The Daily Bias - Cutting the crap since 2005

Today the Taliban attacked a wedding ceremony, killing 20+ attendants and wounding 40. The BBC reports:

"People were running around, some were lying on the ground crying," one
survivor, Nanai Agha, is quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

"Dead
bodies were everywhere," he said.

At the Daily Bias, we eagerly await the immediate condemnation by the self-proclaimed "anti-war"-crowd.

Henrik

Something that probably didnt rattle a lot of people´s world this week: Pretoria, South Africa got a new name.

The city was originally founded by immigrant Boers (white Africans coming from the Cape) who named it after their leader Andries Pretorius, but the new authorities in South Africa have in their wisdom decided that, apparently, places named for white people are somehow "divisive" or "racist", so instead they are now calling the city Tshwane, naming it after the son of an immigrant Ndebele (negro African coming from Zululand) chief instead.

Of cours, some people couldnt see how switching from naming a city after a white guy to naming it after a black guy made it that much less "divisive", so instead the authorities cooked up a story about how Tshwane supposedly means "we are the same":

According to the City of Tshwane website, Tshwane was the name of the son of an
African chief who settled in the area hundreds of years ago; and is also a word
that means "we are the same" or "we are one because we live together".

There is one problem with that neat story - it isnt true:

The first were Nguni-speakers, known as the Ndebele who named the place Tshwane, which means Little Ape.

So, there you have it: one of the largest cities in South Africa is now to be known as "Little Ape". As one South African put it:

This morning I drove past a newspaper poster proclaiming that Pretoria will now be known as Tswane. Who the fuck wants to live in Tswane? The CBD however will still be known as Pretoria. A bit confusing I think... I'm so sick and tired of overpaid 'politicians' in government bitching and moaning about stupid shit like city names. I'm extremely pleased to see that our country has time and money to spend on something as fucking retarded as changing 'racist boer inspired' city names to more ethnic sounding meaningless names that have ZERO relevance to the original founders of the city. JESUS CHRIST! We have AIDS, raped babies, hungry people, illegal aliens, escalating petrol and property prices, unemployment, lack of education, cyclists getting shot, pigfuckers cutting me off on the highway and god knows what else... I don't think changing city names should be on our list of priorities for the next 100 years.

PS- MS Word doesn't even see 'Tswane' as a real word...

I think that about says it all...

Update:

I just thought Id throw in that I do know that Andries Pretorius wasnt exactly your nice guy next door. The Boers had been molded by two and a half centuries of border warfare (and the recurring mutual massacres that entails) with negro and hottentot tribes, and had little inhibition against enslaving these.

Update II:

While Im at it, I might as well clarify my stance on "natives", "africans", "immigrants" etc. You may have wondered why I choose to call both Boers and Ndebele "immigrants", given that we normally think of Africa being inhabited by people like the Ndebele (ie negros). This has led to the equation negro=african. That is not true, though. Likewise, negro is not just negro.
The Boers WERE immigrants to South Africa, arriving from the very early 1600s in the Cape, where they found a population of Khoi/hottentots. The hottentots, along with the pygmies, are the original population of South, East and Central Africa.
What we normally view as Africans/Negros are mainly the Bantu, a group of people that began expanding from what is today Nigeria when the Roman Empire was at its highest. Over the following centuries, they invaded and took over more and more land until the original population was left only in todays Namibia, Botswana and western South Africa, and the Bantu expansion was only temporarily stopped by the intrusion of the Boers in the 1800s. With de-colonisation and the fall of white minority rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, that expansion has resumed. The renaming of Pretoria as Tshwane is only a small part of this. Others are the massacres of pygmies by Bantu in the Congo and the eviction of Bushmen from their reserve in Botswana.
If the Bantu were white, we´d call it "racism" or "imperialism" and critisize it, but since they arent we just shut up and let it happen.

OK, rant over. Im going to shut up now.

Update III

It occurred to me that I didnt deal with the concept of "natives" as I said I would. I can sum it up in a few words: its bull. Various groups use the claim of being native to any particular piece of land as a front for what it really is: a grab into your pocket to get your money.
Fact remains that the only piece of land where we actually stem from is Africa - all people migrated out from there. In short:

WE ARE ALL AFRICANS

Im probably going to write more on this another time. Right now, Im off to bed.

Henrik

In these Star Wars-loving times, Sir George over at Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has committed an eminent piece of ranting against all things Jedi, proving what a bunch of freedom-hating, anti-capitalist, ultra-religious fanatics they really are, and what a stinking pile of anti-sith propaganda the Star Wars series really is:

What you might not know was the Republic was also yet another socialist failure. It didn't have a hard currency, only "credits", and as Watto said, "Republic Credits are no good here." The US Dollar is hard currency, accepted everywhere. Republic Credits are a pretend currency, a cross between an IOU and a Cuban Peso, accepted only in the Republic -where people are forced to take them and pretend they have value. No wonder the Senate was corrupt: they ran their Republic with Monopoly© money. On all of Corsucant, the only thing Lucas showed Galactic Credits actually buying was hard liquor in the bar at the start of Episode II. Drunks, vodka, Rubles - you figure it out.
................
Combine the Organization of African States, the Arab League, and the Communist Bloc, stick their offices in New York, and you have your vaunted, fetid, putrefying Republic. It was nothing but a passel of dictatorships, failed planets, and septic backwaters, with all military power farmed out to an elite aristocracy of Mamluke warriors armed with laser swords and flying chariots. Make no mistake, these psycho jihadis had free reign to kill.
That was the vaunted Jedi Order, and worse, it's wasn't even a voluntary one, since the Jedi were pressed into training while mere tots. Imagine a church that sought out toddlers, whisking them away to a distant planet, turning their minds into jelly, coercing them into abandoning their family and all ties, and then convincing them to devote themselves to a lifetime of violent service to The Order. That wouldn't be an Order worthy of admiration and respect, nor a religion worthy of the name. The Jedi Order was a damn death cult - a death cult whose stranglehold on power lasted for thousands of years.
................
We at the Rott are not afraid to denounce the Jedi, to expose them for what they were, because we are Sith. We know what the Jedi were - pathetic scum, brainwashed from youth - limited – ascetic – narrow minded – enablers of failure – sowers of discord – holy thugs - parasites. There's a reason each and every Jedi had to be master of the light saber, the dagger's big brother, and it's not for personal growth. They used those to kill, and they did their killing up close and personal, not on the field of battle like a man, as their incompetence on Geonosis so proved, but at the conference table, in the back alley, at the wedding party. They were never a military force; they were the enforcers, the muscle, the Stasi officer corps; sucking in information and dealing out violent death at a personal level. In return, they demanded respect, power, adulation, even worship. Fuck that and fuck them. They are not fit to lick Sith boots.

What then follows is a masterful picking apart all the pro-jedi propaganda we have been spoonfed for damn near 30 years, complete with a list of the endless list of crimes committed by this vile cult:

Episode I: Interference with the operation of a space of a vessel, attempted hijacking, destruction of property, flight to avoid arrest, gambling, attemped theft by deception, slave trafficking, breaking and entering, murder.

Episode II: Wanton endangerment and wreckless driving (multiple counts), attempted carjacking, interference with the pilot of a vehicle, murder (innumerable counts - Tattoine), child murder (innumerable counts), murder (innumerable counts – Geonosis), destruction of property.

Episode III: Conspiracy to commit high treason, attempted assassination of the Chancellor of the Republic, attempted murder, kidnapping (two counts), theft (droids), high treason, trafficking in stolen children.

Episode IV: Treason, theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, espionage, resisting arrest, flight to avoid prosecution, assault, breaking and entering, aiding and abetting a prison escape, aiding an escaped prisoner, vandalism, more resisting arrest, assault, murder of security officers in the performance of their duties, impersonating military personnel, destruction of government property, murder (innumerable counts).

Episode V: Treason, flight to avoid prosecution, destruction of yet more government property, murder.

Episode VI: Treason, sedition, impersonating a deity, resisting arrest, incitement to riot, sabotage, destruction of government property, possession of weapons of mass destruction, murder (innumerable counts).

Its complete with the revelation of the warcrime-prone Jedi´s habit of executing prisoners out of hand and showing Master Yoda as what he truly is: a religious fanatic, skilled manipulator and ruthless liar.

Read both parts and laugh. Thats and order!

Henrik

Today the White House said that US president Bush is coming to Denmark in July:

President Bush will travel to Denmark prior to his participation in the Group of Eight (G-8) Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland in the United Kingdom. The President's bilateral program in Denmark will take place on July 6, 2005. Denmark is a close friend and ally of the United States, and Prime Minister Rasmussen is a strong proponent of effective transatlantic cooperation.

President Bush's visit, his fourth to Europe since his second inauguration, underscores the President's commitment to working with our European partners to advance freedom and prosperity in the world.

To make it even better, the day Bush visits Denmark is his 59 birthday. I have a wee feeling a few people are going to show up and greet him on his birthday, and that I am going to be one of them.

Anyway: the visit is in response to an invitation that Danish prime minister extended already in 2002. Since then, Denmark has had special forces and F16s helping to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, troops to help demine the country, and currently we have 530 soldiers in Iraq. The contribution to the actual invasion was rather pathetic, though: we sent a friggin submarine to a desert war!

On top of the military contributions, prime minister Fogh has also provided steadfast diplomatic support for the US for the last 4 years. For the celebrations of the end of WWII, Fogh acted as pitcher to Bush´s batting in the game about making Russia apologise to the Baltic countries for 50 years of occupation (interrupted by 3 years of nazi rule). Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had been demanding such an apology for years, but given that they dont exactly have much diplomatic weight to throw around, their demands didnt get anywhere.

The US has been accused so much of acting unilaterally that she couldnt do much in the matter without negating any benefit by appearing to intrude in other people´s affairs. The remedy to that problem was to have another country bring up the topic early enough for it to develop to a degree where Bush could put the demand for an apology before Putin. Denmark was perfectly suited for that role ever since its trailblazing in recognizing the independence of the Baltic countries in 1991, and thus the plan worket out: The Baltic countries delivered the ball, Denmark pitched, and Bush acted as hitter. Infortunately, Putin refused to take the bait, but at least the matter was brought to a wider audience.

It is such small acts that Bush repays now.

Henrik

Update: In case you wonder the Baltic obsession with getting an apology, btw, consider that on average one in ten Balts died or were deported to Siberia under Soviet occupation. The Balts didnt particularly like that, and responded with a widepread guerilla-movement - the last Estonian partisan drowned rather than surrender in 1978.

As the story goes, the guy had been hiding out in the forests for years. The KGB finally got wind of where he might be, but rather than sending in the troops and make enough noise to scare him into hiding, they took the smart way out: they sent in two men in civil clothing. After wandering the woods for a couple of days, they happened upon him as he was peacefully sitting by a stream, fishing to have something to eat. After convincing him they were genuine patriotic Estonians, he was delighted to finally have someone to talk to again, and let them come closer.

That is the time when they jumped and cuffed him. As they triumphed, he managed to tear loose, run, and dive into the stream he had just been fishing in. He dived deep down into the stream, stuck himself under a submerged tree, and drowned rather than surrender. That was in 1978, 34 years after the return of the Soviets.

His name was August Saabe.

Respect.

Update 2:

You can find a picture of August Saabe here, thanks to Uriasposten.´

Henrik

Ah, hell. The last post was probably a bit too long, so here comes the quick rundown of how Danish parties stand:

Unity List: Communists, with all that entails.

Socialist People´s Party: Ex-communists mixed with humanist an environmental fundamentalism. IE, reality doesnt matter, ideology does.

Social Democrats: Social Democrats. Democratic socialists with a tinge of sanity. The left wing is beyond salvage, though.

Radical Left: The self-proclaimed center party. Fundamentalist humanists trying to talk people into believing they are both pro-poor and pro-rich (Richard Flordias ideas). When one of their constituencies finds out about the other, the party is in for a world of hurt.

Left - Denmarks Liberal Party: Social Democrats. They still have an economically liberal wing that is making a lot of noise about the party´s move to the left. An actual liberal party is under formation. We will see if it manages to draw strength from disaffected elements in Left.

The Conservative People´s Party: Socially responsible conservatives. Pro-business, too. They have a strong urge to be the big party in the middle, though, that is not going to do them any good if they follow it.

Danish People´s Party: The right wing of the Social Democrats in all but name. That is also where they have a lot of their voters from.

In short, you could take the Radicals, the left wing of the Social Democrats, the Socialist People´s Party and the Unity List and smack them together, and nobody would know the difference.

Same with the right wing of the Social Democrats, the Danish People´s Party and the left wings of the Conservatives and Left.

The remainder might actually form an actual rightwing party.

Henrik

It occurred to me that, given that I am going to comment upon Danish poltics from time to time, I had better include a small run-down of Danish politics.

First, a small bit about parliament:

For the first 100 years as a democracy, Denmark had a two-chamber parliament much like Germany, the US or Great Britain. During the last 3 decades of the 1800s, however, the conservative party Højre (it literally means "Right") became locked in battle with the liberal party Venstre (litterally "Left") and, seeing its majority in the lower chamber steadly dwindling, resorted to using its majority in the upper chamber and the support it received from the king to block Venstre power and govern by decree much of the time.

When Højre representation had dwindled to 8 members in the 114-member lower chamber, the king finally gave in and backed a Venstre-government in 1901 (rumor has it that the reason was that Venstre was blocking any attempts at paying a dowry for two of his granddaughters unless they were handed power). This also entailed the institution of parliamentarism (that you cant govern against a majority in parliament) as a guiding principle, and by the revision of the Danish constitution in 1915 the virtual neutering of the upper chamber. It languished for another four decades before being abolished in the 1950s.

The chamber left, Folketinget - "The People´s Thing/Parliament" - today consists of 175 members elected in Denmark proper and two each elected in Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.
the latter four members represent their own Greenland-only and Faeroe-only parties, some of whom are pro-independence, and they seldomly, due to their small numbers, have any real impact. The exception to the rule is the 1998-election, when it was 300 votes cast on the Faeroes that provided the last MP needed for the incumbent Social Democrat/Radical government to continue.

The MPs themselves today are apportioned to the various parties proportionally according to the number of votes they get. As a consequence, the Folketing is always populated by a plethora of different parties, in the last couple decades ranging in number between 7 and 11. After the last election in February, the number came down to 7 with the failure of the Christian Democrats in convincing the electorate that they are inconsequential vote-waste.

The development of the party systems (leaving out small, short-lived parties) looks like this:

The original constitution of Denmark didnt consider the possibility of parties, only elected individuals, and they (parties) only began developing under the impression of the struggle between conservatives and liberals in the latter part of the 1800s. The conservatives quickly formed into the party Right (Højre), while the liberals coagulated into a plethora of groups under the general heading "Left" (Venstre).

With the formation of a Social Democratic party from the 1870s, the stock parties of Danish politics were there. It also began the steady formation of more and more parties to the left of the party Left, that would prove the partys name wrong several times over.

Fragmentation started in 1905, when smallholders and urban intellectuals split off from Venstre to form Det Radikale Venstre (Radical Left). Next came the Communists, who split off from the Social Democrats following WWI. Disregarding numerous smaller parties that have since gone out of existence, it continued like this until 1958, when the Communists began their history of splits, and the result was the Socialist People´s Party. Officially, it was the "democratic" elements that split off after the suppression of the Hungarian rebellion of 1956 by Soviet troops, but given the 2-year lag, and the fact that it was the very same people who had witnessed Stalins purges without complaining that now suddenly professed to be virtual innocents, this can be safely discounted

The Watershed-election in 1973 (so named because new parties received almost a third of the number of MPs) produced the Progress party that, after shedding its (economically) ultra-liberal elements in the 1990s evolved into the Danish Peoples Party - essentially social democrats with an anti-immigration agenda.

Otherwise, the Communists dissolved into a plethora of smaller parties, that didnt reform into a viable party until after the collapse of the Soviet Block, calling their new creation the Unity List. With the loss of representation of some other products of the Watershed-election (the Center Democrats and Christian Democrats), the number of parties represented in parliament (again discounting the 4 northern Atlantic members) fell to its current 7. They are the following, ranged as they normally are from left to right in the political spectrum:

Unity List
Socialist People´s Party
Social Democats
Radical Left
Conservative People´s Party
Left - Denmark´s Liberal Party
Danish People´s Party

The sequence is deceiving, though: The Conservatives and Liberals have formed the government since 2001, and to retain power the Liberals have moved more and more to the left, taking much of the Social Democrats´ positions on especially welfare policy. At the same time, the Danish People´s Party has finished the process it started in the 90s to transform itself from an ultra-liberalist party into, essentially, the Social Democrats plus xenophobia.
To compensate a bit for this rush to the centre, the Conservatives have tried to pair their pro-welfare policy with pro-business stances, while the fundamentalist humanist Radicals have moved to the right economically.

The result of all this, however, is that all the choice one has among these seven parties is between two radical left-parties (Unity List and Socialist People´s Party) and five different shades of social democracy.

Right now, that works out fine, but the problem is that while everybody knows that reforms are needed to ward off eventual collapse due to the rising number of the elderly, nobody dares to actually do much about it. In the 1998 election, Social Democratic allegations that the rightwing parties wanted to raise rents lost the rightwing parties the elections, and in the 2001 election, the reform of pre-retirement pensions that the Social Democrats pulled through was widely seen as having cost them the election.

Henrik

Ran across the blog "Eject! Eject! Eject!" today. You positively need to run over there right now and read the essay "Sanctuary".

No, I dont mean walk, go or tap. RUN!, I say!!!!!!!

Henrik

Update:

If you like what you see there, consider buying William Whittle´s book at Amazon.

In the US, the Council on Foreign Relations has put out a report entitled "A New Beginning - Strategies for a More Fruitful Dialogue with the Muslim World", in which the council has asked focus groups in Morocco, Egypt and Indonesia about their perceptions of the US. What the report says is basically that the US in its relations with Muslim should quit defending itself against their attacks, give them more money, and stop telling them that their barbaric customs are.....well, barbaric customs. As such, nothing new.

Where it becomes interesting is in the treatment of how the focus groups view jihadist leaders, both local and global. Seems as if many dont know their homegrown jihadis:

Despite their hopes for Islamic influence on politics, focus group members gave little support to local Islamist leaders in Morocco and Egypt and only moderate sympathy in Indonesia. In Morocco, several participants confused Abdeslam Yacine, leader of the largest local Islamist group, al-Adl Wah Ihsane, with the late Palestinian Hamas leader Ahmed Yacine, killed by an Israeli last year. “We don’t know much about him,” said an older woman. A few alluded to his learning and stature (“teacher,” “respected”). Among those who offered opinions, some were wary or anxious. Many thought him an extremist.

Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Akef was even less well known in Cairo, where almost none of the participants knew his name. Their affect and body language when he was mentioned gave the impression of genuine puzzlement, not fear.

In contrast, Abubakir Bashir, a controversial figure in Indonesia, drew mixed reactions in Jakarta. Accused of being the spiritual leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate responsible for the deadly bombings in Bali and Jakarta in the past three years, he was awaiting retrial on terrorism charges at the time the focus groups met. Many associated him with violence or extremism (“terrorist,” “hard-line,” “bomb,” “uses religion as cover”). But roughly as many people were sympathetic, seeing him as a “religious person” who is a “victim” or “scapegoat” facing unfounded charges. (One claimed Bashir was the object of an American vendetta.)

As such, this could be seen as pretty encouraging news. Then comes the description of how people see Osama bin Laden, though:

In contrast to local Islamists, Osama bin Laden received rock-star reviews from many young Muslims. “He is a good man [who] fights for his beliefs,” said one young Egyptian woman. Other associations included “very clever,” “cunning,” “a good businessman,” “intellectual,” “idealistic,” “courageous,” and “hero.” Many dismissed his ties to terrorism as American propaganda, describing him as a “victim of false accusation” and “a name invented by the United States to justify its acts.”

Oh really? How about we nuke the entire Middle East, then tell them that the United States is just a name invented by Muslims to justify their terrorist attacks.

Sheesh!

Read the whole thing here.

Henrik

Thursday saw the resurfacing of a struggle that most peoples thought had ended with the US Civil War 140 years ago: the fight to abolish slavery.

Two thousand people took to the streets of Niamey, the capital of Niger, to demand the release of anti-slavery campaginers Ilguilas Wila and Alassane Biga. The BBC reports:

Ilguilas Weila and Alassane Biga have spent more than two weeks in custody.

They deny charges of attempted fraud, by allegedly trying to falsely
elicit money from foreign donors.

................

London-based Anti-Slavery International has urged the authorities to immediately release Mr Weila and Mr Biga, who both work for the anti-slave organisation, Timidria.

"We are very concerned for their welfare and categorically refute the charges against them," said Anti-Slavery International Africa Programme Officer Romana Cacchioli.

"The government's actions appear to be a concerted campaign not only to discredit their reputation and the work of Timidria, but also to silence efforts to end slavery in the country."

The problem for the Niger´ian government is, that while it passed a law abolishing slavery in May 2003 (ie, two years ago, and only under massive pressure by western donors), it really doesnt want to actually ACT upon that law.

Interference began already in 2003, when the government tried to prevent the press from reporting the first slaves being freed. The following from the BBC:

Drama as Niger slaves are freed

Dozens of slaves have been set free at a ceremony in Niger despite an attempt by the local authorities to stop the event being reported.

The ceremony in Tahoua in central Niger was disrupted by police, who seized equipment from journalists.

...........

Tears of joy

The BBC's Idy Baraou says Governor Ziti Maiga sought to prevent journalists reporting on the ceremony, because he, along wiht many others in authority, does not accept that slavery still exists in Niger.

However, our reporters says the former slaves shed tears of joy as they were given certificates showing they were now free.

................

Castrated

The organisation says many female slaves are raped and subjected to other forms of sexual abuse by their masters.

Men who disobey orders are flogged or in serious instances castrated.

Succeeding in having the first dozens of slaves freed, anti-slavery campaigners then planned for a grand ceremony this february, in which some 7.000 slaves would be freed. Initial participation by the government was even secured. But then it happened:

Niger cancels 'free-slave' event

The government of Niger has cancelled at the last minute a special ceremony during which at least 7,000 slaves were to be granted their freedom.

A spokesman for the government's human rights commission, which had helped to organise the event, said this was because slavery did not exist.

It is not clear why the government, which was also a co-sponsor of the ceremony, changed its position.

At least 43,000 people across Niger are thought to be in slavery.

It is this event that the Niger´ian government now tries to turn on the anti-slavery campaigners. Seems as if, now that it has gotten rid of the pushy attention of the western donor countries, the government wants to shut people up so it can go on in its old ways and maintain slavery. One word comes to mind:

Vile

In case you´d like to help do something about this, you can drop the Niger´ian ambassador to the US a piece of your mind here: ambassadeniger@hotmail.com

Other contact info here.

If you prefer to actually achieve something, try working your government. Its the one holding the purse strings for the Niger´ian government - 45% of Niger government revenue came from foreign donors in 2002.

You can mail the Danish foreign ministry here: um@um.dk

The US State Department is somewhat trickier -

To send them your "foreign policy opinions", go here.
To send a message to the Secretary of State (ie, Condoleezza Rice), go here.

Henrik

The aboriginals in Australia are having a fit after four of them were spotted breaking into a farm. Two farm workers caught one of their number, restrained him with a noose around the neck and roughed him up some. The BBC reports Wednesday:

Mr Davies said the farm had suffered frequent break-ins and local police had given the owner permission to restrain offenders.

"It's a pity they didn't have the hindsight to put a rope around his waist and not his neck," he told the court.

Of course, presented with such an obvious opportunity, Aboriginal representatives choose to overlook the fact that the boy was caught committing a crime, and pulled the race card instead. Says "aboriginal activist" Murrandoo Yanner:

"I bet if two black fellas had gone out and done that to two or three white children, we would not be receiving an A$800 fine," Mr Yanner was quoted as saying by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"Aboriginal leader" Bernie Button chimes in, too, threatening violence:

"This is going to incite racial violence," he said.

"The justice system stinks. It's saying it's all right for non-indigenous people to go and put a rope around someone's neck and drag them up and down a river and give them a flogging. We're saying that's not on."

Bernie Button knows people will take his threats serious, too. When an Aboriginal native of Palm Island died in November last year, the island saw aboriginals riot and burn down the police station and court house. The previous February, rumors spread in Sidney that police were to fault for the death of a 17-year-old (he had crashed on his bike and was impaled on a metal fence). As a result of his crash, the local Aborignals rioted, torched a railway station and injured 40 policemen.

Compare to what happened today. Graham Staines was a Australian missionary who had worked to ease the suffering of lepers in India for thirty years. In January 1999, he and his two sons, Timothy, 10 and Philip, 8, were sleeping in his car in the village of Manoharpur, India, when the following happened:

All three were burnt to death by a crowd of Hindu fanatics as they slept in their vehicle outside a church in January 1999. The missionary and his sons tried to escape the flames but the mob, armed with axes, prevented them.

Of the mob, one man was sentenced to death last year, while 12 were handed sentences of life in prison. Thursday, a judge opted to reduce the death sentence to life, while all the others were released.

Result? Well, no white rioting in Australia, at least.

Henrik

Update:

The Staines family before father and sons were burnt to death: http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1604/16040221.jpg

Update 2:

Gladys Staines, the wife of Graham, decided to stay in India nevertheless, to continue helping lepers in the clinic she and her husband had lived in. Now, to add insult to injury the Indian government, that thursday released 12 of their killers last year, slapped a 10 million rupee-demand on it. The land the clinic lies on was given as a gift 102 years ago by a local Maharaja - ie 45 years before India even came into existence. Now, the Indian government has decided that it needs to "regularise" the gift, and needs 10 million rupees to do that.

I seem to run into surprise after surprise these days, with icon after icon of the left being outed as falling somewhat short of the idealistic people they have been portrayed as. First Marx was outed as an ultracapitalist stocktrader and serial freeloader, then uncle Ho turned out to be a would-be collaborator with the French imperialists, and now this: Salvador Allende is outed as a secret proto-nazi. The Telegraph reports:

Mr Farias, who teaches at the Latin American Institute of Berlin's Free University, said: "I thought I would look at what he had done, and looked at his writings, and this dissertation came up."

Only 18 pages of the dissertation, called Mental Hygiene and Delinquency, have previously been published, a fact that aroused the historian's suspicions.

"I wanted to read the whole thing but couldn't find it. Eventually at the university I came across a mountain of old doctoral theses covered in dust. Like I miracle I found his and it was 160 pages long.

"Before reading the dissertation he handed it to the Allende Foundation in Santiago for authentication.

"They gave me a copy, and I started to read it," he said. "I thought I had gone crazy. . . there was a theory which he praised, that homosexuality being a crime, it could be corrected with surgery - small holes would be made in the stomach, into which small pieces of testicle would be inserted. This would make the person heterosexual. Then he writes about different races, and their predeliction for certain crimes, he says Jews are genetically programmed to commit fraud, theft and usury. This is pure Nazi theory, that he says it was genetic."

Allendes writings also come with a Chilenian master race, no less:

As for Chileans, Mr Farias said the dissertation quoted a theory that the Spaniards' 300-year fight to colonise Chile had weeded out the weak from both Spanish and native Indian populations, leaving the proud Chileans with the best from both races.

It does seem that Allende wasnt too thrilled with the master race he had been dealt, however, so he brought in help from Nazi Germany to help formulate a law that could help him prevent undesirables from breeding (source: Politiken - the translation is mine):

....that Allende as the minister of health in a Chilenian peoples´s front-government 1938-41 brought the two nazis E. Brücher og Hans Betzhold to Chile, so they could help him formulate a planned law on forced sterilizations of the mentally retarded

And Allendes collaboration doesnt end there (Telegraph again):

He was minister in 1939 and I found in the political archive of the foreign office, files that the Nazis were bribing three Chilean ministers. There were papers showing [Nazi foreign minister] Ribbentrop paying the ministers, including Allende. They each got 300,000 Reichmarks."

He said the money was to ensure the Chilean government bought weapons stolen from Poland after 1939. The deal never came off, but Mr Farias said he found a document written by the German ambassador saying the money was not wasted as Nazi ideas were being spread in Chile.

And Mr Allende, as health minister, did propose a Bill on compulsory sterilisation of the mentally ill and chronic alcoholics, said Mr Farias. "Allende was more radical in this than Hitler was at the time," he said. The Bill was opposed by the medical profession in Chile and never reached parliament.

The thing that has to REALLY bug the radical left has to be this, though:

Mr Farias said the dissertation also attacked revolutionaries, saying that although they might appear normal, they were actually sociopaths.

You can almost hear their hearts breaking, cant you?? :-)

What you are reading right now is the very first posting on The Daily Bias, a periodically reoccurring opportunity for me to vent my outrage at the general stupidity that permeates the world today. And in case you are wondering about the title: NO, I am probably not going to put this out daily. The title just sounded better than plain “Bias”. An example of form over content, I guess. Oh well.

“The Daily Bias “ is primarily in response to what I see as a general anti-western bias in the world, and the accompanying willingness to accept anything as gospel as long as it reinforces that exact bias. The idea is to present the other side of the news, provide background, and provide access to news stories that just don’t make it into the mainstream media because they don’t conform to preconceived notions about the world.

In other words, the idea is to provide the reality check that most people are in need of.

A final word about layout and the like: this is not some artsy project designed to over-awe you with its beauty. In all probability, it will continue looking like this: the template that got me started. I´ts a question of content over form. I do have a life besides this thing.

No, really: I do.

Honest.