw personally and through e-mail with specific questions about the briefing paper. The delegation responded with the statement, “The U.S. is dedicated to achieving an ambitious, effective and workable outcome in the UNFCCC and in Warsaw, and our positions are designed to further this goal. We are engaging with all countries to find solutions that will give momentum to the effort to tackle climate change.”

That the U.S. sees climate change as an opportunity to also leverage and open economies of developing countries to clean-tech investments is also revealed, “The work we have undertaken in 2013 has begun to lay the groundwork for an ambitious and wide-ranging efforts aimed at catalysing low-emission, climate resilient investment in developing countries, though of course we recognise that much work remains to develop the tools necessary to shift the global economy in this direction.”

The poor countries have consistently warned that public investments can neither be adequate nor predictable and can work merely as a complementary source of finance. They also warn that private investment does not move towards the priority of adaptation activities where the returns are negligible but the monies important to save lives. The U.N. climate convention imposes the obligation on the developed world to provide funds and technologies to the poor countries to ‘enable’ the latter to undertake climate action but the U.S. position in the briefing paper talks of pushing in investments instead.

The U.S. has said in public earlier that it sees public funding in the climate change arena more as a tool to leverage private investments. Developing countries have demanded that the U.S. and other developed countries put forth a clear timeline for when and how they shall provide for the $100-billion annual fund by 2020 they had earlier promised. But the briefing paper remains silent on the U.S. committing to any such time line in Warsaw. The talk of any scaling up funds between now and 2020 is ignored.

It instead says, “We’re also working to intensify our coordination in the context of the Green Climate Fund board to shape an institution that could leverage private investment more effectively than any other multilateral climate fund.”

‘Loss and damage’

The U.S. acknowledges in the cabled briefing to its diplomats that “Finance is another contentious issue, with many developing countries feeling that there is lack of clarity on climate finance between now and 2020”. But, in effect, the U.S .strategy is to work outside the UNFCCC to leverage private funds and it plans to talk of this through the Warsaw talks too.

On the controversial issue of loss and damage, demand by developing nations that developed countries pay compensation for damage to life and property that cannot be avoided despite the best of adaptation and emission reduction efforts, the U.S. plans to not let the idea become a full-fledged separate mechanism at Warsaw. After very strongly opposing any such mechanism. the U.S. had to give in last year and allow talks.

At Warsaw, the briefing paper shows, it plans to ensure that while the issue is called ‘loss and damage’ it does not get a life of its own but is swallowed by the existing track which would ensure the issues of ‘liability’ and ‘compensation’ are thrown out.

The document says: “It’s our sense that the longer countries look at issues like compensation and liability, the more they will realise this isn’t productive avenue for the UNFCCC to go down.”

It adds, “We are strongly in favour of creating an institutional arrangement on loss and damage that is under the Convention’s adaptation track, rather than creating a third stream of action that’s separate from mitigation and adaptation.”

The Hindu Link is http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/us-to-oppose-mechanism-to-fund-climate-change-adaptation-in-poor-nations/article5353229.ece

CHINA SHOULD LEND AN EAR TO INDIANS INSTEAD OF AMERICANS

Yesterday (07/10/2013), The Hindu newspaper  reproduced  Thomas L Friedman’s OP-ED column originally published by New York Times News Service. The column titled ‘Too Big To Breathe’ is about the alarmingly  high level of  pollution of the atmospheric air and water in China.

Why has Thomas L Friedman written about China’s acute pollution

problems? Is he really concerned about the health of  Chinese people.?  While reading the column, one can spot the business interests beneath the concerns, which are only skin-deep. Friedman is a proponent of Globalization 3.0 (version 3). Pollution is a real problem in China, judging from the various news reports about the same, but the American(‘s) interest is to sell to China ‘clean  & green’ technologies.

China’s development path has taken a turn for the worst. The material ambition of the Chinese  people had been kindled and therein lies the danger. How to satiate this material hunger? Without affecting the environment !!!?? China is doomed unless it corrects its course, and make its  people  understand the value of a simple and peaceable living.

India has a lot to learn from this negative experience of  China. Real Indian Values are being replaced  by Material Values. Material ambitions of ALL can never be satisfied. Imagine trying to provide concrete houses and a car for  30 crore households . (Total Population  120 crore / 4 members per household ).The strain on the resources and environment will be too much that it will collapse. Therefore   the Govt has to encourage simple living by its citizens. Many of our existing Karmas will thus become redundant.

China produces all those cheap goods sold at the Wal Marts of US. If the US sincerely want to help the ordinary citizens of China, it should stop buying all those cheap goods. But the Americans can’t survive without cheap Chinese products. China is providing these goods on credit. When viewed from this perspective, the Chinese are real fools, putting in all hard work and at the same time polluting their commons  to maintain the standard of living of the American people. And China is not likely to get back its principal amount from US intact.

All these facts should make the Indians long for their own Karma Theory (karma-yoga). We Indians should not allow   politicians and businessmen to substitute our ancient and time-tested spiritual values, with the worn-out material values of the rest of the world.

Thomas L Friedman’s  article is  fully copied here. Strangely it is missing from The Hindu electronic Index, so I have copied it from the New York Times  site. Interestingly there is a media blitzkrieg  about China's pollution woes , and it can be traced to print and blogpages  associated with the New York Times.  All the links are provided here at the end. It seems there is a concerted attempt by US

companies to influence the Chinese people and Communist Party Officials and bureaucrats. Trade and money are the only  matters of concern  to the Americans.

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Too Big to Breathe?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: November 5, 2013 

SHANGHAI — I arrived here on Oct. 19th and was greeted with this news: A combination of cold weather, lack of wind, coal-powered heating and farmers burning off post-harvest debris had created a perfect storm of pollution in the northeastern industrial city of Harbin, home to 10 million people. It was so bad that bus drivers were getting lost because the smog-enveloped roads would only permit them to see a few yards ahead. Harbin’s official website reportedly warned that “cars with headlights turned on were moving no faster than pedestrians and honking frequently as drivers struggled to see traffic lights meters away.”

The NASA Earth Observatory declared that some Harbin neighborhoods “experienced concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) as high as 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter. For comparison, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality standards say PM2.5 should remain below 35 micrograms per cubic meter.” This means that Harbin would need a 97 percent reduction in pollution in order to reach the maximum level our government would recommend. NASA said Harbin hospitals reported “a 30 percent increase in admissions related to respiratory problems, and several Harbin pharmacies were sold out of pollution face masks.” The American jazz singer Patti Austin canceled a concert in smoggy Beijing because of “a severe asthma attack in combination with respiratory infection,” according to the event’s website.

It was no wonder that at a gathering of environmental activists in Shanghai I attended, organized by the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, or Juccce, the conversation was dominated by moms and dads talking about where in China to live, when to send their kids outdoors and what food and water to trust. While swapping notes on China’s latest “airpocalypse” a few days later, Hal Harvey, the American chief executive of Energy Innovation, who is working with China’s government to try to get its air quality back under control, asked a powerful question: “What if China meets every criteria of economic success except one: You can’t live there.”

Indeed, what good is it having all those sparkling new buildings if you’re trapped inside them? What good is it if China’s rapid growth has enabled four million people in Beijing to own cars, but the traffic never moves? What good is it if China’s per capita incomes have risen to a level affording tens of millions of once-poor peasants diets rich in milk and meat, but they can’t trust the labels? What good is all that rising G.D.P., if there is no clean air to breathe?

China has built amazing hardware in 30 years — modern cities, roads, airports, ports and telecoms — bringing more people out of poverty faster than any country in the history of the world. The Chinese have much to be proud of. Every healthy economy, though, depends on a healthy environment. China will stall if President Xi Jinping and his government do not now build the software — the institutionalized laws, courts and norms — that can ensure that all this growth will not be undermined by an epidemic of despoiled land and dirty air. 

That is easier said than done. China is a one-party system with multiple, competing interests inside. More enlightened party leaders in Beijing may declare, “We have to clean this up,” but they still have to get the local bosses — whose bonuses depend largely on generating economic growth — “to assert environmental interests at least as strongly as economic interests,” said Harvey. That requires assigning real value, and giving real institutional power and weight, to those in the system who believe that it is just as important to protect the commons — air, water, land, food safety — as it is to grow the commons, that it is just as important to have decent ingredients in the pie as it is to grow the pie. “At the end of the day,” said Harvey, “if the pie’s not edible, it doesn’t matter how big it is.” 

  

(We can thank our lucky stars that foresighted Americans, starting around 1970, built the institutions to protect our air and water. Next time you hear someone beat up on the E.P.A., send them to Harbin for a week.)

Peggy Liu, the founder of Juccce, is working with Chinese consumers, producers and bureaucrats to define and implement a more sustainable “Chinese dream” that must be different from the American dream of a house, a car, a yard and a throwaway economy for all. I think building the institutional support for a sustainable Chinese dream is the most important thing President Xi can do.

“China doesn’t have to have rivers that run bright red with industrial waste, or our lakes and beaches smothered by thick, green algae, or 18,000 dead virused pigs floating down the Huangpu River,” Liu recently wrote. “We shouldn’t have to check our air quality index app on our phone every day to determine whether we should let our children outside to play. There shouldn’t be any more Chinese children who, when they go abroad for the first time, ask: ‘Mommy, why is the sky so blue?’... China can be better than this. China needs to carve our own unique way to a thriving life and stable community — a path that is a sustainable path. If we don’t do this soon, we will end up with a China Nightmare. And there’s no escaping that a China Nightmare is a global nightmare.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 6, 2013, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Too Big To Breathe?. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/opinion/friedman-too-big-to-breathe.html?_r=0

Other links to reports about China’s pollution problems which appeared  within the past one week  are provided here

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/business/energy-environment/chinas-clean-air-drive-likely-to-take-a-long-time.html?src=recg

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/an-8-year-old-girls-lung-cancer-is-blamed-on-air-pollution/?src=recg

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/on-the-chinese-internet-big-interest-in-smogs-threat-to-fertility/?src=recg

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/30/opinion/international/hua-jokes-lies-and-pollution-in-china.html?src=recg

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/opinion/if-you-think-chinas-air-is-bad.html?src=recg

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/opinion/chinas-dirty-air.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp